I can’t remember when it happened, or how it happened.
I felt like I needed a change, and that the world could really be a better place.
Then again, I was in such a deep hole then, all I really wanted was that MY world would become a better place. I got desperate, but the hard-wired habits of fear, uncertainty, self-doubt, and paralysis still had a really good hold on me then.
What started as a practice of laziness and neglect, turned out to be one that helped me change how I was thinking.
And helped me change my life.
You see, part of that deep hole I dug myself into, was the belief that where I was living, and the world I was in, was such a negative, dog-eat-dog, unforgiving, limited place to live in.
Because I wasn’t part of the lucky ones who struck it rich, and I didn’t have enough resources to startup again, I felt there was nowhere for me to go.
Because I didn’t get into the corporate world early, and my resume show no signs whatsoever of career development, then again tenure, I believed there was nowhere for me to go.
I always watched the news back then. Me and my stock-trading, and stocks and news sort of made sense to me. That was one of the few things I though I could do. Turns out I wasn’t really doing it all that well.
I watched and read a lot of negative stories. Stories that only instilled fear, and questions in my head, about why people do what they do, and why we can’t all just get along.
And everyday, I’d expose myself to these stories in the morning when I read the newspaper, and in the evening when I’d watch the evening news.
God, that sucked.
I remember being so depressed and downtrodden, that I quickly closed the TV that one night, and I didn’t read the paper, or watch the news from then on.
I felt so betrayed by the world I lived in. So negative, so hurt by what happened to me, and was continuing to happen to me. I stopped watching and reading the news because I didn’t want to know what was going on anymore.
Those things stopped to matter to me. I wanted to get away from all of that. All that negativity, blood, gore, sensationalism, and trivial things.
I once read a comic that summed up how I felt about the news at that time. In a nutshell, it goes like this:
“The last newspaper you’ll ever buy. HEADLINE: Pope proclaims world peace, traffic piles up, unrest in the middle east, storm devastates lives and property, and a new fashion fad is taking over the world.”
Yep, pretty much what I read and watched almost every single frickin’ day.
I didn’t want to be reminded of negativity and hardship everyday.
I didn’t want to see people not being helped, and people hurting other people.
I didn’t want to feel helpless, powerless, negative, sad, fearful, and insecure.
Because the news made me feel that way.
And so I stopped watching the news to get away.
To get away from that world.
And as soon as I stopped watching the news, and started to devote to being in the present moment, my life quickly started changing.
By not being constantly reminded of the negative goings-on in the world, I then had more awareness, space, and freedom to focus on what was going right instead, in my world at the moment.
Instead of focusing and being fed the things that had happened, and their effects, I then had more energy to devote to answering the questions:
“What can I do in this moment now?” and,
“What will the effect be?”
I also realized that I didn’t really want to get away from this world. After all, I wanted to contribute, to help, to do something that mattered.
What I wanted to get away from was the world I was creating for myself back then, a world where I myself had no place, all was going wrong, and I felt there was nowhere else to go for me. I even contemplated ending it all by jumping off a building.
How unglamorous can you get? That just goes to show that I don’t have wicked fashion sense.
And the news just served to remind me of all that. That’s how I saw it.
I also didn’t like being spoonfed opinions and reviews of other people who I didn’t really trust. Just because you’re on TV, you’re supposed to be trusted instantly? Crooks, corrupt politicians, and airhead celebrities get frequently shown on TV.
It’s garbage in, garbage out. So if you feeding yourself garbage, you’re likely to produce, share, speak, write, and believe garbage.
So I stopped watching the news. I stopped reading the news.
And I started living my own life, making news for myself.
Less negativity, less sadness, less despair and fear.
More freedom, power, space, awareness, and possibility.
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