Have you ever felt that you have no or very little control over the way you lead your life? If not, just think about your daily routine from the time you wake up till the time you go to sleep.

How much time do you spend on doing activities that you love to do and are passionate about which can be dancing, painting, yoga, meditation, reading, working out etc. and how much time you spend on doing things that you are supposed to do just because you are a student, an employee, someone who earns enough to own a TV, a smartphone, spend on junk food and internet. Examples of such not-so-productive activities are mentioned below, just find out if you:

• Ceaselessly surf channels on TV for hours.
• Spend a large chunk of your time chatting on apps like whatsapp, facebook etc.
• Stalk profiles of unknown people of opposite sex on social media apps like facebook, Instagram.
• Work on a project task in office in unproductive and lame ways just because your employer follows such an outdated process and your managers wants you to comply with it.
• Copy assignments from classmates in college just because you are supposed to submit them in order to get good marks allotted to this not-so-interesting activity, even when you are least enthused to do it by yourself.
• Satisfy your taste buds by munching on scrumptious but unhealthy junk food items like ice-creams, pizzas, burgers, cold drinks and what not.
• Masturbate multiple times every day to uninterrupted supply of terabytes of porn to release your frustration.

If you are indulging in any of these activities in your day to day life you are being trapped by one of the most dangerous elements of the society, that is, 7 things that consumes your mind, controls your life. If you think you are alone and something is wrong with you then think again because you are not alone.

Millions of people across the globe unconsciously fall into this category, on daily basis.

Society has been deliberately designed in such a way that people’s mind is consumed in unnecessary things for most of the time and that way their lives are kept under control.

Let me cover each of these things in detail so that you completely understand the idea behind their existence in the society.

TV

Majority of the stuff that runs on TV are totally BS be it fake news, daily soaps, WWE, commercial breaks yet people consume a significant amount of time watching it. Let me elaborate a couple of them.

a. Fake News

By fake news, I mean news influenced by some political party to divert public attention from real issues that matter. Nowadays majority of the news channels are being controlled by some political party or a large business house. This phenomenon is common in US and other developed as well as developing countries. As a result, most of their content is propaganda news and which is not worth wasting your precious time.

b. Commercial Breaks

By commercial breaks I mean ceaseless breaks during movies that are telecasted on TV. I termed them as “commercial breaks” because the duration for which they run completely outdo movie duration itself thereby killing the joy of watching it. This is the reason why platforms like Amazon Prime video and Netflix has emerged for people looking for high quality entertainment free from commercial breaks. Why would anyone waste his time on TV when he can choose from to watch any of top movies on Amazon Prime right now.

Bottom line, cut the time you spend watching TV only to specific shows which add real value to your lives. In my case, I use TV only to watch very few shows on National Geographic channel and discovery channel, one weekly comedy show and UFC pay per view events.

Online Chatting

Online chatting also referred to as texting can be very tempting especially when person on the other side is of opposite sex. The curiosity to get her reply skyrockets if she is a stranger and you had found her on tinder or some other social networking site.

Guys!! You must understand that there are hundreds of such guys messaging her to get her attention. Even if you have a very good profile and deserve to get her attention she is unlikely to reply to you instantly as her messenger gets flooded with PMs (Private message) and DMs (Direct Message) all the time.

Pause for a minute and think. Is it really worth spending your time and effort on a girl whose attention span is close to zero, thanks to number of aimless guys’ constantly sending needy messages to her? Next time when you are indulging in something like this, ask yourself a simple question, how smart is it to let some stranger’s reply consume your mind and control your life?

If person you are chatting is known to you I would still recommend you to spend quality time with him or her in person. Chemistry is always better when you are talking while sitting together as you can feel each other’s energies. If you have time constraint simply call her or leave a voice message. Lately I have been using voice messages very often for it is a better way to send across my point and saves time.

Mindlessly scrolling on Social Media

How many times do you grab your smartphone for doing a particular activity and end up browsing your facebook news feed? It begins by tapping on one of the facebook notifications and continues as hours of mindless scrolling. You often end up opening profiles of several people, watching their feed, albums and what not.

When you are bored and tired of this futile activity of browsing through every nook and corner of social media you realize that you actually grabbed your phone to do something else but ended up wasting two hours instead. Such mindless behaviour is very common among youth and is a result of negative effects of social media on society.

This happens to every one of us because smartphone apps and their features (read notifications) are designed for this very purpose of consuming your mind and hence controlling your life.

