4 weeks without news – the result

It’s been four weeks. I’ve stayed away from news as much as I could. I didn’t succeed completely because that would mean that I should have turned myself into a hermit for these weeks and that’s something I’m not willing to do.

Over the past few weeks I’ve had many people asking me how I was experiencing the news silence. My answer was always the same: “Great, amazing and nice”.

I’ll try my best to tell you how I’ve experienced the lack of news. The first week it was first and foremost peaceful. I wasn’t missing it for one second. Tension that built up over the last few months drained away in a heartbeat. I was surprised at how easy it was to not look at facebook at all. By week three I heard some snippets of news concerning corona and I have to say, that had me worrying a little. Were there things that I really needed to know? How bad is it becoming? 

But once I thought about how information would be distributed if things would really get out of hand, I could let go of the worry

This experiment and idea was not new at all. But it was the first time I did it consciously. Once I announced that I would be undertaking this experiment a friend offered me some insight from a book she read. The book is by Mirjam van der Vegt and is called Koester je hart. In the books she then mentions Rolf Dobelli. He wrote about why we shouldn’t follow any news. 

In short: News is misleading, it’s irrelevant, it’s restricting views, it’s poison for your body, it enlarges thinking mistakes, it stops the thinking process, it’s addicting, it costs time, it makes us passive and last but not least it stops us from being compassionate and creative.

Now after four weeks I feel detoxed. I’m ready to receive small portions of news once again. I won’t add the news app and facebook to my phone anymore. I’ll listen to the news on the radio and that’s it. I’m happy I did it and can recommend it to everyone.

I’ll finish this blog by going through the list of negative feelings once more and see what the result is.

• Alienated
• Different
• Empty
• Lazy
• Losing control
• Timid
• Withdrawn

If I compare this to the list of four weeks ago, I’m amazed. What a difference! I could tell I was feeling more positive. I went from 29 feelings to 7! This just proves to me how big the influence of the news and facebook has on me. This was a successful experiment and I’m happy to repeat this if I ever fall into the same trap.