Yesterday I spoke with someone who was really unnerved by everything he had been hearing on the news. So, as we came to the end of our phone call, when he asked if there was anything else I needed from him, i said: Yes. I do have one more thing I need: I need you to turn off the news.
He laughed. But I was serious.
That’s why today’s blog and practice — Be Calm — begin with learning how to recognize when we’re in the throes of fear. Because when we’re listening to fear, we’re not listening to Love.
In my new book (which is coming out in less than two weeks!), I write a lot about what happens when we let fear get our ear. (Spoiler alert: It’s not good!)
In the aftermath of 9/11, my friend Karen worked for FEMA in New York City, providing free counseling services to those who had lost loved ones, to eyewitnesses who had been there when the Twin Towers came down, as well as to anyone struggling with general anxiety after that traumatic event.
It was not long before she began to notice a pattern among those who seemed to have the most difficulty working through their anxiety and stress. When Karen asked these people how often they watched the news on TV, their answer was always the same: “Oh, I always have the news on. I have to keep watching it.”
Karen started asking these men and women of all ages to watch less of the media coverage that relentlessly replayed the scenes of that horrific day. She even asked some people whose anxiety seemed most intense to turn off the TV altogether— for a whole week! Initially, they were resistant, convinced that those news reports were their lifeline to making sense of what had happened.
Yet when they returned to talk to Karen after watching less of the news or, better yet, no news at all, their stress levels had dramatically decreased. Karen helped her clients to see that in watching the news, they were not only reliving the trauma they had experienced, but the news reports also were creating new anxiety about what might happen next.
Breaking that cycle of trauma began a new cycle of healing.
(from Living Love: 12 Heart-Centered Practices to Transform Your Life — available in print & ebook on April 15)
Most of us have no idea how bombarded we are with fear-based messages, because fear has become a habit. And let’s face it — our most ingrained habits are invisible to us most of the time.
Fear may be our most ingrained habit. We learned fear from the time we were little. But ingrained though it may be, it’s still just a habit. Which means We can unlearn fear. Because all habits can be broken.
Understanding how fear gets our ear is a big part of breaking its mesmeric spell.
Sociologist Barry Glassner believes we have become the most fearful society in history due to the fearmongering of the media.
You see, the media has to sell us on their “services” because there’s a lot of competition for viewing and reading out there. Even the Weather Channel now rivals the best 1970s disaster movies — with named storms whose potential destruction is touted weeks in advance. So we all hunker down for a polar vortex which is really something that used to be called one heck of a cold snap. Certainly, yes, climate change is a huge factor in the much more extraordinary weather occurrences. But the alarmist weather reports aren’t making any of us reduce our carbon footprints. In fact, we all rush out to buy buy buy more in case we’re snowed in!
Glassner’s three narrative techniques of fearmongering give us an incredibly useful way of recognizing when fear has gotten our attention, as well as how it gets it.
REPETITION:
Did you know that television commercials for medicines have more than doubled in the last half decade? We are now so inundated with ads for the cures to ailments ranging from the common cold to cancer that we don’t even hear the “fine print” any more that is read at breakneck speed at the end of every commercial. You know, the ones that say that warn you that the possible tradeoff for the possible relief you may experience ranges from some fever and muscle pain to the occasional coma or the possibility of growing a second head.
Now you would think that hearing about all of the things that could go wrong might deter a potential customer. Not at all, says Jeff Rothstein, the CEO of an ad agency specializing in health care: “It’s counterintuitive, but everything in our research suggests that hearing about the risks increases consumers’ belief in the advertising.”
In other words, invoking fear gives us more faith in the product — and makes us want it even more.
Fear begets fear begets customers. This is how fear works. It sells itself.
This is why Big Pharma buys up so much advertising and repeats the same commercials over and over again. We have to be sold on the disease first before we believe we need the cure.
Every good teacher will tell you that if you repeat something over and over again, their students will learn it.
Every good teacher will tell you that if you repeat something over and over again, their students will learn it.
That’s why fear repeats itself. . .to get us to buy what it has to sell
THE DEPICTION OF ISOLATED INCIDENTS AS TRENDS:
There are many many different countries having different experiences of this extraordinary moment in time. There are many different people within those different countries having different kinds of experiences. But to listen to the media, it’s all my dad’s movie: The Last Man on Earth. And yet, when we go outside and take a walk, we think to ourselves: Wow! It doesn’t seem so bad out here. The sun is still in the sky and the birds are still singing. Am I crazy?
