Any of you who know me well, will know that I am not a big fan of watching television. It’s not that I never do, but that it is important to me that I take control over what I watch, when I watch, and that I am able to justify why I am doing so.
If you want to get more out of your life, I strongly suggest that you start to think about your TV watching as something which is likely taking you away from growing as a person or connecting to your real purpose in life.
When was the last time that something you spent time watching on television actually had a real impact on your future?
I am happy to admit that my television watching extends to between two and six hours per week. I don’t generally watch:
News – I don’t need my mind to be infiltrated with the negativity. Politics, crime, the stinky economy – how does knowing about it change anything about my day to day life? If anything earth shattering happens, I guarantee that somebody will tell me.
Soap operas – Why not show a genuine interest in the lives of the real people in your life?
Cookery/DIY/gardening programmes – I live in the world’s smallest cottage with a postage stamp garden, and cook a very basic repertoire of healthy meals. I am grateful for what I have in life, and do not aspire to have much more than I do now.
Reality shows – Who cares if a minor celebrity can dance, or if you get to vote to decide the fate of somebody else’s dreams – worry first about pursuing your own!
Quiz shows – Only remind me of how bad my memory is, and my retention of things not immediately of use is poor. I try to learn and recall what is important to me in the here and now.
Medical/crime dramas – My interaction with the medical profession is very real, and I promise not how it is generally portrayed on TV. My personal experience of crime is that it doesn’t change anyone’s lives for the better, and that it’s not solved as easily or neatly as we are led to believe.
Television is often described as ‘entertainment’. Is your life that unfulfilling that you need to be entertained by somebody else for multiple hours of each and every day?
Television watching is generally a passive activity, whereby you sit slumped on the couch, sometimes mindlessly snacking, whilst filling your thoughts with something which will do almost nothing to enhance your life.
I have a hunch that prior to the 1950’s and 60’s, when it became more common for households to own a television, people did more with their lives because they had to be more creative about how they spent their time. They probably socialised a darned sight more, played cards, danced, read books, spent time together as a family, and best of all actually talked to each other rather than trying to escape into a virtual world.
If you look back over your last week of television watching, I would bet that you can barely remember what happened in the majority of programmes which you saw. Even if you can, did anything actually change a single thing about the way you live your life?
There might be two or three programmes in the last year which actually impacted you in some meaningful way, and the rest were irrelevant. Did it then justify the time which you gave it, or would much of it have been better spent doing something else?
Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely respect that we all need down time where the mind can virtually switch off and we can relax. The problem is that television is so often a one way dialogue. We don’t get to interact, build relationships, learn about ourselves, help others, face our fears, or any of the other tenets of what it really means to evolve as people.
I love the reminder that we are human beings, destined to ‘be’ somebody, not to allow life to simply happen to us. Invariably this takes some form of activity or action on our part, and a conscious choice to develop ourselves as a person if things are not to remain the same.
Am I saying that all television is bad, or that spending time watching it makes you a bad person? Absolutely not, as there are some really excellent shows in amongst the dross; programmes which will actually teach you something or challenge your perceptions.
Unfortunately they are in the minority, and all too often people watch television out of habit or boredom.
I will place a bet, that on your death bed you won’t look back and be proud of the fact that you spent a quarter of your waking hours watching ‘the box’. Industry figures suggest that on average in the UK people watch more than 28 hours of television a week – that’s four hours per day!
What could you do with that time which would actually impact your life in a meaningful way?
Why not take that study course which you have always wanted so you can change your unfulfilling job, learn an instrument and ultimately perform at an open-mic night, try a yoga class which it turns out you love and then go on to be an instructor so you can share your joy with others, teach yourself to bake the best cakes in town and then open your own small business ………the list of possibilities is endless and very personal to you.
How many times have you declared that you are too busy to do xyz, something which you claim that you really want to do? Is that honestly true, or is it actually that you prioritise watching television, or time spent browsing the internet over making those life changes actually happen?
Looking back over the last week, will you remember what happened in a soap opera, or instead the phone conversation which you had with a friend who you haven’t reached out to in six months, meeting a new neighbour in the pub who it turns out shares your diabolical taste in music, or the time which you spent at the local climbing wall trying valiantly but unsuccessfully to look like Spiderman?
Apparently 3% of households in the UK don’t own a television, and indeed my best friend Rachel is one of them. Perhaps it is no coincidence that she is one of the most active and interesting people I know. She has ample material to draw on when talking about what she did each week, the experiences which she had, thepeople she spoke to, the time which she spent thinking about her own place in the world and what she wants to achieve next.
It is also of note that she isn’t scared of spending time in her own company. She is prepared to create her own experiences, rather than needing to live vicariously through the lives of others.
So many of the trappings of our modern life (television, computer games, and the internet) are taking us away from what it takes to really connect to ourselves on a meaningful basis.
I often wonder if we use the television as a sort of blanket, to enable us to smother the voice in our head which tells us that we could be so much more. If you are not prepared to spend time with only your own thoughts for company, then it is extremely easy to allow the opinions of others to become your own, to become content with your current situation rather than seek self-improvement, and most insidiously to let life slip by before you notice.
If I have learned anything over the years, it is that life is short, way too short. Every day which passes without some purpose, and every hour you watch something on television simply because it is on, is time which you will never get back.
We don’t need to be on the go 24/7, but to make the most of life we need to be aware of how precious time is, and make the most of as much of it as possible.
So yes, I do own, and indeed watch a television. I operate my own screening system to ensure that I don’t let it rule my life or waste what precious time I have. My solution is a digital recorder box. On a Sunday evening I spend a few minutes scrolling through the following weeks TV guide, and set to record anything which I want to see.
When I come in late, which I often do as a Plymouth based group fitness instructor and personal trainer, it is easy to spend the downtime whilst I eat dinner actually watching something of interest. This strategy removes the danger of simply turning the television on and going with the flow.
It is just too easy to watch whatever is on (even if it is of no real interest to you), and worse still continue watching long after your chosen programme has finished. I neither need, nor want, to be entertained for the sake of it. Real life holds so much possibility.
My challenge to you in the next week is to write down exactly how much time you spend watching television, and notice whether watching that show was truly enhancing your life or not. At the end of the week, look back and make a conscious decision about how much of that ‘lifetime’ really gave you something worthwhile in return.
Did what happened on ‘Made in Chelsea’ really form memories worth recounting?
Inevitably of course, bearing in mind this is a fitness orientated website, my suggestion to you is that you swap at least 30 minutes a day of television watching for 30 minutes of exercise. I guarantee that you will be healthier, happier, leaner, and getting a darned sight more out of your limited time on this planet.
Whatever and however you need to move your body, just do it. It’s the surest way I know to buy yourself more time to spend doing the things you love. Pretty much nothing will shorten your life as much as a sedentary lifestyle!
For me, sitting on the couch for an hour of my day, whilst watching The One Show followed by Eastenders holds no allure. If you are that average person who spends four hours per day watching television, it could amount to 15 to 20 years’ worth of your waking hours by the time you die. What a waste of a life!
Time is not a deposit system, and you can’t buy it back when it is gone………….
