Get Real -Turn Off The Media and Find Reality by Joseph McCaffrey

Let me propose an experiment, one aimed at immediately improving
the quality of your life. It's simple, it will cost you
absolutely nothing, and as a bonus it will give you a clearer
understanding of our modern world. Interested?

To begin, let's cover a little background material. Here's a
bold claim: Our point of mental focus determines our quality of
life. That may overstate it some, but consider that claim for a
moment.

Mental focus means what you pay attention to. It's what you look
at, think about, remember, imagine, ponder, and dream of. You
have a point of focus in every moment, and your experience of
life is what you're looking at.

Here's an example of mental focus. Right now chose to remember
two events from your past. First, pick one that was moment of
great joy and success. As you recall that moment and think about
it in detail, how do you feel?

Your point of focus has affected the way you feel right now.

Now, recall a moment of disappointment and failure. How do you
feel as you relive that in your mind? I suspect not as good as a
moment ago.

Get off of that subject. Go back to the good memory.

Now what changed as you went from one memory to the other in
that little thought experiment? Weren't all the details of your
life - where you live, what you do, who you know, etc - the
same? Yet the quality of your experience of life in the present
moment (the only moment we have) changed as you shifted your
focus from one memory to the other. Your mental focus affected
your quality of life.

That's what I mean by our point of focus determining the quality
of our life. So what determines our point of focus?

It's possible to choose our point of focus, but most of us
don't. Most of the time, most people give their attention to
whatever is most noticeable around them. They don't choose. As a
result they give up control of their life's experience.

With that background, consider the new media. The media picks
stories based on the story's sensationalism. They are always bad
news stories, the more heart-rending the better. They certainly
are attention getting. As you focus on them, how do you feel?

Why would you choose to focus on something that makes you feel
that poorly? You don't have to. You do have a choice.

And that brings us to the experiment I mentioned at the
beginning. The experiment is this: go without reading, watching
or listening to any form of news media for two weeks. That means
no newspapers, no top-of-hour news summary, no news magazines,
no news blogs, no evening news shows - none of any of it.

If you want to go to the next level, fill the time you'd
normally use to focus on the media to focus on something that
you find fun, that's uplifting, that's positive. In short, to
focus on things that create the opposite experience of the
media's choices.

When I first read of this experiment years ago, I was a little
skeptical. Then, my clock radio went off one morning right in
the middle of the pop rock radio station's hourly news summary.
In rapid-fire sequence, they reported on a school bus accident
in New Jersey, a local man killed when someone threw a cinder
block off an overpass as he was driving by, and a child trapped
in an abandoned well in Texas. I had gotten to get to the "off"
button as quickly as I could, and they still managed to get
those juicy tid-bits into my brain.

Why in the world did I need to think about any of that? What
could I do to change any of it? The only effect any of those
stories had on my life was to make me feel bad as I thought of
them.

Using just that example, imagine going through your morning
routine with thoughts of a school bus accident. Is that really
the best way to begin your day? Wouldn't you rather be listening
to uplifting music, thinking of things you're grateful for, or
thinking of... Well, whatever you want to think of.

And that's the point. Your power is your power to choose. Don't
let the media do it for you.

Try it for two weeks. It's only an experiment - you can always
go back to listening to all the news you want when the
experiment's over. My bet is, you won't want to.





About the author:
Joseph McCaffrey believes in living life as a work of art in
progress, and writes on all aspects of livng life fully at:
http://www.masteringlifespuzzle.com/