Why You Should Stop Watching The News

September 29th, 2009

I’ve heard that the average American spends 6 full days without sleep on average over the course of a 30 day month in front of the television. That is 20% of your life including sleeping time. If you count sleep as 8 hours per night Just imagine what you could do with that time.

30 days = 720
6 days watching TV = 144 hours
8 hours sleep per day * 30 = 240 hours

720-240 = hours awake = 480
(144/480)*100 = percentage of awake hours watchng TV = 30%

Lets say you live to 90 years old. That would be 18 YEARS consistently of your life, in order, with no sleeping in between that you had watched that little box in your living room.

That is a pretty shocking statistic.

We all know that News channels tend to have their own motives. You don’t get a news station whos duty it is to provide the most important news it tends to be which ones are most emotionally strong. This is why all the British papers have HUGE headlines such as “shocking, unbelievable, hooligan, scum”. They suck you in with the outrageous headline. It’s kind of like a cheap drug. You pay about 40 pence (haven’t bought one in ages) and it changes your state to one of several emotions which usually include shock, horror, loathing, fear. Isn’t that what a drug does? And to an extent I see why they do this. They have business motives which are to survive and become the most popular news station or newspaper. But the sad thing is they cater to an audience of emotionally numb people who would rather experience a negative state than feel the emptiness that they feel daily because it beats feeling nothing, right?

I sometimes look at people who watch too much television and a huge wave of compassion mixed with pity comes over me. It’s like they zone out to a lower level of consciousness and just become inside the box. It’s like when someone daydreams and are totally stuck in their mind. This is probably partly due to the fact that they are tired from work or whatever and use TV as some kind of leisure activity. They have a far off glazed look in their eyes and its creepy and these people seem more robot than human but I digress.

Information overload

You really don’t need all that information coming at you at once, do you? Who needs 24 hour news anyways?A huge disadvantage to being able to connect to people at all times is that they can all connect to you at all times too! We need to learn to disconnect from the grid and be alone sometimes. One of the greatest benefits of going into self discovery/self development is training myself to have Zen-like concentration. I’m not perfect but there’s a huge improvement. This is a lot easier to achieve with less distractions like news in the background etc. Do you really need to know about the cat that got caught down a drainpipe this week or even how young the latest soldier was to serve in Baghdad? What purpose are you SERVING by doing that?

How to stop TV addiction?

Find some alternatives – Talk to people about world events. Its much more fun, its interactive. I have a friend online who talks to people in Palestine about the ongoing conflict there and she loves it. You are talking to a human being not a corporation. Sure they may have their own biases like we all do but the difference is that you are in control. you can interact with whom you wish and when you outsource your world news to people in corporations you are always going to get biases. People open up over time to let the real truth come out.

• Have a trustworthy friend – Most people will have a trustworthy friend who will always give reliable straight facts about something. I definitely have at least one who I can discuss events with without either of us attaching to a specific point of view and it makes for fantastic discussion. They can be a gatherer of information for you in sorts.
• TiVo or watch online – this way you save time from skipping adverts and if you maintain the habit of using TiVo then you can stop watching all those shows that you just watch because nothing else is on.
• Slow withdrawal – For pulling yourself from watching the news or tv in general I would suggest a slow withdrawal. This is a huge habit that will take a long time for most people. Try going a month without watching any of the 24 hour news firstly then no 6′o’clock news the next month etc. Always reward success too and don’t be too harsh on failures.
• Find a hobby – Find something that you are really passionate about and start doing that regularly. This will disintegrate the TV habit by bringing in the new one because whenever you feel that sense of having nothing to do you can always do something you’re passionate about. This one abit will benefit your life tremendously and who knows you might be able to make a full time income from it one day.

I’m not just about ignoring things that need fixing, sometimes the news can help us by pointing out the horrors capable by the human species. I sometimes feel like laughing when I see the huge emotional drama created round a certain event and the looks of childish pure outrage and distress that flicker across the faces of people watching and I’ve nearly had to leave the room a few times out of respect. It’s sometimes really funny to see someones mind suffering from an illusion. It’s like a mother who hides their face from their childs and they says PEEKABOO! and the child is amazed and startled that their mothers face comes back!
It’s quite similar to someone playing a game and when their character dies they get really upset. When the character does well they are always wondering

“How well am I doing, how long will it last?”

The look of terror comes across their face, their eyes glaze over

What if I get to the end of the game and all these weeks of effort I put in were worth nothing? What will be left of me? I MAY HAVE TO BUY ANOTHER GAME!

They associate themselves as the person in the game but truth is you are the games player who never really dies.

But then your higher consciousness will kick in and realise that this person is living out childhood responses and conditioning and its not really a funny matter. These businesses that do this are not exactly evil because many of them are on the same level of consciousness as the people who are so emotionally affected by news and they all need to be shown the path to higher consciousness.

Once you’ve established this habit a great idea is to get someone else who watched too much TV and help them gain more control in that area. Then they will be motivated to help others to do so and it will create a beautiful domino effect. And if you wanna recommend them too my site in the process, be my guest .