I remember one thing that the economic collapse of 2008-09 did to me.

No, I didn’t lose my job or house or anything like that. It caused me to seek answers. I started to dig into the whole system. Why are they giving billions of dollars to the same people whose actions caused them to fail in the first place? Surely if they fail they deserved it, and now a new fresh business can step in to take over the void? Heck, it could even be said they caused the whole collapse in the first place.

I was reading or watching hundreds of news stories about it. Oil was rising to incredible heights, were we at peak oil or did we already pass it? This whole thing called civilization is going to collapse and everyone who isn’t prepared is going to be fucked. The end of the world as we know it, TEOTWAWKI. Shit, I better get some freeze dried food. I better get some silver and gold. I better stock up on ammo and get more guns. I better…

I was injecting myself with all this bad news like a crack addict looking for a fix.

I was fearful and angry (anger is good at times, but that is for another post) and stressed and only found the negative side of things wherever I looked. Maybe I was safer, but at what cost to my mental state?

One day it just clicked.

Was all this negativity helping me or hurting me? Even if it was all true, what could I possibly do about it? What if everything continues to muddle along? All the news was doing was making me miserable and stopping me from bettering myself. I bet it’s the same for you, too.

I have eliminated basically all news from my life and have only become better off for it.

BUT I NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS GOING ON!

By now I bet that some of you are saying that I am wrong. That the collapse is coming. That you need to know about every development in the world, so you can be prepared for it.

Ok, I understand, and I am not telling you how to live your life. But let me ask you this: Can you still prepare, but stay away from the news?

Can you still grow your heirloom seed garden? Can you still stock up on this, that, or the other without reading about how Russia is about to start WW3 or that the Shemitah is the start of the collapse?

I think you can. I think you can do it and be happier and less stressed. I think you can do it and have more time do to things you want to do.

Or maybe you aren’t like that and you say ”How am I going to know what’s going on in the world?”

I will ask in response ”Why do you NEED to know about it?” How is it going to better your life? Or is it just noise blocking you from really hearing what you need to know?

If something is truly important enough, you will find out about it – trust me.

Let everyone else get their blood boiling about something you can’t help while you are using that time to better your own situation. Instead, read great articles that make you think, or a well-written book.

WHY NEWS IS (NEARLY) ALL BAD

There is way more bad news that gets reported rather than good news. It comes down to our evolution.

In a hunter-gatherer society, bad things needed to be handled immediately to survive. If my ancient ancestor heard that a cave bear moved into the area and was running around killing people it would be the top priority to know that. It has caused us to search out negative (dangerous) things so as to be prepared.

Now we live in the modern world and instead of cave bears things such as layoffs or which liar is going to be placed in charge of us takes over that spot in our brains.

Since we notice or seek out the bad news we tend to get more fearful than happy from it. The fear causes stress hormones to be released.

When a town of a few thousand people read their local news it was rare that something bad happened. Compare that to a city of millions where bad things are happening all the time. Now we get it from all over the world, billions of people cause bad things to happen every second. We get to hear the worst of it reported to us 24/7.

A constant stream of stories to make you scared and angry, a constant stream of stress.

So is it any wonder so many people are walking around scared, angry and stressed – taking three types of anti-depressants, while we, collectively in the western world, arguably enjoy the easiest and most luxurious lives over all of human history?

WHAT NEWS IS

• The news gets it wrong. In the day of 24/7 news they have to manufacture things to talk about, so they get to speculating. They don’t care about being correct, they can ‘apologize’ for the error later. Makes a person even think they purposefully put out the wrong information or don’t cover the real story. They are there to keep you watching so they can make money selling advertisements. Journalism went out the window decades ago.
• The news makes you think everything is worse than it is. By all accounts, most countries are safer than in years past. But when anything happens anywhere it will be reported all over if it is seen to get people watching. So you end up thinking the whole world is dangerous, but it is all just an illusion. While horrible deeds are still happening, they are not happening at any greater rate than before there is only more news reporting on it. It is just distorting the perception of tragedies.
• The news is just entertainment: It all about getting your eyes on the screen, whether that is TV news or online, heck even print. They are there to sell advertisements. It is something to keep you watching between car commercials, that’s it. They choose which stories to run only to get what they think will get the maximum amount of eyeballs to pay attention. It is their only goal.
• Which brings me to the next point. The news picks stories that are meant to keep you scared and in fear because it will make people watch, see the first point. Have you ever heard “This thing has been linked to 50 gazillion deaths and it could be in your home right now! Tune in at 11 to find out what it is.” All this does is build up fear to create anxiety and depression.
• What can you do about it? Tell me when the last time watching the news made a positive impact on your life? I don’t know if you can. Let me tell you what I think most people do. They get all angry about something and post it to Facebook, where they can just get more people angry about it. Do any of those people change anything about it, or does it just bring a negative into their lives?
• Since you can’t do anything about it, the news is a waste of time. Think of all the time you could be doing positive things in your life. You could write more steemit posts. You could do more things with your friends or family. You could learn new and useful things. All much better options than having crap shoved in your face.

TRY IT OUT

Stop reading or watching the news for a month. The world will not end.

Do things that make you happy instead. Do things that make you a better person. Learn things. Do things that help others.

I’ve eliminated nearly all of it and am so much better for it. If something that actually matters to me, I will be told soon enough. You can’t go to work or talk for any length of time with someone else before something from the news pops into the conversation.

So stop worrying about it. You will come out better on the other side. You will find that you don’t miss it one bit.

When you fill your mind with depressing things, is it any surprise that depressing things will fill your mind?

This post was originally featured on my steemit blog. 

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