درسنامه اصلی

Regional Differences In America – Coaching Lesson

Hi, this is AJ, welcome to this month’s coaching lesson, Regional Differences, hm. As I think about this conversation I immediately think about the media because the media presents certain places, certain people, certain countries in a specific way and I find that usually the media, news, television, movies, the media usually is not accurate.

For example, we were talking about all these regional differences in the United States and yet in the media, in the news media, for example, often the United States is portrayed, is shown to be, y’know, kind of all the same. They show certain parts of our culture or exaggerate certain parts of American culture, but then they ignore lots of other parts so that if you’ve never been here before for a while, you won’t realize all these differences. You won’t realize the kind of rich, unique aspects to different regions of the United States.

And this, of course, is true not only for the United States but for all countries. The media tends to stereotype people, y’know, so Russia is presented in a certain way but we don’t really get to see the full, true view of Russian culture and all the differences. I mean Russia’s a huge country, for example, so they’re not all the same. Everybody is Russia is not the same but yet in the media we get this very onedimensional view, and it’s true, generally.

The other thing about the media, not only is it inaccurate, but I find that the media presents the world as a very dangerous place. If you watch certainly the news, but even television and movies, you are shown a view of the world or of a specific country as being a very, very dangerous place to live. Let me give you an example from my own life.

A few years ago I was going to Thailand, going on a trip to Thailand, and I go there quite often. But at that time there were big protests happening in the country, especially in Bangkok, the main city, which is where I usually go. And on the news every day they showed these protests, y’know, they would show some angry person, y’know, a little close-up on the angriest person in the crowd shouting.

And then the reporters would present this story, this view that, y’know, Bangkok was now a very dangerous place and had all these tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands even of protesters and, oh my god, and the military is coming. So they presented this situation in a way that seemed very dangerous, that there was a great, huge, dangerous conflict coming. Be careful.

Now my family saw all these news reports and they knew I was going to Thailand, specifically I was going to Bangkok and, in fact, I was planning to stay in a hotel just a few blocks away from one of the big protest areas. So my family got really worried. Oh my god, AJ you shouldn’t go. It’s too dangerous. So they gave me constant warnings. They were really afraid for me.

And I’ll admit, even though I’d been to Thailand many times, I wasn’t worried in the beginning but after hearing all this and seeing these news reports, I got a little nervous, too. But I decided, I’m going. I know Thailand. I’m comfortable there. If something dangerous happens, I’ll get away. I’ll escape. That’s what I said to myself.

And so I went. And I arrived in Bangkok, took a taxi to my hotel. And everything was perfectly calm.

There was no fighting. There was no shouting. There was no violence of any kind. Well, sometimes I’m a little too curious so I decided I’m going to go check this out. I want to find out for myself what the situation really is.

So I went for a walk and I walked to the big protest area where the protestors had a huge camp. They had blocked many of the streets. And I walked right into the protest area. Now the news showed these people as being really angry like they were maybe scary, possibly violent. But as I walked through the protestors and looked around, I noticed most of them were families. There were parents and their children and grandparents there. There were also lots of monks, lots of Buddhist monks.

And everybody was sitting around like having little picnics, eating lunch together. Yes, there were speakers on the stage and some of them were kind of shouting and upset, but no violence at all. In addition, when they saw me, everybody just smiled and nodded to me. It felt more like a music festival to me than some scary violent protest. And I realized, oh, the news is not showing the true situation at all. It was a peaceful, calm situation with mostly very friendly people and lots of families.

I stayed in Thailand. I did a seminar in Bangkok. I continued…I did my business that I needed to do there and I realized that there was nothing to fear at all and then I left finally, when I was done. And the important point for me, it really showed me, something I knew already but it showed me very clearly that the media does not equal reality. The media gives us a very, very, very inaccurate view of reality.

And, in fact, the media always gives us a scarier, more dangerous view of reality and what’s really true.

Why is this? If you think about it, the media, television especially…we’ll talk about television right now but it’s also true for print media, for radio, but let’s just talk about television because it’s the most exaggerated.

Television needs conflict. It needs fear. Why? For drama. Drama attracts viewers and advertisers.

That’s where television stations make their money. They make their money from advertisers. Advertisers pay the station because they’re getting a lot of viewers. So there’s a lot of pressure for any news media, for any media at all, to get more viewers. They need to attract people. They need to get people’s attention so that people will watch their show and then that’s how they get money from their advertisers.

