We are the guardian to our mind, body, and soul. We must stand at the gates of our life and protect ourselves from unwanted contaminants: negative information, people, and habits. ~ Brendon Burchard

One of the best decisions I made was to stop watching the news on television and to not allow my local news station social media posts in my feed. The other day I turned on the local news on purpose. It was to see if they still offered a calendar of local events - fairs, festivals, etc. I can't tell you if they do or not because I turned it off after the first 10 minutes. Why? Because every single story was about someone getting shot, someone hurting someone else, someone getting robbed, someone dying in a fire/flood/car accident - and only 3 of those were local! I quickly determined that this information was not helpful to me.

I remove people and pages from my social media feeds when I notice that I dread seeing their name appear in front of me. Sometimes it happens quickly - soon after we've connected and my feed is flooded with their posts about how awful This Group is, or how evil That Group is, or how greedy This Company is, etc. Sometimes it happens slowly - recent tragedies or occurrences become their fixation. Either way, I simply stop Following so that I don't have to see their vitriol, their angst, their determination to see the world as an evil place to live in.

As for habits, I still have not won the battle with procrastination. What I have done is reduce its occurrence, and for that I'm thankful. All I can say is that when I say Do It Now! I take it seriously and do it.

My morning routine includes prayer and meditation, followed by reading something that will keep my thoughts and mind on moving forward with personal improvement so that I can be the best person I am capable of being that day. I believe that this helps strengthen the guard at the gate, because on those days when I'm "just not feeling it", when I am going through the motions, I find my thoughts being negative and am drawn to negative input from the outside sources.

If I'm going to grow and be better than I was yesterday, it is my responsibility to keep the negative and non-productive away so that I can focus on my vision, my goals, my life.

this post originally appeared in The GROW Alliance Facebook group