Life....Outside of the Box; The Reality TV Box
Posted on January 25, 2012 by Cherese Jackson, One of Thousands of Leadership Coaches on Noomii.
Stop letting Reality TV affected the way you see yourself
What do you want to be? The simple answer to that question is the same for every person on the planet. We all want to be fulfilled. At the core of every other possible answer is that one underlying truth; fulfillment, with its varying definitions, is what we want!
When you were young, someone asked you, “What do you want to be when you grow up”? You looked around at the adults in your world to find examples of possible answers to that question. And instinctively gave more consideration to those whose lives seemed to bring them happiness or fulfillment.
Right away you began to believe that your own identity, and future success, depended on what you decided to be when you grew up. This becomes a reference point for our perceptions about life.
If the people around us are rich and have other people work for them, that’s the way you think life is. On the other hand, if the people in your world struggle just to pay their bills and are always waiting on the next paycheck, that’s the perspective, you tend to associate with.
Whatever a child sees in the world around them is what they are subtly programmed to expect from life. This all happens very early in our lives. We may or may not want the reality we see, but that is what forms our perceptions and expectations of how life is.
So, our limits are based on the choices available to us within our immediate environment because that’s what we see as reality. The subconscious anchor here is: if that is reality, then everything beyond that is just fantasy. Perhaps, this is why we’re so attracted to the box otherwise known as Reality TV.
Reality TV gives us the “ability” to experience life through someone else’s perception of fulfillment. We see the unreal world of Reality TV and buy into its false sense community, involvement, and truth.
False sense of community: We ‘know’ more about what’s happening in the on-screen lives of these people than we do about the real-world people next door or even in the next room from us. We talk about them on a first name basis, as if we actually know them. How much do the “characters” in these shows know or care about us and our lives. We only see what the camera operators, editors and producers choose to let us see. If we think they’re interested in portraying reality, we are being incredibly naïve. False sense of involvement: Media executives cynically manipulate our sense of “being involved” in the lives of these people. We’re being remotely controlled by the remote control. We get more emotionally involved with the people on these shows than with our own loved ones. It’s a one-way relationship. We complain when we’re connected to people, in the real world, and it seems as if we’re the only contributor. False sense of truth: Who can really distinguish the truth from the drama? It is a counterfeit reality, an artificial world where we waste time substituting the reel for what’s real. It’s Reality TV, where reality itself dissolves in a web of lies and scandal.No matter what kind of hopes and dreams we may entertain as children, sooner or later we are expected to stop living in a fantasy world and start living in the “real world.”
This huge contrast between the kind of reality we fantasize about and the reality we have been programmed to accept creates massive internal friction. Somewhere inside of us we all intuitively know that more is possible, and that knowledge is in direct conflict with our “real world” programming. So, instead of challenging ourselves, we succumb to live through the characters within the box – the Reality TV Box.
We need a radical program upgrade and the one viable option is to rewrite our internal programs. When our identity is tied to “what we do” it sends a message that “we are” our job, career, or role in life. That is not what we are; it’s just one of the many things we do.
Who we are as a person is more about our personal qualities; our passions, values and relationships. So, it’s not what I want to be; instead it’s WHO I want to be. Upgrading our internal programs requires that we get very clear about who we are on a core level.
Believe it or not your fantasies actually serve a purpose. They are the voice of your true self calling out for recognition. They are a message from your intuitive, creative nature; reminding you that fulfillment of life is really possible. Now the question is, are you ready to break “out of the box”?
See you at the TOP!
