Why do we like to watch TV? What is happening internally when you do? How often do you notice that the problems or concerns you have, disappeared for a period of time? What’s streaming during this time?
Perhaps the nagging voice telling you should be doing something else or be more productive has gone silent. Or the internal movies of your problems turned off.
When you watch TV regardless of what is on, you become a passive recipient of the visual and auditory medium. Your mental screen gets hijacked in a way. Your mental screen starts displaying images and movies that are triggered by what you see and hear on TV. And then your emotions are triggered off of the images and movies playing on your mental screen.
Let’s take an example. You are watching a crime drama on TV. You see a child get murdered on TV. On your internal mental screen, you see your own child. This triggers an emotional response. Then perhaps on your mental screen you see your child get hurt or even killed. That emotionally triggers you even further.
Good television is designed to trigger you emotionally. They want to captivate your attention, eyes and ears, and even more importantly they want to hook into your emotions. Hijacking your mental screen is the simplest way in. So what happens when you become aware of what is running on your mental screen? When you start choosing what you display on your mental screen, what position does that place you in? Who has the power now? People speak of reclaiming their personal power — could this be the strategy to achieve that?
You may have heard the saying “energy flows where attention goes”. How much energy is consumed by whatever is playing on your mental screen? How would you feel if you were choosing what you display on your mental screen? Would you be fueling what you want in your life with your energy rather than fueling someone else’s agenda? Have you ever felt drained at the end of a day without physically exerting yourself? Have you considered it may be the energy consumed by all the drama played out on your mental screen from all different sources? Maybe from work? Maybe from family? Maybe from neighbors? Maybe from school or teachers?
If your eyes and ears are the input device to populate what plays on your mental screen, how many things could be streaming on there? Where is that damn remote control? So you can switch from streaming to on-demand. So you can turn down the volume on those nagging voices. So you can reduce the brightness of the screen. So you can turn it off even once in a while. Wouldn’t that be nice!
Exploring and becoming familiar with your mental screen affords you all of these possibilities. Continue to become familiar with your own personal internal TV screen and get your hands on that remote to see what kind of difference you can make in your life.
