This week’s focus: I’ve stopped watching the news on TV. I find it all just too depressing and it’s no longer the way I wish to either start or end my day.
Don’t get me wrong; I still want an understanding of what’s happening in the world and will scan the newspaper that’s delivered each morning. But I can’t cope with the hyperbole that accompanies most TV news stories.
Everything on the TV news, it seems, must be a crisis.
A bit of bad weather approaching? Let’s send an army of reporters, with their wellies and pac-a-macs, to all corners of the country to stand in a bit of wind and rain and check whether or not the River Ouse in York will burst its banks again (usually it doesn’t!).
An MP caught with their hand in the till? Let’s bring into the studio a stream of commentators and reporters to let us know that we are not simply witnessing an isolated case of corruption, but a decline in the moral standards of the nation equivalent to the fall of the Roman empire!
The key to success in life is, I’ve found, a healthy level of optimism. That doesn’t mean being blind to reality, but it does mean focusing your time, focus and efforts on finding ways to make the most of your situation, rather than simply wallowing in its negatives.
If your team is filled with negative doom-mongers, it’s probably time to change your team. Life – and certainly business life – is simply too short to become caught up in the attitudes of these energy suckers. After all, they needn’t worry, as they will be perfectly suited to life as a TV news reporter!
Off The Record: Going Underground by The Jam
We talk and talk until my head explodes
I turn on the new and my body froze
Those braying sheep on my TV screen
Make this boy shout, make this boy scream!
© Stuart Cross 2018. All rights reserved.