By Elizabeth Herman | Posted: July 26, 2019
Do you find yourself watching television shows for hours at a time, even on your phone? The accessibility of television programs has grown, not shrunk, over the years. If you’re not sure whether you’re addicted, you might want to ask yourself if you can give up TV for one week. If you respond in the negative, it’s likely that you have a problem with TV addiction.
With smartphones and other devices, you have a television screen with you wherever you go, throughout the day and night. Not only do 95% of Americans make TV part of their leisure routine, but the average person spends about 5 hours per day watching some form of television programs. This figure adds up to a whopping 15 years of TV per lifetime, based on a 78 year life span.
Time to decide
Do you really want to spend years of your life in front of a television screen? Here are some suggestions for reducing or eliminating TV from your daily life:
Unsubscribe! Various channels available via cable, internet and other sources add up to many more options for news and entertainment than there once were. You don’t need all of them to have plenty of avenues for information and cultural enrichment.
Throw away the remote control. If you have to make a physical effort to change the channel, you’ll spend less time surfing for more and more programs so easily. This will help to reduce the amount of time you can sit in one place and watch continuously.
Practice yoga daily. Daily yoga helps release your mind from obsessive thoughts that pull you back towards television. As a healing practice, using physical postures, breathing and meditation can elevate your focus and lead you to freedom from any addictive behaviors, including excessiveTV watching.
Identify and enforce TV free times. Make sure that you stop the video stream during meals and at other important times of day, like right before bed and when you get up in the morning. By really being present while you are eating and performing your necessary self care, you’ll feel more in control of your life and less in need of another show.
Take up a two handed hobby. Learn to quilt, plant a garden, play cards with friends, or anything that requires both your hands, your two eyes, and your mind. You’ll gain a sense of empowerment in your own life and won’t need the escape of sitting idle and inactive, losing yourself in the shadows of fantasy on a screen.
Be patient and accept yourself
By gradually reducing your TV time, the sense of empowerment will grow. That doesn’t mean you have to go cold turkey and stop watching altogether, and certainly you don’t want to judge yourself if you occasionally lapse and watch again. But accept your own pace and learn to manage your time more effectively.
As you become more active in real life, the interactions and creations you experience will replace the drama of television. There’s plenty going on in real life if you just tune into it all. Shifting focus may take some time, but you’ll find that freeing yourself from constant TV shows will be more interesting in the long run. In fact, it may bring real people into your life who will enrich your life and reveal potential sources of happiness that you never knew existed.
For help finding ways to make changes in your life, try Art of Living’s Happiness Program or Sri Sri Yoga or Sahaj Samadhi courses. All the best on your journey to addiction free living!
By Elizabeth Herman - PhD in English, with concentrations in Rhetoric and Composition, and Literature, she offers writing support to clients, teaches locally, lives in Boone, NC, and volunteers for a better world.