Well, guess what? They figured out that conflict and violence and danger are exciting and interesting to people and people will watch that. And peace and calm don’t sell. Peace and calm are less interesting and they just don’t sell. Doesn’t attract viewers. Not as interesting, not as exciting. I mean that’s really the reason that we see so much of this in the media and why the media is so inaccurate.

Let’s imagine two movies, just imagine two movies. Now in movie number one, movie number one, we watch the movie, maybe an hour and a half long. And in this movie we see very friendly, wonderful people and everybody in the movie is really nice to each other and they just get together and they chat an everyone’s really sweet and nice for one and a half hours. The end. Nothing really happens. It’s very calm, it’s very peaceful and everyone’s nice. The end.

Movie number two has drama. There are fights. There’s a lot of danger. There might be some violence.

There’s anger. There are arguments. There’s risk. We don’t know what’s going to happen next. It’s a much more exciting movie. Which movie will people go to watch? Which movie will be the most popular?

It’ll be the one with lots of conflict, lots of drama, with fights and chases, with danger. It’s just more thrilling to us. It’s just human nature.

And that’s why when you go and you see most movies, what do they have? There’s lots of fights, there’s lots of danger, there’s conflict. All of that. That’s because movie makers know this. They have to create conflict and drama to get your attention. That’s entertainment.

So what’s interesting is that real life, though, is more like movie number one. In real life, usually not much happens. In real life, usually most people are quite friendly. In real life, most people are fairly nice. In real life, people don’t usually get into big fights. I mean how many times have you seen people in a restaurant in your neighborhood start fighting each other and have a big huge fight? I don’t think I ever see that.

How many car chases have you actually seen? How many people have you seen get killed? Actually, directly seen it…you hear about it on the news but how many times have you actually seen it happen, right? In real life, usually nice people go about their day, maybe it’s not so exciting, but it’s peaceful. It’s calm, there’s nothing much to worry about.

The point of it is this. The media is not presenting real life. It’s not presenting accuracy. And so we have to be very careful, right? If I had listened to the media I never would have gone to Thailand. I would have been convinced in my mind that there was all this violence happening, that it was a super dangerous place. But the reality was quite different, lots of nice people. Yeah, there were protests. Yes, there were some conflicts with the police and the protesters but nothing like the media showed. They exaggerated it for drama, right? They need the drama to create that excitement and get viewers.

So this is what I want you to do and this is why it’s so important. If we watch the media without thinking we can really build up a lot of worry and a lot of anxiety in our minds. And we can really get some fear in our minds and start to believe that the world actually is such a dangerous place and that most people are quite scary when it’s just not true. Because in your normal day-to-day life, face-to-face, what do you find?

You find most people are actually quite nice. Yeah, there might be some annoying people but they’re not really that scary.

So what I want you to do this month, just try it for this month, is every time you watch the media, especially the news, but including television and movies, I want you to analyze it and look at it more like it’s entertainment, like it’s a movie, not the truth because it’s not the truth. Look at it and see, ask yourself, how are they creating drama? How are they trying to make this more exciting? How are they exaggerating this? How are they trying to create conflict?

And then the second thing I want you to do this month is that instead of trusting the media, I want you to trust only your direct experience. So instead of believing what the media shows you, see that just as entertainment, like it’s a movie. And instead value and trust your own direct experience, face-to-face with real people, real life. See for yourself. Don’t just trust what you’re given in a video on television, even me telling you. See for yourself. Investigate things for yourself.

Don’t be so afraid. Don’t be so worried. The world, in general, is a much less scary place than the media shows you. No, don’t go run into a war zone, but generally, if you’re curious, go find out for yourself instead of trusting what the media shows you. Always understand. Always be thinking and realizing as you watch television, as you read the news, that they’re creating drama, that that’s their business is to create conflict and drama and sell that for excitement.

The benefits of doing this: number one, less fear in your life. You’ll become less fearful. You’ll realize, y’know, the world actually is not such a bad place. The world really isn’t so scary after all, not the real world. And number two, you’ll have more fun experiences. You won’t be held back. You won’t avoid things so much because you’re afraid.

Good luck with this. Tell us about your experiences on our social site. See you next time. Bye for now.