Let’s face it. We’re all overwhelmed these days with information. Many of us walk around with smartphones — devices in our pockets that can access the entirety of human knowledge. You need an answer? It’s right there in your hand.
We all have so much information, we often don’t know what to do with it. Our minds can only handle +/- 7 bits of information at a time… and that’s when we’re not feeling stressed. But add the overwhelm of too much information, then we are unable to focus on anything at all. It feels a lot more empowering to just walk away from it all.
Because we do have access to so much more information, we are being forced to learn how to develop capabilities of discernment in order to learn what is relevant and what is not much more quickly. Without the ability to prioritize what is important to our lives — what will make the biggest shifts and give us the biggest bang for our time and effort — we can find ourselves paralyzed.
This paralysis of information overwhelm can leave us feeling fearful, unfocused and confused. We can become depressed at the sense of not being able to fully create the life we want.