Beware the stories you read or tell; subtly, at night, beneath the waters of consciousness, they are altering your world.

– Ben Okri

When I was a kid, I used to obsess over this type of Lego called Bionicles. It was more than just blocks and pieces, there was this whole universe about it – movies and comics with heroes and villains and twists and turns, and 5-year old me devoured it all. When I went to Big W with my parents, I would always beg them to buy me a new Bionicle to play with. And usually, out of what I now suspect was a ploy to get me to pipe down, they complied. Little did they know how much these toys would take over my time, thoughts and obsessions.

From the ages of 5 to 7, hours each night were spent on my bedroom floor with swarms of Bionicles pieces in front of me. During these hours, I’d create epic battle scenes, new ‘hybrid’ Bionicles and a complex story with my figures which I thought was honestly pretty good. At the peak of my obsession, I even created a card game out of Bionicles. For each card, I would give each unique Bionicle a name, a ‘description’, some attack/defence stats and draw its face on a piece of paper like a Yu-Gi-Oh card. Looking back, it was absolutely ridiculous but as a kid, I was in my own little world and I loved it.

This strange phase of my life illustrates how my inputs directly influenced my outputs. It was only through my constant input of Bionicles: the movies, comics and buying new figures, that I was able to fuel my ideas of storylines, new figures and even a card game. If I had never taken any of these ‘Bionicles inputs’ in, there is no chance any of these weird ‘Bionicles outputs’ would’ve ever transpired.

Of course, this concept applies to almost all domains. If you want good grades, you’d better learn the lectures. If you want a healthy body, you’d better eat right. And if you want to be an epic Bionicles producer, you’d better have some interest in what the Universe and characters are like. Our outputs are directly influenced by our inputs.

Output	Necessary Input
Good grades	Learn stuff
Healthy body	Eat right
Epic Bionicles ideas	Obsess over Bionicles

This seems obvious. But due to the enormity of the information available on the internet these days (let alone podcasts, movies or books), there is huge potential for our ideas about ourselves, the world or other people to be radically altered. Whether it’s a subtle Facebook comment or an alarming news headline, the amount and diversity of stimuli out there that we can interact with is astronomical. This means negative and unproductive stimuli can hurt us, inspiring and exhilarating stimuli can build us up, but on unprecedented levels.

Which leads to the idea of the importance of developing ‘intentional inputs’. Whether it’s reading good books, avoiding unproductive pieces of information or having a stronger filter, controlling the ideas and products we input can help make dramatic changes in our outputs, whether that’s ideas, physique or anything in between, illustrating the ever-increasing need to defend our inputs.

I’ll admit, this can be uncomfortable as it creates responsibility on us to decide how we want to see things, and responsibility can be scary. But at the same time, this notion of defending inputs is also remarkably liberating, as the ideas that shape how we see the world can be slowly but surely moulded into something new, if we only decide to choose so. The potential for this is enormous.

So what you need to do, if you really want to broaden your horizons as a listener, is to get exposed to new things. Pick somebody. It doesn’t have to be me…. Find somebody who you trust as a guide, and let them open your ears to these new experiences.

If you do that, you will be rewarded infinitely…

– Ted Giota, from a podcast episode on Conversations with Tyler.

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On another note, I’ve been enjoying writing recently and so I’ve decided to write more during this Easter break. Starting today, I’ll aim to write 2 thoughts a week on this online journal: probably on a Sunday and a Thursday. I’ve absolutely no clue how long this’ll last, but we’ll see how it goes. As always, any feedback or comments are always appreciated!