Protect Your Mind

Some months ago, a voice in the night woke me out of a sound sleep and said, Protect your mind.

I lay there wondering what that even meant.

Protect your mind? What does that mean?

At the time, I didn’t have an answer. But the question stayed with me.

Over the next four to six weeks something unusual began happening. I started experiencing insomnia. Restless sleep. Nightmares that left a strange residue in the morning.

Then my patients began reporting the same thing.

Insomnia.

Anxiety.

Disturbing dreams.

A feeling that something inside their nervous systems was speeding up.

And I kept returning to that phrase:

Protect your mind.

This morning I read an interesting article in The Guardian by Michael Pollan. He was interviewed about something he calls consciousness hygiene. https://www.theguardian.com/wellness/2026/mar/05/michael-pollan-book-a-world-appears-consciousness-hygiene?CMP=share_btn_url

Consciousness hygiene.

What Pollan was pointing to is something many of us are beginning to sense: we are increasingly living at the effect of algorithms and digital systems designed to capture and hold our attention (and then monetize it).

Our minds are constantly being pulled — notifications, headlines, feeds, videos, commentary — each one competing for the small window of awareness we have available.

When that happens, something subtle but important occurs.

We lose our ability to choose.

Or maybe more accurately, we slowly relinquish our willingness to choose where our mind goes, where our attention rests, where our consciousness is directed.

Our awareness begins to move according to someone else’s agenda.

Which brings me back to that phrase that woke me in the night.

Protect your mind.

One of the simplest and most powerful ways I know to do this is through meditation.

Because when we meditate, we put our devices down. We stop scrolling. We stop watching.

We stop listening to something outside ourselves.

We sit and experience our own mind.

If you’ve ever tried meditation, you know this is not easy.

Thoughts bounce everywhere.

Memories arise.

Worries appear.

The mind moves like a restless animal.

Our instinct is often to suppress those thoughts or push them away — to banish them somewhere out of sight.

But meditation asks something different of us.

It asks us to see.

To allow.

To notice the movement of the mind without immediately reacting to it.

And that turns out to be a radical act.

Because when we become aware of our thoughts — when we see where our attention is going — we reclaim something essential.

Choice.

Where attention goes, consciousness follows.

And attention is something we can learn to guide.

When we begin to place gentle boundaries around our attention — not as walls, but as acts of choice — something else becomes possible.

We begin to reclaim our sovereignty.

Instead of reacting constantly to outside stimuli, the mind becomes a place where our own thoughts can form.

And that is a kind of creativity.

We begin generating our own ideas, our own reflections, our own questions.

We may choose to express them or not. The point is that the choice is ours.

When we are constantly downloading streams of artificial media — endless grabs for our attention — something inside us begins to erode.

Maybe we don’t lose our authenticity entirely.

But we begin to abandon it.

Protecting the mind, then, is not about isolation.

It is about remembering who is directing the current of our awareness.

Because when we reclaim that, something remarkable happens.

Presence returns.

We begin noticing the world around us again — nature, animals, the expressions on other people’s faces.

We inhabit our lives more fully.

And from that presence, something deeper becomes available.

Joy.

Not the frantic stimulation we often mistake for happiness.

But a steadier form of joy that arises when we feel aligned with our own direction.

I suspect this is what most of us are actually seeking.

Not just happiness.

But the quiet knowing that our own minds belong to us.

So perhaps the invitation is simple.

Protect your mind the way you would protect something sacred.

Put the phone down sometimes.

Sit quietly long enough to hear your own thoughts again.

Choose where your attention goes.

Because attention is life.

And your life deserves to be directed by you.