Stop Watching the News

Chris Albert 00:00:00 (link to this point)

You know, one of the things I'm always saying is that if this country is gonna get better, if this country is gonna go on the right path, we have to step up as a community. Veterans are the sleeping giant in this country, and it is time for us to step up. That's why I wanna talk to you about The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina. Now you might have thought about The Citadel in the past as this corps of cadets, this military institution, but they have programs for veterans that don't involve you joining the corps of cadets, don't involve you wearing a uniform every day, and don't involve you living a military lifestyle. If you wanna do that, great.

But if that's not what you're up for right now after your military career, then you don't have to do that, and you can access some of the best programs in the world. The Citadel has some hot degrees in intelligence, tactical strength and conditioning, engineering, and project management. And there's five student type options for veterans. There's graduate college, there's evening undergraduate, there's active duty students, non cadet day program, returning cadet veterans, and online programs. The academic offerings include undergraduate, graduate, college transfer, graduate certificates, and online degrees.

Veterans have access to every single academic degree the college offers, and they have the most flexibility when it comes to their schedule. They can major in anything offered to the cadets and would take those classes during the day with the cadets. But then there's other programs offered in the evening or online and graduate programs to choose from too to make things so flexible for you. The US World and News report has named the Citadel the number one column for veterans in the South. And for veterans who choose to take classes on campus, they get to be a civilian student in a military environment.

They don't have to wear uniforms, like I said before. They don't have to join the military culture of the corps of cadets. The atmosphere is a really good transition environment from military to civilian life. There's an organic mentorship that comes from taking classes with the cadets. The cadets wanna talk to you guys.

They wanna hear your stories. They wanna know what it was actually like to be in the military. A lot of the... A lot of these men and women are gonna go on to serve as officers in the military, and they're gonna exact change. And they need to hear from you guys.

They... You also get access to The Citadel's alumni network. Like I said, this is one of the most illustrious institutions in the world. And when you join the Citadel and you graduate, you're part of their alumni network. That includes so many leaders.

It includes so many business leaders, so many leaders from the military, and so many leaders from the government. The college's core values of honor, duty, and respect align with veteran culture. They align with who you are, and it's something that you're not gonna get anywhere else in this country. There is tons of special assistance for veterans at The Citadel. And whether you're a veteran or active duty military personnel, you can take advantage of these programs.

You also get access to the veteran student success center, the career center, the academic success center, the student veteran association, and all campus clubs. If you wanna play rugby, you could do that. If you wanna you wanna lift weights, you could do that. You get access to everything that the students get. There's fellowship opportunities.

There's tons and tons of financial assistance. So if you're interested in getting a degree from The Citadel and building your life, head over to citadel.edu/veterans.

This is Chris Albert, and I'm here to remind you of one thing. Someday, you're going to die. And that's not some morbid statement or scary idea. It's solid fact. Your time here on this earth is limited.

And we need to be reminded of this as much as possible for one simple reason, to live your best life while you can. This is the Warrior Soul podcast.

What is going on, ladies and gents? Welcome to another edition of the Warrior Soul podcast. My name is Chris Albert, and this podcast is where we deliver tools, tactics, strategies, and ideas to help The US military veteran community to live their absolute best lives. And as of late, haven't done a interview in a in a week, and, you know, I wanna use this time at the beginning of 2021 to riff on a few things, things that I think are simple changes that can help you to improve your life. And, you know, we just got through this crazy year, '20, and we're moving into this next year.

And and from all signs, it looks like 2021 is gonna be crazy as well. We've had some crazy things going on in the news, and we've had some crazy things going on everywhere. I mean, there's just craziness all over the place. And what I wanna tell you guys is something that I figured out a long time ago that really and truly benefited my life. And it wasn't something that I do.

It's something that I stopped doing. I stopped looking at the news all the time. I stopped checking the news, going to to the news sites on... Online. I stopped getting news alerts on my phone.

I stopped looking at Yahoo because there's news alerts on Yahoo. I stopped looking at the news alerts on Facebook. I stopped it altogether. And when I check the news, I check it for ten minutes in the morning after I've already done all the other important stuff that I need to do in the morning. And I don't look at it at any point after that.

Now is that because I wanna be ignorant? Is that because I don't wanna be an informed citizen? Absolutely not. I feel it is extremely important to be educated and to know what you're voting for, to know what the issues are. But here's the deal.

Back all the way up until recently, we used to not watch the news all day long. We used to not watch the news until it came on and at the the 06:00, you know, 06:00 news every night. That's when people watch the news or they'd read the newspaper. Right now, the news is in your face twenty four seven. And I've got a lot of things in my life that I need to focus on.

