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7) Reorganize your bookmarks.
So, this one may not be for everyone, but: a lot of people talk about how checking the news constantly is really upsetting, and they end up terrified or grief-stricken or just more stressed than they were before they checked the news, but they don't know how to stop.
There are two aspects to this piece of advice, the psychological and the practical.
The psychological one is: when huge enormous events are happening, of course it makes sense to want to know what's happening. It's incredibly important, and it feels vital to your survival, and sometimes, it probably is?
But not every fifteen minutes. There are things you can do something about (buy food! donate money! make masks! wash your hands!), and those are good to know. But... at this point, you know them? And if something else you can do comes along, it, like those things, will be mentioned in every major news outlet multiple times. Checking to see the death toll rise, to see what people are panicking about on Twitter, to see what further nonsense came out of the mouth of that asshole in the White House-- these do not give you actionable information. If checking them genuinely makes you feel better somehow, then sure, do that? But if you find, after checking news or that particular social medium, that you are again scared and angry and sad and ashamed, without any new action to take, this may not be the best thing for you.
Which brings me to the practical aspect of this advice, which is: go to your default internet browser, and look at your bookmarks. Find the websites that make you feel best-- happiest, safest, most spiritually connected, most amused. Take those bookmarks, and move them to the very top of the list, and keep doing that until they have shifted news sites and social media where you get the most worrying news to a drop-down menu.
Then go to your phone (assuming you have a smart phone) or tablet and do basically the same thing. Find the apps that make you feel best, calmest, most accomplished, and put them on the first page. Move the ones you've been compulsively checking to the second page.
This is not to say stop checking the news entirely-- don't delete Twitter from your phone. You can still check, and doing so once a day is probably even a good idea. But... make it an effort to check. Make yourself have to take a second to think about it as you're doing it. And in that second, ask yourself, "why am I checking right now? Is there something I need to know so that I can act on it?" And if not... maybe click on that font of cat pictures instead.
--R
So, this one may not be for everyone, but: a lot of people talk about how checking the news constantly is really upsetting, and they end up terrified or grief-stricken or just more stressed than they were before they checked the news, but they don't know how to stop.
There are two aspects to this piece of advice, the psychological and the practical.
The psychological one is: when huge enormous events are happening, of course it makes sense to want to know what's happening. It's incredibly important, and it feels vital to your survival, and sometimes, it probably is?
But not every fifteen minutes. There are things you can do something about (buy food! donate money! make masks! wash your hands!), and those are good to know. But... at this point, you know them? And if something else you can do comes along, it, like those things, will be mentioned in every major news outlet multiple times. Checking to see the death toll rise, to see what people are panicking about on Twitter, to see what further nonsense came out of the mouth of that asshole in the White House-- these do not give you actionable information. If checking them genuinely makes you feel better somehow, then sure, do that? But if you find, after checking news or that particular social medium, that you are again scared and angry and sad and ashamed, without any new action to take, this may not be the best thing for you.
Which brings me to the practical aspect of this advice, which is: go to your default internet browser, and look at your bookmarks. Find the websites that make you feel best-- happiest, safest, most spiritually connected, most amused. Take those bookmarks, and move them to the very top of the list, and keep doing that until they have shifted news sites and social media where you get the most worrying news to a drop-down menu.
Then go to your phone (assuming you have a smart phone) or tablet and do basically the same thing. Find the apps that make you feel best, calmest, most accomplished, and put them on the first page. Move the ones you've been compulsively checking to the second page.
This is not to say stop checking the news entirely-- don't delete Twitter from your phone. You can still check, and doing so once a day is probably even a good idea. But... make it an effort to check. Make yourself have to take a second to think about it as you're doing it. And in that second, ask yourself, "why am I checking right now? Is there something I need to know so that I can act on it?" And if not... maybe click on that font of cat pictures instead.
--R
