Tuning in and dropping out
Our thoughts and actions are strongly tied to the information and people we tune in to and drop out from (ergo our environment).
If you tune in to the way the vast majority of people think, you will think like the vast majority.
If you drop out of automatic behaviours most people exhibit, you will start to act differently to everyone else.
I don’t have an aerial hooked up to free-to-air or cable TV in my home, because I believe consuming mainstream, mass-marketed media will only lead me to think like the masses.
I haven’t watched the news or read a newspaper in years and yet I’ve never felt like I have a better understanding of how the world works than I do today.
The caveat: To this experiment of a taking a mainstream, information diet, is it means I miss out on some valuable information in the news. But to me, the benefits of tuning in to specialist people and areas of knowledge far outweigh the cost of having to tune in to 80–90% of the sensationalised rubbish for the 10–20% gold mainstream media actually spits out. I find the difference between the two is like comparing knowledge and wisdom — the latter is so much more worth the squeeze, so why even bother with the former?
The lesson for me has been to consciously design my environment so I’m exposed to timeless insights and wisdom that will be just as relevant today as it will be in 10, 20 or even 30 years time. It’s very tempting to want to tune in to the hyped-up, topical drivel of the news as it presses all the highly emotional buttons in our brain — fear/greed, pain/pleasure — but that emotional merry-go-round is so ephemeral and circular that I actually think it takes you backwards. Because if you’re not growing, others around you are and you’ll quickly get left behind.
As with all experiments, they don’t have to last forever. If you’re a newsofile then don’t stop watching it forever. But try taking a holiday for a week. If it feels good at the end of the week, try another week. The news isn’t going anywhere, but you might just find you go to an entirely new place in your mental landscape that you hadn’t discovered before. You might like it, you might not. Whatever happens, you’ll be glad you ventured out from familiar territory into something a little less known.
