Your Choice of Entertainment: Helpful or Harmful?

Well hello there!  Happy Wednesday to you!  I hope your day started off on the right foot.  Mine sure has!  I got up a bit earlier than usual to take the Sadie lady on a nice 20 minute walk around the neighborhood, then enjoyed a tasty breakfast of oatmeal pumped up with added flax seed and a juicy red grapefruit.

I've been getting these babies from Whole Foods every week now for about three weeks and they are delicious!  They come from Texas and are absolutely huge.  No surprise there.  They are also incredibly sweet, juicy and just overall delicious.  What I'm saying is, if your Whole Foods has giant grapefruit right now, check and see if they are from Texas.  If they are, buy them all.  It is worth it.

I really wanted to share with y'all the recipes for the vegetarian chili and vegetarian lasagna that I made this week, but I have to be honest.  The lasagna was nothing to write home about and Jesse made the chili, so I have no idea what he put in it.  I know he added white, black and red beans, diced onion, red and green bell pepper, one diced jalapeno, one diced habanero pepper, taco seasoning and oregano, but I think there were a few other spices in there that I don't know about.  It was absolutely delicious and I'm going to try to coerce the full recipe out of him so I can share it with you. It had that sweet and spicy thing going on and I think I could eat this stuff every single day.  Anyone have any good coercion tactics I can use?

On to today's topic.  Each morning on my way to work, I usually sit in silence, alone with my thoughts.  My commute isn't long- only about 12-15 minutes, so sitting in silence doesn't bother me.  It is actually kind of pleasant.  However, my commute use to be much longer and I passed the time by listening to morning shows on the radio.  Some days, I'll still turn on the morning shows just to see what they are talking about.  The problem is, quite often they are discussing something shocking, disgusting, frustrating or intrusive.  Don't get me wrong, morning shows talk about incredible, inspirational things as well.  I just feel that they usually are going for the shock factor and often times get that by going down a negative route.

Today was one of those days I chose to turn the radio on.  I'd gotten a bit frustrated on my way out the door (I still don't know where my gym bag is!) and wanted some silly distraction.  In hopes that the shows were talking about something positive, I switched the radio on.

The show I turned to this morning had people calling in to spill the beans on a secret they had never told anyone before.  In less than five minutes, I heard stories of blackmail, cheating, deceit and lies.  Not one positive secret was shared. 

I have a hard time understanding why people choose to begin their mornings listening to this garbage.  It just starts your day off on the wrong foot.  Takes your mind down the wrong path of thinking.  Encourages you to focus on unhealthy things.  Consider how many people call in to these radio shows passionate and extremely angry because of a story someone else has shared.  Is that really necessary?  Overreacting about something that has absolutely nothing to do with you is not healthy.  I understand that the shock of it all is what keeps us listening, but isn't exposing ourselves to the downfalls of humanity the wrong way to start our mornings?

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I am not naive.  I recognize that these things happen.  That lies, deceit, cheaters, blackmailers, and other horrible things are part of our society.  I know this isn't going to change because we choose to ignore it.  Instead what I am suggesting is that we not voluntarily expose and involve ourselves in such stories.  We choose our entertainment in the same sense that we choose who we surround ourselves with.  You wouldn't choose to be around a person who exposes you to as many negative things as some of these morning shows do, would you?  Someone who partakes in those behaviors is usually not going to be someone you call a friend. 

When I hear these terrible stories, my spirit gets down.  My faith in humanity falters.  I start thinking about the things that have gone wrong in my life.  The things I've worked so hard to be free of.  I don't want or need reminders of things I have put in the past.  Even though my story doesn't remotely align with most of the negative stories being shared on the radio, they still send my mind into a dark thought process which is certainly not healthy.  By surrounding ourselves with negativity, our thoughts become negative and distasteful.  And it all snowballs from there.

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Instead, I suggest we choose to surround ourselves with positive things, joyful energy and happiness.  I'd rather live my life on a cloud of happiness and joy entertained by uplifting things than be brought down by other people's need to share and dwell on their poor choices.  I'm not saying that everyone who calls in to these shows are terrible people.  We all make mistakes.  But it is unnecessary to allow a stranger's troubles bring you down. 

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In my post on 10 Steps to Overcome Unhealthy Thought Patterns, I mention stopping behaviors that reinforce negative thoughts in your head.  Sometimes, a radio show that we think is meaningless entertainment (and for that matter reality TV shows- I am looking at you Real Housewives and Jersey Shore) really could be affecting us negatively.  Reinforcing our negative thoughts.  In short, we need to pay attention to the entertainment we are exposing ourselves to.  It may seem mindless at the time, but next time consider how it affects your thoughts and actions.  All that exposure to negativity, poor choices, yelling, screaming, fighting and outrageous behavior is not helping you wind down.  I'd wager you'd be better off devoting your time to some alternative.

Choose to surround yourself with happiness and love.  Immerse your thoughts in positive things and recognize that you choose what you expose yourself to in the form of entertainment.  If you are different from me and can listen to/watch these things without getting internally affected, by all means continue.  I know a lot of people find them funny and entertaining.  I do not.  They bother me.  They stress me out.  Therefore, I chose not to make them a part of my life.  I'm just asking you to be aware of how your choice of entertainment affects your attitude and actions. 

I watch silly movies like Ramona and Beezus, read books and go about floating along on my little cloud of happiness and oblivion.  Judge me if you will.  But I'm happy, and that is all that matters to me.

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PS- Completely random, but how cool is this?!

Can you listen to morning shows/watch reality TV shows without getting affected?
Do you think reality shows/radio shows take things too far sometimes in order to obtain the shock factor?