Latest / Pathological Positivity / Haunted by the Headlines: How to Find Peace When the World Feels Heavy – Episode #675
Transcript
- This is Live on Purpose Radio, episode 675. Haunted by the headlines? How to feel peace when the world feels heavy. Now is the only time to create and live the life you love. I'm doctor Paul Jenkins, the positivity psychologist. My job is to connect you to powerful positive psychology principles that immediately upgrade your relationships, business, and mental health. Are you ready? Let's jump in. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Live on Purpose Radio. This is doctor Paul, the shrink who expands your life. Everywhere we turn, it feels like the world is on edge. Violence, division, tragedies, it's easy to feel haunted by the headlines. Have you noticed? But what if peace isn't about changing the world? It's about how we see it. Let's get into this. There's three main points that I I feel to share with you here today. And, this might help to bring in a little different perspective. Point number one, the news isn't the world. It's a sliver of it. Point number two, the the real danger in us versus them thinking and point three pieces of choice. Circumstances are neutral. Now with that introduction, let's jump into that first point. The news isn't the world. It's a sliver of it. Now notice when you watch the news. No. No. No. No. No. Let me correct that. You don't watch the news. You watch your news. Now what's the difference? Most of the news that we receive is through Internet and some kind of a feed that we subscribe to. Now in the olden days, you'd turn on the evening news. It was on the television. It came from the major networks. Now we get notifications, and we get stories that show up in our feed. I want to emphasize you don't watch the news, you watch your news. Meaning, it has been curated through the algorithms that whatever your platform uses to give you a version of news that is likely to resonate with you. Now when I say resonate with you, I mean, it's going to be either something that you agree with, you align with, you pay attention to, or that provokes you or upset you. Whatever it is that gets you to stop the scroll and read the story. That's what the platforms will feed you. It's driven by algorithms. If you're not paying for it, you're the product. Meaning, if you're getting your news through a source like Facebook or Instagram or whatever your feed is and you're not paying for it, the advertisers are paying for it. And what they pay for is anything that stops the scroll so that they have your attention. It's your attention that they want. So anything that gets your attention is going to show up in your feed. I was having this conversation with someone who's really close to me, and he asked me, do you know so and so? I can't even remember the name off the top of my head. And I said, no. I haven't heard of that person. Really? That really surprises me because you seem so informed. You don't even know about her? No. She hasn't shown up in my feed. Well, it's shown up in his for a number of reasons. But the the the point that I invite you to consider is that you're not watching the news, you're watching your news, whatever that means. Now I've also had several conversations with television news anchors. I've collaborated with a few people who work in television news on a couple of different projects, and they have all told me this. Some version of this. If it bleeds, it leads. What that means is that only the rare, negative, sensational events make the headlines. The vast majority of people every day... The overwhelming majority, I would say just short of all people, spend their days doing good, serving others, making the world a better place. They get up in the morning, they go do good things all day long, and then they go to bed. And they get up and do the same thing again tomorrow. The vast majority of people do this. That's not news. Any more than, Hey, the sun came up today is news. So understanding that if it bleeds, it leads. Our brains are wired to pay attention to danger because our brain's job is to keep us safe and also to prove us right. And both of those get in the way all the time. When's the last time you saw a headline that said, millions of people were kind to each other today? You don't see that because it's not news. That's normal. So when we look at the news and we say, where is the world going? The world is going downhill fast. No. It's not. Yes. These events are happening, and there's a reason they make the news. It's because it's uncommon. It's not normal. But when we focus our attention on the news, we can develop a perception of the world as going downhill fast, and our news feed makes it look that way. I invite you to be more responsible for your consumption of your news, and remember to put it in perspective. And by the way, the vast majority of people that get up every day and do good things all day long belong to all different religions, political parties. It it it makes no difference. They are humans. They are our fellow brothers and sisters on the planet. Just a couple of weeks ago, I attended a conference at Utah Valley University. Now I might have to explain to you what that was, except it made the news a few weeks before that when Charlie Kirk was killed as a guest speaker on that campus. This is just a mile from my office and he was killed. Now, a lot of people know that story, and I'm not here to comment about any kind of politics or philosophy around that. But there was a heaviness. When I visited campus, there was a palpable energy there. There were still piles of flowers and notes and memorials and increased security on campus. This was the first major event on campus since the killing happened. And I felt that. Now that heaviness, we're not going to ignore. K? Because these things happen. And by the way, they happen every day. So when I say it bleeds, it leads. I don't mean that it's out of the ordinary for somebody to get killed. That happens every day. When you look at the, the sheer numbers of the population of the planet, and you understand that hurt people hurt people, those things are going to happen on a fairly regular basis, but they make the news because it's out of the ordinary. It's sensational. It's not normal. It's frequent, all too common, but it's not normal. So what's happening to the world? Well, maybe