How to Wiggle Out of the Mud! - 11

Avoid Trifling Conversation

By Dr. Ron Ross

The Ellen DeGeneres show was on the TV when I walked into a waiting room. I had to listen to it because, well, because it was on and I had to wait. I didn’t want to hear it so I did my best to tune out her inane conversation with some celebrity. What I heard serves to make the point of this edition’s way out of the mud: avoid trifling conversation.

Your brain is a sensitive and powerful computer, a finely tuned mechanism, a magnificent work of creative genius capable of brilliance. But it must be continually nourished with blood and oxygen, exposed to great ideas, and most of all, it must be challenged.

No one knows how much information your brain can actually hold. Scientists believe that the brain, unlike the finest computers ever built, has an ever increasing, un-measurable capacity to hold, process, understand, and question information.

Do you realize what this means? It means you can be much smarter than you are! You can grow in knowledge and understanding way beyond what you think is even possible!

Then why do so many people run on intellectual empty? Why is there so much banality to the television shows you watch, the magazines you read, and the websites you visit? Why do you fill your magnificent mind with shallow and worthless information that will at best leave you ditzy and at worst comatose?

You’re not going to like my answer: BECAUSE IT’S EASY! It is much easier to capture all the details about the celebrity gossip of the moment than it is to grapple with a great idea. It takes much less effort to watch Entertainment Tonight than read a book, yet in the thirty minutes you take to watch twenty minutes of so-called “news” that may contain only one or two minutes of useful information, you could read a chapter or two of a great book and come away encouraged, informed, amused, more clever, and therefore a much more interesting person.

If within the last month you haven’t read a book or discussed some of the world’s great imponderables with someone smarter than you, then your brain is going unchallenged and your life is on hold. Continue on this path and your brain will, like an unused muscle, atrophy, weaken, and could even become dangerous. Unchallenged brains can lead people from morality to misery, from science to superstition, from great ideas to irrelevant idiocy.

However, if you have declared yourself a person of value and purpose, if you are focused intently on a few important goals, if you are committed to continual learning and growth, then you don’t have the time, energy, or inclination to talk about some ditzy, hollow, irrelevant babe or some goofy but good looking stud who swaggers around as if everyone is in love with him.

You’ve got things to learn, ideas to test, goals to reach, and books to read. See yourself as someone important, worthwhile, intelligent, and relevant. You will never wiggle out of the mud unless you begin today to avoid trifling conversation.

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©Copyright 2016 Dr. Ronald D. Ross