I had been with my partner for four years when we broke up in 2018. In the months that followed, I wanted to change some things in my life. There's a stereotype where people "discover themselves" after a breakup—the Eat, Pray, Love cliché. This was mine.
I had been doing some soul-searching and I signed up for a weekend meditation retreat in London, England. I wanted to be more present in my life, to feel more powerful. The company sent me a list of things I needed to stop doing for the week before the retreat: eating meat, drinking alcohol, consuming caffeine—and, to my surprise, watching television.
The list made it hit home that television has a powerful influence on how we think and feel and how we see the world. I stopped watching TV for that week, and I haven't watched it since.
Up until the age of 24, I used to watch television every day. Then, between the ages of 24 and 29, when I was working longer hours, it became more of a binge—I would watch television maybe twice a week for four or five hours. I'd get into something like Breaking Bad and I'd sometimes be up until 4 o'clock in the morning. I was totally engrossed, feeling what the characters were feeling. Afterwards, I'd feel a bit ill.
I grew up with the TV on most of the time at home. I didn't enjoy spending so much time watching it, but I wanted to spend time with my family and that's where they often were. I would have loved for there to have been less television and more games and interaction. I find it odd that "togetherness" meant being silent for four hours, looking at a box.
We go into a trance when we look at a screen—you only need to see people staring at their phones to know that they're not fully aware of what's going on around them, they're just focused on what they're watching. This perhaps helps them to relax as it takes them away from reality.
Even as an adult, I would watch TV when I finished a long work project. I would binge just to chill out and sometimes I'd spend a whole day finishing a series as a way of slowing down.
So, suddenly giving up television for the week before the meditation retreat was weird—especially as my flatmate was still watching a show we used to watch together. But when I came back from the retreat, I decided to give up TV in the long-term. The retreat had been amazing. I didn't want to go back to how things were before. I wanted to extend this new way of feeling in the world and build on it.
I felt lighter, clearer, and I had better digestion and sleep. I started to dream more and my imagination became a bigger part of my life. I had more time to be creative, to do the things that I'd put to one side—I'd spend my evenings and weekends doing pottery, drawing and writing.
Time felt different, too. When you watch TV, you put it on and before you know it, it's midnight. It's like a vacuum. Whereas time would still fly when I was being creative but it was a different feeling because I felt present in my body.
I felt more relaxed because I wasn't sitting for long periods, totally absorbed in a film and its intense mental stimulation. When you watch a thriller, it feels real enough to stimulate chemicals in the body, like cortisol and adrenaline. We're almost putting our bodies into survival mode, which can be exciting but can also cause stress and strain in the body.
I felt my evenings became more peaceful, just from not watching other people's arguments on soap operas. I also became more aware of my body and noticed that when I felt stressed, my breathing would be shallow and my neck would become tight. By being more aware, I was able to release this stress with breathing exercises and other practices, such as walking and even dancing around my lounge.
I became more social, too. I wanted to connect more to people in real life, so I'd initiate and say yes to more activities. Instead of watching TV, I wanted to get out in the world.
Four years on, I'm still experiencing the same benefits from giving up TV. I'm certainly not a puritan. I'll watch YouTube videos of cute huskies and sometimes I have to watch old historical dramas for inspiration in my job as a set decorator on films and period dramas.
It might seem ironic that I work in media and yet don't watch TV, but I enjoy working on films and period dramas because there are wonderful stories, with so much history and beauty. Sometimes colleagues will ask, "are you watching so-and-so" and I don't know what they mean, but I don't feel left out and it doesn't affect my work.
While I still work in the film industry, I mostly work as a hypnotherapist now. From my retraining, I realized that TV is like hypnosis, as you go into a trance of focus while watching it. This realization has encouraged me to stay TV-free.
Now, my patience for TV has really diminished. When it's on at a friend's house, I feel it hijacks the room and I can't think as clearly or concentrate on what other people are saying.
Of course, sometimes I miss it. There is something shared about watching a live Saturday night TV show that everyone's watching at the same time. There's a sense of togetherness.
I might watch TV again at some point in the future but I'd be choosy about what I watched, maybe going for beautiful true stories about other people and cultures in the world.
For now, however, I am content. I have achieved what I sought out to do during my soul-searching in 2018. Without television, I feel more engaged, more present and, ultimately, happier in my life.
Sarah Bick is a set decorator for movies and television shows. She is also a clinical hypnotherapist, and founder of Inna Therapies, based in London.
All views expressed in this article are the author's own.
As told to Katie Russell
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
");jQuery(this).remove()}) jQuery('.start-slider').owlCarousel({loop:!1,margin:10,nav:!0,items:1}).on('changed.owl.carousel',function(event){var currentItem=event.item.index;var totalItems=event.item.count;if(currentItem===0){jQuery('.owl-prev').addClass('disabled')}else{jQuery('.owl-prev').removeClass('disabled')} if(currentItem===totalItems-1){jQuery('.owl-next').addClass('disabled')}else{jQuery('.owl-next').removeClass('disabled')}})}})})
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7r7HWrK6enZtjsLC5jqJkoJmmmnq1woynprBlmJa9sbXEq2ShnZGhwam1xKtkam9iaIZyfQ%3D%3D