a better question would be, what am I choosing to focus on? And that will change the energy that will change how you feel. Are you haunted by the headlines? Maybe you're focusing a little too much on the headlines. All right. Let's get to point number two, the real danger in us versus them thinking. Division, not difference. Listen to the listen to the distinction there. Division, not difference, is what destroys peace. The mindset that they will destroy us is toxic and self fulfilling. At this conference that I told you I attended, the opening keynote was given by Arthur c Brooks. He's become one of my favorite authors and thought leaders, and I've just finished reading his book, From Strength to Strength. Had some of my high level clients read that as well. He opened the conference. A little later in the conference, Patrick Mason was speaking, and he quoted a fairly alarming statistic. He said that roughly two thirds of Americans think... No. No. No. No. No. No. They don't think. They know. They're convinced that the other side, meaning the other political party, will destroy America. They will destroy us. Think about that. It assumes that there's a them and there's an Us. And I already said the vast majority of people. In The United States, since we're talking about The United States right now, the vast majority of people get up every day and do good things all day long, take care of their families, serve their neighbors, love God, whatever it is. Who is this they? And if we choose to define people by what religion they're affiliated with, what political party, who they voted for in the last election, the color of their skin. We've tried all kinds of divisive definitions, and that has been tried, and it has failed. They will destroy us? How about we could destroy us? And as alarming as that could be, we get to save us too. The danger of tribal fear, how it escalates conflict at every level. And this is from global to right down in your living room, within your family. The psychology of belonging. Fear narrows focus. Love expands it. What if we were to start thinking more in terms of us? And and I am not immune from this. As the positivity psychologist, I get caught up in it too. It was, also just a few weeks ago that I read a news story, maybe you saw it as well, about a church shooting in Michigan. And and along with the shooting was an arson that burned that church to the ground. These are peaceable church going Americans who were attacked during their worship service. There were five people that died in that incident, and a a church building was destroyed. Now this happened to be an LDS meeting house, a meeting house of the church of Jesus Christ of latter day saints, of which I am a member. That is the particular affiliation that I claim. And I caught myself thinking, this is really hitting close to home this time. That was one of our churches. And then I heard it in my thought, and I corrected it. And I said to myself, it's always one of our churches. Why was I setting myself up as being us and all the others are them? That was the error in my own thinking. I caught it. And and gratefully, and it's because I just listened to Patrick Mason and heard that statistic about they will destroy us, I caught it. And I I realized it's always one of our churches. I don't care if it's a mosque or a synagogue or some denomination I've never even heard of. It's always one of ours. What if we could align in that? The redirection from division to unity. It's not us and them. It's just us. Peace begins when we stop waiting for them to change and realize that we get to show up differently. Now there's one other point that I wanted to make today, and that is that peace is a choice. Circumstances are neutral. We can't always change what's happening. If you notice that you have very little control over that, you read the headlines, you're haunted by the headlines, you don't get to change those things that are happening. But we can always choose how to interpret it, what our perception or attitude is related to it, our position. Circumstances are neutral. Pleasant. They might be very difficult and painful. Neutral means that it is what it is. It could always be better. It could always be worse. And then noticing that we are constantly judging. Our judgment or evaluation, as I describe it in the positivity model, is what creates our emotional experience. That emotional energy drives how we show up, and how we show up creates our results. It's the comparison. It's the judgment or the evaluation that determines how we feel. I got to interview doctor Richard Nisbett right here on the show, and I quote him all the time on this particular issue because it was so profound. He said, the number one error that humans make is that we believe what we think. Humility is part of the antidote here, giving up our need to be right in exchange for being open. How does this apply when we're faced with disturbing news or a conflict, whether that's a a private, intimate, interpersonal conflict or a global, between nations, all out war? How does this apply? How we respond to what it is teaches our kids how to live in their own world. It it demonstrates to our neighbors and our friends and our fellow brothers and sisters here on the planet that there is an option to choose our position differently. When the headlines feel haunted, peace comes through choosing a perspective, also known as attitude or position, over panic. We don't have to be captivated by these headlines that seem so bad. Let's do a little recap of those three points. The news isn't the world. It's a sliver of it. The real danger is us versus them thinking. And peace is a choice. Our circumstances are neutral. What's one way you can practice seeing the good, building connection, and choosing peace this week? Will you ponder that and consider that? I invite you to join me in standing for peace and love and connection and not being so divisive in our us versus them thinking. At the end of the day, it's just us. Did you get something that you can use? I certainly hope so. We've talked about it. Let's go enact it. Let's put this to work in our lives and live on purpose. Did you get what you came for? Give yourself the gift of taking real action on what you realized today. Please share this episode with someone you know would value it, and leave us a rating too. It's time now to live on purpose.