Gandhi once said that even the most egregious evil will never be outweighed by the daily acts of good taking place every single day on this planet. When I first heard that, I saw it in my head like a movie. I saw dictators and diseases and nuclear war all the other evil — and it seemed huge. And then I saw every single person on this planet — 7.5 billion of us — and I pictured each one of us smiling at a stranger, opening a door for an elder, helping a child learn. And I realized Gandhi was right! And most people don’t just engage in one daily act of good each day. Especially now. There are 7.5 billion people on this planet and each of us is doing good — especially right now — all the time. And yet, when we hear some good news, we all say: Thank goodness. Good news for a change.
But we are getting so much bad news NOT because everything is bad. We are getting so much bad news because to be news at all it has to be a report of danger, doom or destruction. (With a feel-good story at the end if we’re lucky.)
There is no news channel exclusively reporting on Bob bringing groceries to his neighbor Mrs Smith. While over here Sally spent time just listening to Ann’s problems. And down the street, the nurse took on an extra shift because she was needed, and the spiritual director spent all day on the phone with people who needed prayer. Nor are there movies about the kinds of days most of us spend — a walk with the dog followed by work. A light lunch and a movie night with the family. We have been trained to expect murder and mayhem from the movies and doom and destruction from the news. So that’s what we get.
But what we are seeing is not LIFE.
MISDIRECTION:
Misdirection is the classic tool of all stage magicians. Our attention is drawn to something else while the lady is sawn in half or the rabbit is pulled from the hat. Misdirection is deception pure and simple — but it is deception for which willingly pay good good money. We buy the ticket and excitedly wait to be deceived. More than that — we want to be deceived!!
Every young magician learns that the “right way” to misdirect an audience is to make sure that they don’t feel distracted. For a trick to blow away an audience, they need to feel that they have never been tricked at all. Misdirection is all about getting an audience to believe that they are in complete control of their own minds. When in reality, the magician is choosing where they look and what they see at every moment. When this happens, a magician has succeeded in his art — and an audience is overjoyed by the deception!
This is exactly how fear mongering works. Our attention is drawn to things we are told to be afraid of by making us believe that there is good cause to fear these things. Soon we are choosing to focus on those fearful things because we believe that doing so will make us safer. And we, too, willingly pay good money for this deception.
Scientists tell us that consciousness creates reality. This means what we think we will eventually come to experience. We can understand this when it comes to inventions. For centuries humans believed they could fly. Those humans thought flight into happening.
This is true of everything. We just don’t see it. But how we think determines the experience we have.
So what kind of reality are we creating by choosing to fixate on fear?
The media — which wants us to choose their channel or streaming service — knows that fear sells! So it gets us to focus on the fears to the point that we forget to remember what Gandhi knew. The daily human acts of good will always outweigh even the most egregious evil. We believe we have more reasons to be afraid than to trust that Love is the only True Reality.
When a fear becomes “acceptable”, the misdirection has worked.
However engaging a misdirection may be — watching the news may seem necessary, important, informational — it is still deception. A deception that is, however, very hard to recognize when we’re in the throes of anxiety! Fear is a master magician — getting us to focus on itself, when all we really have to do is choose to change our gaze and look at Love.
That’s why I shared all this today. Because in order to engage today’s heart-centered practice — BE: Calm — I need you to do one thing for me. I need you to turn the news off for 24 hours.
I’ll tell you what I told the gentleman on the phone yesterday. If there’s something you need to know, I guarantee you someone will call and tell you. If there’s a meteor hurtling toward your house, you’ll get a call. If the next directive is to rush out and buy shoelaces to save your soul, someone will text you. So turn off the news for 24 hours. Don’t look or listen or read the news. At. All.
And then commit to taking two minutes every hour or so to sitting still and closing your eyes and breathing, to petting your dog or cat, to looking out the window at the sky, to having a cup of tea and just sitting still.
To Being CALM.
Calm, the dictionary tell us, is not showing or feeling nervousness, anger, or other strong emotions.
Well, if the news is bombarding us with things intended to make us feel nervous or angry or other strong emotions, it’s a heck of a lot harder to be calm.
So turn off that news.
Do pay attention to when that urge comes to tap the News app on your phone, to switch on the TV, to turn on the radio. Paying attention is the first way to recognize a habit. But then DON’T DO IT. Just for 24 hours. Give it a try and see how you feel.
Remember: How you think determines the experience you have. Invite calm by politely escorting the fear-mongering media out the door for a day. Then drop into your heart and choose calm.
Let’s take a page from the brave British who survived the Blitzkrieg: We too can KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON. IN LOVE.
