Conquering Our Addiction To News

We can easily develop an addiction to the news. Good news hardly ever makes the headlines. Instead crisis follows crisis. We watch and listen and we can get caught up in its wake. There is a better way to manage to keep informed

Transcript

Dear friends,

I have to make a confession.

From time to time I've become addicted to the news.

It seems there is always some crisis or another which is demanding our attention.

Our tendency might be to listen and listen again in the hope that we will see the crisis resolved.

The problem is that there is always another crisis demanding the same attention.

And on and on the addiction goes.

Good news seldom reaches the headlines and for that maybe we should be thankful.

Wouldn't it be a sad day if good news was so rare as to be a sensation?

But bad news and crises always make the headlines.

And if we find ourselves consuming a constant diet of bad news it will do us no good whatsoever.

It will waste our time and it will drain our energy.

We need to conquer any addiction that we may have to logging on mindlessly to news bulletins.

This is not to say that we bury our heads in the sand and fail to pay attention to what is going on in the world.

We need to be informed,

We need to be concerned,

We need to have our opinions.

But surely one news bulletin a day from a reliable source is sufficient to keep us abreast of what is going on.

Not many of us have the privilege or the responsibility of working to solve the problems of the world on a day to day basis.

We send our love,

Our care and our support to those who have that responsibility.

Our day to day attention will be better directed to building up our own communities,

Looking after our neighbours,

The people in need in our own area,

Spreading kindness by taking care of one another on a one to one basis.

Of course we can and we should take part in campaigns that seek to change the world for the better,

Whether through environmental action or working to encourage honesty and decency in the worlds of politics and communications.

Time taken from the news headlines can be put to good use.

And speaking of news,

There has never been a time when facts can be more easily manipulated and fake news spread.

We must take care to seek our information from sources that we know for certain to be impartial and reliable.

We must be careful not to take as gospel anything which we come across in social media.

Unfortunately social media is the easiest place in the world for fake news to spread.

Now more than ever before it is essential that we do not spread information that we do not know for certain to be true.

Remember the old recommendation?

Before passing on information we must stop and ask ourselves,

Is this true?

Is this necessary?

Is this kind?

If what we are about to pass on does not survive these three tests,

We hold our tongues,

We keep our hands away from the keyboard and we move on to deal with something which is true and which is kind.

So let's all take great care to keep ourselves well informed.

By conquering our news addiction we can save lots of time.

And we can each use the time saved contributing to the well-being of the world.

So much better than mindlessly consuming an unhealthy diet of news.

Wishing you every blessing in this endeavour.

Namaste.

Reviews

Great reflections which offer a way through the addiction to the news. Thank you

So glad you addressed finding facts. Here in the US “news” is used to perpetuate agendas and there isn’t much decency or honesty in “news”. I agree you have to vet the news no matter where it comes from, television (tell lie vision) social media, radio, or print.

I personally have stopped watching news years ago bcs here, much of it is fabricated and one sided. I agree much better uses for our time.

I am guilty of this often. Thank you for this timely reminder to be mindful and to refocus our energies. Namaste.🙏❤️

Thank you for this reminder. I quit watching news & my days are so much better.

A quick reminder for us to keep ourselves in check for the many mindless negative things that can so quickly turn our spirit away from seeing and feeling the good in our humanity.

Timely. Useful. There is no need to read all of the news that’s fit to print.

Great appreciation for this wonderful and vital reminder, Tony! Namaste :)

Bravo Tony! Very good advice. Thanks for putting this out there as a reminder for us all.
By the way it’s good to see you back here. I hope all is well with you and your family. 🙏🏻💕

Thanks, Tony. Good perspective on this for me! 💝🙏

Only bad news are good news. And now, we even have fake news... Thanks for the reflections Tony. 🙏

Such an important message. We live in turbulent times made worse by the hyper connectivity surrounding us. Thanks for reminding us to find the balance in life. 🙏🏻🌺

This is a much needed message Tony ! In 2019/2020 while everyone was being told to social distance. I took it a step further and started social media distancing. Doing so lifted my mood during the time we were in. A few weeks ago I went on social media, and before I knew it, I was sucked back in. I developed high anxiety, and a low mood. After about 2 weeks of a racing mind, I started my social media distancing again. Thank you for this talk. It is such an important message. 🙏🏼

Beautifully said and so true. Thank you for all that you are, all that you do, and your wonderful words of wisdom.

Great and sound advice. Also, it’s much needed in todays world. Thanks, Tony!

I agree Tony! I'm a bit of a news addict myself. One thing that helped me was to stop watching or listening to the news on television and just try to read news content from reliable sources. I do use my phone and I find that I check it a bit too often but at least my news feed is customized so I get lots of science and health news as well as community interest news which does help. I find that not hearing the dramatic voices of the newscasters helps my nervous system a lot. Anyway I loved this talk Thanks so much

Oh, Tony, how often do I hear this message from Margie? I must admit to my addiction, which does me no good. Thank you for your message. I'll try to remember the 3 steps!

Thank you for this important reminder! Blessings to you also.

Your perspectives always give me so much to think about, Tony. This one made me think of how doomscrolling causes so much loss of opportunity and time to enjoy the beauty and peace around us and to act to bring a bit of joy to others or to act to improve anything within our power for ourselves and others. There are many things these days that can rob us of those things anyway. There’s just no point giving them up voluntarily.
Thank you so much! Have a wonderful week!
Donna

So true. I’ve stopped tv news but still love the newspaper…although I’m more into skimming headlines than doing deep dives into drama🙏

I appreciate your attention to our tendency -or even addiction- to often checking the news. We do benefit from checking less. Namaste 🤓🙏🏻