Inputs.

Picture a glass cup siting under a faucet. Now you gently turn the water on and it begins a slow but steady flow into the cup. You can see the crystal clear water slowly filling up the cup, starting at the base and working its way higher and higher until it reaches the brim.

Once the water reaches the top, the cup begins to overflow. That overflow is pure water directly from the spout.

Now imagine you turn the faucet off and the flow of fresh water slows to a periodic drip off the spout.

Next, picture a bottle of grape juice. You pick up the grape juice and put just a splash of juice in the cup. There is almost no noticeable change in the color, smell, or taste of the water. To the naked eye, nothing has changed.

Gradually, you begin pouring the juice more steadily into your cup. At first, the water just appears to be a deeper blue thanks to the purple of the grape juice.

Eventually, however, the water becomes noticeably darker. It is no longer a blue hue at all, it is turning purple all the way through.

As a result, the overflow of the cup is no longer pure water, it is a water/juice mix that begins leaving a faint stain on the once clean sink.

Over time, with enough juice poured into the cup, the cup will become a darker and darker purple until it is no longer a water/juice mix, it will simply be filled with juice. Therefore, the overflow will be only grape juice, leaving a dark ring as it flows over the rim of the cup and into the surrounding sink.

What if you then decided to pour Coca Cola into the cup? The color would begin to shift again, turning the deep purple color into a murky brown. Not only would the color change, this would also introduce a new element to your cup with the carbonation from the soda.

The cup will begin to bubble and fizz and soon the spillover will become a mix of foam and fizzy grape juice/Coke mix.

Perhaps you stop after a few minutes, before the Coke completely overwhelms the grape juice and now you begin pouring in ammonia.

This will have no noticeable effect on the color of the liquid. It will, however, make a dramatic difference to the smell and taste of the mix. It will also make the mix toxic and if you were to ingest it you could end up with severe chemical burns in your mouth, esophagus, and stomach.

What is now filling the cup and overflowing into the sink is now a brownish, putrid, unpalatable, poison.

What flows out from the cup is a direct result of what fills the cup. What fills the cup is a direct result of what flows into the cup.

This is true for each of us. We are just living, breathing, human sized containers and what we fill ourselves up with determines what comes out of us.

Have you stopped to consider how you are filling yourself up?

What you are consuming? I don’t just mean food or drink, more than that, I mean what are you watching, reading, hearing, and doing?

What are the people around you telling you? What are your conversations about? What are you listening to? What are your entertainment sources? Where do you get your news?

Are you being filled with positive, insightful encouragement? Do you receive thoughtful, loving feedback? Do you make time for exercise? Are you eating well? Are you watching uplifting or humorous entertainment? Do you read your Bible or books that you can learn from? Does someone tell you they love you every day?

Or…

Do you find yourself hearing negative, pessimistic opinions? Do you get criticized and ridiculed? Are you sedentary and lethargic? Do you eat junk food or drink too much? Are you watching sensationalized entertainment? Do you read mindless rubbish? Do you scroll social media playing the comparison game?

Like the cup of water, anything you put into yourself will have an impact on your make up. At first, the changes may be unnoticeable. A little drop of negativity may not alter your perspective. But, repeated exposure to negativity will begin to shift your own perception of the world around you.

Simply put, your inputs determine your outputs.

Unlike the cup of water, you are not a passive participant in what goes into your cup. You are able to choose how you fill yourself up. This is the idea that you are what you repeatedly do. I would expand that to:

You are what you repeatedly do, hear, and see.

Your inputs don’t always come from the outside world. We have the ability to fill ourselves with positive or negative habits, thoughts, and words. What we do on a daily basis, who we surround ourselves with, and what sort of media we consume will shape our perspective and reactions to our current circumstance.

You cannot control all of your inputs. Life has a way of dumping some juice, Coke, or ammonia in our cup from time to time. However, if we are intentional and diligent about refreshing our cup on a daily basis with what is good, positive, and healthy, we are able to keep the contents of our cup clear. Therefore the outpouring of our cup will be clean and pure.

How you spend your time dictates your direction. What you consume shapes your health and perspective. How you fill up your cup determines how you will interact with the people and the world around you.

Our inputs directly impact our outputs.

How are you filling your cup?