Adam Pedley

Television is something that is in almost everyones home and the amount of time its switched on is getting longer and longer. At my personal worst when I was a teenager the TV would be on as soon as I got home from school until I went to bed and first thing in the morning for a few hours until I went to school. That makes around 8 hours a day in total time the TV is on.

As an adult TV would come on after my children are in bed and not at all in the morning. As my children are still very young I haven’t let them watch TV at all. Yes they will learn about it sometime soon, but it’s much better seeing them in the backyard playing.

While watching TV I was equivalent of a zombie. A blank stare into a small black box or in people’s cases today, a large flat panel on the wall. Using almost no brain capacity and wasting my life away. If I was to look back 50 years from now, what do you think approximately 73,000 hours of tv would have brought me? Nothing much.

So why did I decide to stop watching TV. Big brother 06 was the catalyst for me. I couldn’t take it anymore. Reality TV was doing nothing more than irritating me. So I unplugged the tv aerial (I recently turned it into a phone outlet).

What happened over the next few months. Well I watched DVD’s. Scrubs over and over again (I think I could quote almost each episode). And I dowloaded Stargate and Smallville. On the upside I wasn’t watching any advertisements, which is quite a good thing considering I recently learned that subliminal advertising is actually legal in quite a few countries as long as it is a certain number of frames. These frame rates however still classify it as subliminal and considering the zombie state most people are in, even if it did flash up for a second and was clearly visibile most people would not notice it.

To start curbing my tv watching I would try to put on the tv as late as possible. Each night getting later and later. I also stopped having the tv on if I was doing something else. I know most people like the background noise, but after a few days you easily adjust. Then I was still on my laptop while the tv was on at night. This habit stopped when the tv finally blew up and the only way we can watch tv now is on my laptop. I have decided not to go and purchase another tv.

So now its almost down to just watching a movie on dvd every now and again. Some nights the tv/laptop hasn’t even been turned on. I find I get a lot more work done on the laptop, I play Uno or a board game with my wife and even spend a bit more time cleaning the house. I know the last one isn’t very appealing but I have reclaimed more time to spend with my wife, family and house.

To me the hours I will have spent doing something more worthwhile will be a great thing to look back on in 50 years time, and will give me many more experiences and options. Even if you cut out 1 hour of tv a day, in 50 years time you will save 18,262 hours of your life to something more meaningful.

Each individual has a different perspective on a situation. An individuals way of looking at things is due to many factors of the information they have received over the years. While in this post I won’t go into how you collect information and why you believe in certain things, I want to show you how the world looks in someone elses perspective. This can lead to radical changes in understanding of another person and how you can interact with them.

Now understanding someone elses point of view and then realizing you are wrong in your own opinion can be a hard pill to swallow. From a quick story I will share with you here, those of you with kids will understand how heart breaking it can be if you actually accept you did something not in your childs best interest.

As a lot of parents do, babies and small children are left screaming away at night in their bedrooms. A situation most commonly referred to as controlled crying. The point here is to let your child continously cry for longer periods of time before you come in until they eventually stop crying all together. With my first child I didn’t do the longer periods of time, but normally left him crying in his cot. Until one day something clicked. What if I was new to this world only a few months old, left in a dark room and no one came when I called? It would be scary and terrifying. They don’t have the ability to know they are safe and we are just outside.

It was from then on, he was rocked or sat next to every night until he fell asleep. Over a year later he is getting better going to bed by himself, but I am still sitting there next to him every night. My second child, my wife and I knew exactly what to do and made sure every cry was attended to. And now only a few months old you can leave him in the room and he will go to sleep by himself, most nights, they still are the occasionaly few.

I now have seen control crying kids put off to sleep. And yes they go down and don’t say a word, but its a very sad thing to watch. They huddle up in a corner, clinging on to a teddy bear for dear life and most often sucking their thumb. They are nervous and insecure, and wasn’t this the main thing control crying was meant to avoid, an insecure clingy child?

Yes some nights its hard to get them off to sleep and I can become extremely frustrated and sometimes yell. This is mainly due to sleep deprivation. But yelling makes them scream louder. Go outside take a few deep breathes and come back in. Leaving them to cry for 30-60 seconds is much better than yelling at them, when they aren’t actually doing anything other than expressing they are scared or overtired themselves.

So while might resonate particularly strong with parents, I hope you can all see how if you look at something through someone else’s eyes, you can see the issues or emotions they face and help them through it. Trying to see through your life experiences to deal with other peoples perceptions is pointless unless you both have an identical consciousness and had identical experiences.

With all the information I share on this blog, it essentially leads to one thing. The fact that any human being from what ever background can achieve anything they want. All they need, and its something you have if you are reading this, is the desire to learn and grow.

The information is all out there and all of it for free. The only reason why anyone can not achieve is if they don’t want to, and this goes for every single person on the planet regardless of situation.

So in this quick post I only ask one question, what is it you want to achieve and focus on that.

It came to me last night (or should I say early in the morning 1am) about the state of mind and the affect it has on our lives. Questions arose on what influences it and can I influence it to get into the right state. I am sure all of you have at least once been in the state of mind of getting healthy and doing exercise, or may be inspired to complete a task. What ever it is, when you are in the right state of mind, you can achieve anything.

So our state of mind is can be influenced by many things. Music, images, books, events and various other things that may trigger our associative memory to relate. For example if you had a certain song playing while a major event in your life happened, good or bad, when its play now, you will remember that moment and most likely how you were feeling.

Just a quick side note on music is that what ever music is resonating with you, is what frequency you are resonating at. A realization that can tell you a lot more than you might care to know straight away. Think about what songs you really like, and by reflection its what you are feeling. Music resonates with us emotionally, maybe also from a biological perspecitve as well.

Next time you are completing a task or feel inspired to do something, what created that feeling, take note of the taste, smell, music playing, subject being spoken about. And once you find out what can create that feeling, or brings you to that state of mind, all you need to do is the same thing next time to trigger that response.

Our state of mind determines our lives, and what state of mind you may be in most of the time is what life you live. Change your state of mind, and you change your life. A saying you probably all know, but might now be clearer and more valuable that you can see it in action, understand it and now influence it.