It has been observed that people who watch the most television are the most fearful. It has also been observed that people who are the most fearful are the easiest to manipulate. They can easily be persuaded to buy products they don't need and to vote for candidates and laws that are not in their best interest.
Not only does chronic fear impair judgement and cause bad decision making it can have negative effects on an individual's physical health. The human body was not designed to be in a constant state of fight-or-flight. When blood and nutrients are pumped to the limbs to enable a physical response to danger they are pumped away from the immune system. This lack of support for the immune system leaves the body vulnerable to attack from disease-causing invaders.
You don't have to be a victim of fear. Fear and its sinister little cousin, Anxiety like all emotions are the result of thoughts. They seem to be caused by the environment and the things that area happening around us. But in fact they result from our response to the environment.
You can know about wars, hurricanes, tsunamis, crime and disease without dwelling on them. You can hear about dreadful things that happen and realize that most of them will not directly affect you. You can choose what information you are going to give your attention to.
A century or two ago people had an advantage in that the only horrible things most of them heard about were things happening locally. There were wars and epidemics and crimes taking place in other parts of the world all the time but ordinary people were not constantly bombarded with all that bad news. Their immune systems were not stressed by the constant demands of information overload.
You might wonder what you can do. For a start you can turn off the television. Maybe you don't want to turn it off forever but long enough to give yourself a break from scary news. And that includes from programs that entertain by offering terrifying prospects of awful things that could happen.
You can choose what to give your attention to. If you hear about a new surgical procedure do you immediately think about the failure rate? If someone says "cordyceps" do you immediately think "cordyceps side effects"?
According to the law of attraction people actually attract what they give their attention to. That could be another scary thought unless you are ready to take control and start choosing your thoughts.