Here I have two action items for you:

1. Learn how to disable notifications on your smartphone.
2. Get rid of your social media addiction.

Corporate BS

Office politics, mindless gossips, backstabbing, herd mentality, boss’ shoe licking are primary ingredients of corporate culture. It is hard to focus on your work in such a toxic environment because our minds are consumed by these futile activities for majority of the time. Only a few passionate ones are able carry on with their work unaffected in such an environment.

But how many of us actually get the kind of work we want to do in our job? Apart from few lucky ones, rest of employees hate their job. According to a poll by gallop, which covered millions of employees in 200 countries, 85% of people hate their jobs.

This percentage is slightly better in US at 70% but goes as high as 94% in countries like China and Japan. Needless to say, you better find out, if you are enjoying your work or doing it just because your parents, relatives or some XYZ want you to?

Pause and think deeply on this point for some time, you can read rest of this post later. This is very important matter of your life but most of us tend to ignore it till later when we are too old, sick, lack energy or about to get fired from the very same job that we always hated.

Biggest problem with job is the comfort zone which it offers with guarantee of fixed salary (in most cases) at the end of every month because of which our mind remains shuts down outside of job. Refresh your mind right now; take charge of direction in which your life is going rather than letting your employer control it.

Mainstream Higher Education

What are you studying?

If you don’t want to fall in the category of 85% of those who hate their jobs as mentioned above you better choose to study what you are passionate about. In other words, if you love cooking and can happily work as a chef till your retirement age you should study what is required to become a chef. If you are not sure about your career path it’s always better to take career counselling from a professional.

But for god’s sake, don’t study engineering or medicine just because your parents want you to do so. Otherwise you will end up reluctantly copying your classmates’ assignments throughout your college life and leading an unfulfilled job life filled with frustrations day in and day out.

If you are passionate about painting, dancing, singing, acting don’t be afraid to follow it. Our education system and social conditioning will always discourage you to follow such a non-mainstream passions; it has been deliberately designed to do so and thereby control your life. But you just follow your passion, no matter what!!

Junk Food trap

Do you have any idea how about enormous amount of money that fast food industry spends on advertising stuff like burgers, French fries, pizzas, cold drinks, ice creams and alike. In 2017, fast food industry spent 11 billion on advertising which specifically targets children and teenagers.

There is reason for doing so it helps a great deal in controlling their mind at a time when it is developing. These advertisements have such an impact that every time a child will feel hungry his mind sends a signal to crave for some junk food.

Moreover, these foods are high on sugar, salt and contain high fructose corn syrup which tastes good but is unhealthy for mind and body. No wonder obesity rate is increasing in USA with as high as 38.1% in states like West Virginia in 2018. Bottom line; prevent your children from falling into junk food trap.

Tip: Re-read paragraph under commercial breaks heading in the first point above.

Masturbation- Boon or Curse

As a teenager, every time I tried to find out if masturbation is good or bad I got similar point of views with all stating that it’s normal and has no harmful effects on health. Back then internet was not very prevalent so I had to rely on newspapers and magazines. However I was never totally convinced as I could feel I am not the same person since the day I started masturbating.

In current scenario, masturbate side effects that include lack of energy and willpower, social anxiety and poor concentration are no more a secret. With global porn industry estimated at $ 97 billion with $ 12 billion coming from US, there is no dearth of easy supply of porn.

Just like fast food, porn industry also exists to make profit and they don’t care it is made at the cost of impacting millions of teenagers as well as adults across the world. The worst thing about porn addiction is that even people who are well aware of its harmful effects end up consuming their minds and masturbating to porn in order to escape negative emotions like stress and anger.

Industry will do what it has to do but ultimately it is you who will decide what is right for you and whether you are willing to allow some industrialist with shitty intentions to control your mind or not. Bottom line, take control of your life and quit porn forever and replace it with a healthier habit like reading, writing, exercising, meditating, cooking, learn dancing, yoga, skating etc.

Conclusion

This brings me to the end of another long and intense post. Are you guys able to exercise a firm control over your mind? What is it that works for you and what is it that still challenges you when it comes to disallowing external factors from consuming your mind and controlling your life. Do let me know in comments section as I always love to hear from you.

As per my personal experience the key to take charge of your life and consume your mind on productive activities is by keeping all these things at an arms length. When things like TV, social media apps, junk food, porn sites are out of your reach you are less likely to allow them to divert attention and subjugate your mind.