So, I tried getting rid of my television. That worked for a while, but now the internet has stepped right into the footprints that television left behind.
And I don't mean that surfing the internet all day is just as bad as watching TV all day, though it can come close.
What I mean is, I can watch TV on the internet all day. I've become an expert at finding websites that can provide me with television. I can recite a list of websites that stream video for free, and I can describe all the contortions an interested viewer has to go through to download a torrent of a movie for free, without giving up any important personal information to a phishing site. There are a lot of tricks to getting TV off of the internet!
I find myself wondering why the TV network websites don't just offer their shows, with commercials, on their sites. Some do, but most don't. The ad revenue generated would more than make up for any revenue lost by a loss of off-web viewers. And it would be so much easier for me then -- I could get the shows, in high-quality, from the network sites, and I wouldn't have to go searching for them on bootleg sites and spend a bunch of time monkeying around.
Is this a valuable use of my mind? Thinking about such things? No.
Have I bettered myself, learning all the labyrinthine protocols required to download a TV show for free? Absolutely not.
Could I have bettered myself, using the time spent on these frivolous pursuits? With almost absolute certainty.
I told myself that I would not start watching any new shows. That way, once I'd watched all the shows in a series, I wouldn't have anything new to compel me to watch TV. I have not been able to keep this promise to myself, however. I've watched many new shows since making that decision.
Why do I do it? Why do I start watching a new show? Usually, I've heard about it from someone else, and I feel like I'm missing something good. Sometimes, I see advertising about the show, and it excites me. It gets my imagination going, wondering what they've come up with.
But my imagination isn't too stimulated. The advertising just tickles my brain a little bit, creates a desire for more.
My brain likes to experience new forms of stimulation, apparently, and seeks them out. For some reason, books aren't good enough. I'm trying to read more, lately. But I'm not making enough time for it. I wait until I'm ready for bed, usually after watching an hour or two of internet TV, and then once I'm in bed, my eyes are closing and I'm too tired to read.
I've been hearing a lot about the law of attraction, lately. I'm trying to make use of it to improve my life. From what I understand, we are like a tuning fork. We have to resonate with the same frequency of the life we want to attract. We have to believe that we are already in that life, so that we can create those wavelengths and find our better life.
I'm not explaining it in the best way, but it's basically this: become the person you want to be, and you'll be it. It's called manifestation. Believe it, and it will be.
If this sounds like The Secret, that's because The Secret is based on this same principle, but the law of attraction is not as silly as The Secret. The Secret would have you believe that if you imagine mountains of money pouring through your door, mountains of money will literally pour through your door, burying you up to your knees. The Secret also really focuses on the material side of things.
The law of attraction can be used for materialistic goals, but it is put to better use for spiritual goals, life goals, personal goals. Imagine yourself as the person you'd like to be. Visualize yourself as that person -- how do you look? How do you feel? What does a typical day look like for you? What did you have to accomplish to get to where you are in your life? How does it feel to know you accomplished those things?
As you visualize this, you are resonating with the frequencies of that desired life. But the visualization is important as well. You are preparing yourself for what you must do. It's an internal pep talk. But you are also practicing -- by feeling how it feels to be that desired version of yourself, you are internalizing the attitude, the perspective, the personality of that better you. You are reprogramming yourself. You are changing yourself into a person who knows what steps need to be taken to become that better you (because you visualized them), and this time, you'll be able to succeed at those things, because you know you can do it. You've already done it, in your visualization.
This is all to say that, I want to use these methods to break my television habit. TV is eating my life. I only have one life ... why should TV have it? I want to possess my own life.
The person I visualize is determined, ambitious, driven. She is inspired, and an inspiration to other people. She is creative, and respected. She is very productive, and always has several projects going on. She finishes one project, and moves on to the next one. She is happy that she knows so many different things, and can do so many things. Her life is very full, and she is satisfied with it.
