Breaking the Habit: What the news does to you and what to do about it

In Never Stop Learning this week I will be covering the following 1-2-3:

• One Big Thing - How avoiding the news will improve your mental health

• Two Recommendations - two podcasts to bookmark for the weekend

• Three Actions to take this week

One Big Thing - How avoiding the news will improve your mental health

It feels as though things are getting worse. But are they? Really?

Lately, I have found myself getting caught in a doom scrolling spiral. I am easily sucked in to a headline and then a YouTube video and suddenly I’ve lost half an hour on some pretty depressing topics.

In a recent post I recommended an amazing podcast about sleep and what your brain does during sleep to make sense and make connections between things you have learned during the day.

I was finding my dreams were full of the news I had watched that day and by the time I had woken up my subconscious had started to draw links between all the events I was reading about.

Poison.

But what if I could start to avoid the news again. Imagine using that brain energy and restorative sleep to make sense of things that are actually useful to me.

My story actually starts over a year ago. In the end I used this newsletter to divert my attention away from the news. Since, I have felt the draw back to this dark side so this post is here to remind me and you of what we should be doing with our time.

Above all, avoid the news…..

Back in February, I got an alert on my phone.

It was from the BBC and it totally ruined my day. We were out for a family walk. The sun was shining, it was stunning. The kids were having a great time, we’d just finished our picnic and we’re going to to wander around for an hour or so before grabbing a coffee and a piece of cake.

And then I glanced at my phone. For context, this was about a week after Russia had begun its invasion of Ukraine. It was all over the news.

The BBC app had sent me a notification.

I started to spiral. It was something that I felt so strongly that I started to think that every bang, every plane overhead was the end. That was the last thing I was ever going to hear before the bombs starting exploding and the world ending.

For the rest of the walk I was a mess. Totally consumed by what I’d just read.

For about two weeks after that I was on “high alert”. Still every sound put me on edge. I read the BBC news website constantly. I watched YouTube videos of retired generals who were giving a blow by blow account of the war in Ukraine.

I was looking for clues. I was looking for whether I needed to take action. Action to save my family and friends. But what action could I realistically take?

If I’m honest, the anxiety and stress was physically painful. I had pain in my legs that wouldn’t go away. I woke up with pounding headaches and I couldn’t focus at work. I was pretty close to seeking professional help.

And then I decided to stop my consumption of news. I deleted the plethora of apps on my phone, unsubscribed to a myriad of YouTube channels and started to find other things to do with all that time! Some of that freed time has even led me down the path to writing this blog. That has helped incredibly.

News channels make money from fear

What we need to remember is news channels make money from your fear. They know that by playing on your fears you will keep you coming back to see what the situation is. That was exactly what I was doing. I was checking back on the live feed every hour to see if there was some good news that would start to lift my mood but there very rarely was. Good news would have enabled me to move on and wouldn’t have brought me back in a hours time to check again. It was like a drug.

Learning about bad things chips away at your core

As I fell deeper into this cycle I was teaching my brain that there was only bad things in the world. Neural pathways were being created to only see the bad in everything. It was quite scary to constantly feel this way. The Ukraine war was an extreme example but you can see it with many other subjects in normal times too. The media will take a news story and twist it to anger one group or the other which will engender a reaction that will keep them coming back for more. We are probably lucky in the UK that we don’t have massively “shouty” media as they do in the US but the bad news slant is still there. Just a little more subtle maybe.

At the end of the day, news is entertainment. It prays on the same instincts that makes people stop on a motorway and look at a car crash. We are drawn like moths to a flame.

The world isn’t that bad

Firstly, you need to be aware of what the media is doing to you. Start from a position that the world isn’t as bad as it is being portrayed. Spoiler alert - it really isn’t that bad.

Once you’re aware, you can start to build systems around coping and then thriving in a world where you consume very little news.

Remove the temptation

I went down the route of removing the apps from my phone that were serving me the news. This helped from day one but I still found myself going on a browser and looking up a news website such as the BBC. One little look couldn’t do any harm though could it? Well, it could and it was.

Give yourself something else to form a habit around

When I picked up my phone I had the immediate temptation to click on a news app. Once those apps were gone I needed a new app to fill the habit but it needed to be a good habit. One that was going to help me do something positive with that time over the longer term.

I settled on creating a newsletter. I’d experimented with blogging before and it hadn’t really worked. Maybe I wasn’t really ready or hadn’t done enough background reading. This time it feels like it could really work. I now have these apps that I reach for by habit if I pick up my phone:

• Substack - I have four or five blogs on the go at any one time so there is always something I can add to.

• WhatsApp - sounds like a strange one but if I have an inspiration for a blog then I will WhatsApp the idea to myself.

• Day One - my go to journal app. Any more detailed thoughts go in here. I have been journaling for a month or so now and it is magic for getting thoughts down on paper and some of these can become blogs later on.

What if you need to stay up to date for your job?

If you need to know things to for you job read a good industry publication. There are loads of them out there. You probably already know which one you should be reading to stay on top of your job. You were probably too busy reading The Times to have even considered reading something like that. Just stay away from mainstream news.

Fill your life with beautiful things

If you look for it, the world will serve you up bad and depressing news. If you look for then good then you are equally likely to find good news. Slowly build good habits that take you away from the bad and seek out the good. One step at a time you will get there. I still find myself slipping back from time to time so I can see it takes a while to really embed those new habits but will get there.

It’s simple really. Control what you can control and let the rest take care of itself.

Two Recommendations - what to consume this week

1. Money & The Creator Economy - Steph Smith, Pathless Path with

As you know from many of my posts, I’m fascinated by the creator economy and how you can leverage this amazing thing called the internet. In this podcast Steph and Paul Millerd have an open and honest chat about the trials and tribulations of making a living online.

2. Conspiracy Theories - The Rest Is History

The knowledge and the research these guys bring to this podcast is unparalleled. If you like your history, this podcast is for you! If you don’t like history, check this podcast out and you will soon enough!

Three Actions To Take This Week

My vision for this newsletter is to provide you with weekly actions that you can take away and use in your life in the coming week. So, here are three things you could try this week:

1. Pick that one thing that you have been procrastinating over……and do it now!

2. Go for a walk without your phone! - no distractions, no reaching for you phone. Just you, nature and your thoughts! And maybe take a piece of paper to write down all those amazing ideas that will come flooding in! Its like magic. Trust me.

3. Start a Substack! It’s really easy to start. Get to know the platform. Who knows where it will lead….

Start writing today. Use the button below to create your own Substack!

📝 Other Newsletters I Recommend

Here are 3 of the newsletters I’m currently recommending that I strongly suggest you check out:

- interesting takes on everyday issues.

- well thought out essays on the issues of today.

- taking an alternative view to retirement. Maybe you should be spending more?

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