A lot of people enjoy watching television. It’s mindless and entertaining. It’s also a colossal waste of time. More time should be spent creating than consuming. When you’re consuming content, you’re consuming someone else’s ideas rather than creating your own ideas and manifesting your own reality. The average person is being “programmed” by media without realizing it. The entertainment industry has the power to shape entire societies, by their own consent. The media can slowly, over the course of years, slide in more gender confusion, more violence, more grotesque images, more fear, more rape, more pornography, more cursing, and more narratives and the majority of people don’t even realize it. This imagery slowly turns once objectionable concepts into “normal.” It’s basic psychology that the more you see something the more normal it will become. Do we as a society want cursing, violence, and pornography to be normal? Evidently we are answering that question right now and the answer appears to be ‘yes,’ because we don’t seem to be doing anything about this issue. Children see their parents watching TV, and thus they will grow up watching TV, then their children will see them watch TV, and the cycle will continue.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with TV. There’s plenty of educational and decent programming out there. But it’s not as entertaining and dramatized as the popular shows. Probably best to just stay away from all of it and pick up a book or browse the internet if you’re looking for knowledge. Better yet, create something. Do some writing, some blogging, forum chatting, or some video blogging. It feels incredibly uplifting to put your thoughts on paper and sort them out rather than keeping them jumbled up in your head. And better still, your knowledge can likely benefit someone else. Whether it’s ideas of concepts that don’t exist yet, simple instructional how to’s, best practices, advice, or something you’re passionate about, there’s likely someone else that would like to consider your ideas or converse about your opinions in order to achieve a better end.
If you turned off the television, what would you do instead? The best use of that time is easily going to be spending time with children/family/friends, exercising, creating, or being productive in some capacity. What happens when we start being more productive? It snowballs into “productive” momentum. The more you get done the more you will want to do.
To illustrate the uselessness of most television programming, consider watching a season of a show with thirteen episodes of one hour each. At the end of those thirteen hours what do you have to show for it? Nothing. You were entertained; told a story for thirteen hours. You have no new knowledge, no new skill, just wasted time. Now imagine you spent those thirteen hours exercising, or writing, or watching educational content. You would’ve been constructive with your time and would have been building yourself up. Why bother building yourself up? Well obviously it makes you more employable. It can even result in you being self-employed. It makes you more valuable in general. When you are able to add value to the lives of others, it’s a good thing. It brings satisfaction and well being to you and others. It also makes you more capable. People who work on themselves constantly know that they are a person that is capable of doing and capable of learning new things. The capable mindset leads to a confident mindset; and a confident mindset is unstoppable in all things.
So in summary: Break the cycle. Turn off the TV and become unstoppable. Just kidding, it’s not that simple. Or is it?