I don't need to be focusing on politics. I don't need to be focusing on current events twenty four seven. I just need to know what the current events are. I need to know what's going on out there, and I can do that in ten minutes a day. One of the problems I'm seeing out there is that people are constantly watching the news.

They're constantly looking at the media. They're constantly getting this stream of nonsense that's going into their heads because the way the news media has reacted to being on a twenty four hour news cycle twenty four seven is that they've tried to sensationalize everything. If you go on the Internet, every headline is carefully constructed so that you will click on it. And then when you start reading the articles, the articles are carefully written so that you will continue reading them. And so that you'll jump from one article to the next article.

It's the same thing with YouTube, social media, tweets, Facebook, you name it. The way the Internet is constructed is to eat into your time. Now we can go into a whole another debate about the the nonsense the media puts out there, how they're creating narratives constantly that that, you know, are their narratives and that there's some sort of agenda. But here's the deal, guys. I think the more important thing is to understand how all this BS eats into your time as an individual.

Think about it. If you stopped watching the news, think about how often you're checking it. Right? For some of you, it's probably hours between your time online, between your time watching it on TV, between your time clicking on things that you see on Facebook or Twitter or wherever you're going these days. Think about all that time and what you could potentially do with an extra hour in your day, with an extra two hours in your day.

Think about that. What could you learn? What types of things could you implement in your life? Maybe you could get a work at it. Maybe you could study real estate.

Maybe you could study investing. Maybe you can learn how to get your finances in order. Maybe you could be spending time with your significant other or your kids. There is so much that the news is taking away from you right now. And above everything, I mean, it just puts a really bad taste in your mouth.

Right? When you when you wake up in the morning and the first thing you see is the latest disaster, what does that do to your subconscious? Where does it bring you? What... How are you focusing on you and what you need to do and your place in the world if you're constantly getting blasted in the face with this freaking nonsense that's hitting you constantly.

Alright? This is an addiction. Alright? Just like any other thing these days is an addiction. Alright?

We talk about people spending so much time on social media. We talk about people spending so much time on YouTube. We talk about all the different time eaters out there, but this is a real and true addiction that people have. And again, I'm not telling you not to be informed, but I'm telling you that that this is taking a really, really big slice out of your life that you don't need taken out. Another thing is this.

One of the things the media does is it tends to take the the event that's going on at the moment, and it magnifies it. So that it's like the worst thing in the world that's never happened before in history. Right? And if if you're uninformed about history, you can take it as, oh my god, this is the end of times, or oh my god, this is this is the worst thing that's ever happened in the world. Right?

One of the things I did last year was I I made a significant effort to educate myself on the history of this country. And a book I read called Battle Cry of Freedom, which was an awesome book about the civil war, and another book called Lincoln, they kind of calmed me down a little bit because I realized something. You know what? This country has been through worse. Alright?

It has been through worse. Right now, I'm reading about Churchill and and life during World War two and his his actions leading up to World War two. Guess what? There's there's been worse things that have occurred. And, of course, worse things can still happen, but we gotta be able to put all this stuff into perspective.

And if you're just getting it in these little headline sound bites that are constantly being tossed at you like you're a trained animal ready to click on anything that's sensationalized, well, that's somebody controlling you. That's somebody trying to control your mind. That's somebody who's trying to control your life and what you... And your attention. Right?

Your attention is so important. What you're paying attention to in this world is so important. And if you're not paying attention to the right things, the things that are important to you, to your family, to your community, then you're just throwing life out the door or throwing time out the door. Right? They're both the same thing.

So that's my take on the news. And, of course, we have some craziness going on right now, and I know the temptation is there. And I just wanted to put this out there for all of you. Because if you do wanna change the world, you're not gonna do it by just staring at the news all day. You're gonna do it through action.

And if you're not taking action in your life, you're not gonna move forward, you're not gonna go anywhere, you're not gonna make the mistakes that you need to make to learn, you're not gonna do anything except sit there and get freaking pissed off. Alright? So focus on action, stop sitting there, and getting this weird form of entertainment that we've developed, that we now call the news media. My name is Chris Albert. This is the Warrior Soul podcast.

I'll be back at you again next week with some more awesome content. Thank you so much for listening. If you guys like the show, please write us a review on iTunes. Please share these episodes out with other veterans and other people who could use this information. And I hope that if you have a comment, you'll send it to me so that I can make things better.

With that, guys, I am out.