I have conflicting feelings about television.
Of course I don’t believe there’s anything inherently bad about TV. But that’s not saying much, because I also don’t believe there’s anything inherently bad about crack.
Which actually isn’t far off the mark, as far comparisons go. My issue with TV is that it’s so easy to cross that line between fun-and-entertaining-diversion and tool-used-to-disengage-from-your-life.
The thing is, when the TV is always on, someone else is doing your thinking for you. When you let it run from The Today Show to The Tonight Show, when do you get to hear what you have to say?
And I know a lot of people who let it run from Today to Tonight. They tend to be the same people who pay me their hard-earned money to help them figure out what to do next with their life.
They aren’t sure what they like, what they’re passionate about, what gets them really excited. They have a sense of wasting their lives and they say they don’t know who they are.
I say it’s no wonder, because they don’t spend any time with themselves. They know Matt Lauer and David Letterman better than they know themselves.
And listen, no judgment. Seriously. We ALL have ways of disengaging, numbing, escaping. I use
copious amounts of sugar to disengage from the present moment. In smaller doses, I occasionally use caffeine, work, the internet, exercise, and too much wine. In college I used cigarettes, regular beer binges, pot, and mushrooms. So I’m not judging.
It’s just that TV slips in there because it’s so acceptable. So common. And so harmless, right?
Well, it could definitely be worse. But when you’re getting really honest with yourself, identifying your patterns, and working on your issues because you know you deserve the most honest, joyful and authentic life ever, “it could be worse” just isn’t good enough.
Our ability to create new thought is the best thing in the world. It rocks.
We create our lives with our thoughts. Want to become a nurse? You use your thoughts and your imagination to see the path. You find the steps to doing it in your mind, first. You see yourself the way you’d be as a nurse so that when you’re at that impasse, you recognize it and you know what to do next.
Want to have a happy relationship? You focus on happy relationships around you, take pieces of what you’ve seen and experienced and create your own image in your mind so that when he shows up, you recognize him.
But if you’re never silent, if you never generate your own thoughts, you’re just reacting to other people’s thoughts. You’re living a life of REACTION, not CREATION. You just take what you get and deal with it.
That’s fine if that’s what you want. But it can be really fun to create once in a while, too.
And for that, you need to listen to what you have to say.
