Time for a Bad News Diet?

What news has recently bummed you out? Think about it for a second. If you have something in mind then answer the questions…

1. How is this going to affect me?
2. What am I going to do about it?

If your answers are…

1. It won’t affect me and
2. I’m not going to do anything

then you’re among the majority of us. We’re bombarded daily with bad news that really has no affect on our day-to-day lives. A continuous stream of negativity that we file away in our memory and ultimately ignore.

So my question is now…

What’s the point of paying attention? If bad news bums you out then unplug from it and go on a bad news diet.

This is how you begin to do it:

• Identify 3 news sources you consume. You likely get your news from TV, newspaper, blogs, or websites.
• Do they publish good news or bad news? Spend 30 seconds counting the number of good news items and bad news items. Which is greater?
• Don’t pay attention to bad news sources for 1 week. Does it make a difference to your everyday life? Do you have bad news withdrawal? Do you have more free time?
• Unplug. If you have made it through the week and find it’s made an improvement on your life then unplug from that news source. Fire it. Burn it. Unsubscribe from it. It doesn’t deserve your attention.
• Don’t Unplug. If you find that you’d rather be plugged in then that’s okay too! You must be getting something of value from it. At least now you know what happens if you unplug for a week.

Since I’ve gone on my “bad news diet” I don’t feel like anything’s missing. I don’t watch TV news, don’t go to news web-sites, and ignore the paper and I don’t miss it at all. In fact, when I do happen to occasionally tune in to these sources I find it reaffirms that I don’t need to be paying attention to them. Bad news bums me out.

I’ve also found that the blogs I read are a source of positive information. They can be uplifting and don’t need to harp on the negative in order to gain attention. Those are still a part of my daily read.

If you’ve tried this bad news diet I would love to hear how it worked out for you.

Photo courtesy of  basykes