I've seen what that person looks like, and what her life is like. I've felt her satisfaction, and her happiness. I feel how good her creative inspiration makes her feel. It's better than TV. It's all hers. She made it, and she thinks it's awesome. Every day is better than the last, as she grows more and more, spiritually, intellectually. She is prolific. She is accomplishing everything she ever wanted to accomplish, and more. She wastes no time. She makes use of every moment. She is proud of herself. She feels very good about herself.
Do I ever imagine this person lolling in front of a screen? Wasting hours, taking in some movie or TV show? Letting her wonderful, full life slip through her fingers? No.
In fact, I know that one of the things she had to accomplish to get to where she is in life, was to stop watching TV. She had to give it up. She had to find a way to not be tempted by it. She still needed to use the internet, for work, for research, to communicate with people. She used a program called LeechBlock for Firefox (I use this now). LeechBlock is a free add-on that blocks certain sites. You decide which sites leech your time, and enter them into LeechBlock.
I recommend this for anyone who has a problem staying off certain sites. It's not just for TV sites. Facebook, news sites, gossip sites, YouTube -- they all leech time from us.
The problem for me is, LeechBlock is adjustable. I can turn it on, or off. I can decide when, which days, and for how long it will block me out. So, instead of just blocking myself entirely, I'll allow myself an hour a day on a TV site. Or, sometimes, I'll turn LeechBlock off, to watch TV for an unlimited amount of time.
I tell myself that the hour or two I spend watching is a well-earned break, but it isn't. It hasn't been earned at all, and it's eating into my work time. You see, I work from home a lot of the time, and my work has been suffering due to my TV time. My screen time in general -- TV, Facebook, and all the other distractions -- has been negatively affecting my work productivity and quality. Unfortunately, I have to use the internet to do the work. It can't be avoided. I must be online, at least long enough to check email periodically, and to research various work topics.
While I'm online, I'm inevitably tempted to check Facebook, or to download or stream some TV.
I'd have cut myself off entirely from TV sites, a long time ago, but I felt like moderation was a better way to go. I thought I could handle it. I thought I could just watch a couple hours a week, just the really good shows, and be done with it. But I couldn't -- soon I was watching things I'd seen before, and turning to online TV "channels" that had a non-stop, 24-hour stream of movies and TV. I started streaming movies to be "background noise" while I worked, but ended up watching the movies instead of doing the work.
In fact, that's what was happening just before I started writing this post. I was sitting and watching online TV that I'd originally turned on as background noise, and then I got sucked in and wanted to watch it. The movie was about a man whose life is flashing before his eyes as he dies. He has to come to terms with his life. He's tormented by his failures, and is almost dragged to hell by them, but he learns to embrace what was beautiful in his life, and so he instead goes to an idyllic afterlife.
It got me thinking about my own life. What would torment me? What would I be proud of? What were the beautiful moments in my life? What would be things I wished I had done before I died?
And that got me to thinking how I was wasting precious pieces of my life, putting the brakes on my life, with my TV addiction. How I may never get to where I want to go, if I keep spending so much time watching TV.
I've been here before, at the place of this revelation. Each time I arrive at this thought, I feel so convicted. I feel so determined to succeed. I know all the reasons that I should stop watching TV, and I want to stop. I've written about it, in previous posts.
Maybe it will be different this time. Maybe, if I can keep that better version of me in the forefront of my mind, and continue to resonate with her frequency, I'll remember what I'm doing, and why, and I won't even feel the need to watch TV. Maybe I'll be inspired to succeed at living my life the way I want to live it. It sounds so simple, and it just may be.
I encourage you to stop what you're doing right now, and take two minutes to visualize the person you'd like to be. Get really detailed. Imagine your face, picture yourself doing the things you want to be doing. Get inside the head of that person and feel their feeling and think their thoughts. Hear them speak. Remember their accomplishments that got them there. They are you. They are you when you succeed, and you are taking the first step towards that success right now. Go.
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