Some background facts:
• Reality television saw an explosion of global popularity starting in the early 2000s. Two reality series – Survivor and American Idol – have been the top-rated series on American television for an entire season. Survivor led the ratings in 2001–02, and Idol has topped the ratings three consecutive years (2004–05, 2005–06, and 2006–07). The shows Survivor, the Idol series, The Amazing Race, the America’s Next Top Model series, the Dancing With The Stars series, The Apprentice, “Fear Factor” and Big Brother have all had a global effect, having each been successfully syndicated in dozens of countries.

• In 2007, according to the Learning and Skills Council, one in seven UK teenagers hopes to gain fame by appearing on reality television. “Jaded”. The Economist. January 27, 2007. pp. 57

• In April 2008, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences announced it will give its very first Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Host for a Reality or Reality-Competition Program on September 21. “Reality television has become such an integral part of television and our culture, so it only made sense for us to create this new highly competitive category,” TV academy Chairmen and CEO John Shaffner said in the announcement.

• Inspired by the success of American Idol, Indian TV channel Sony Entertainment Television (India) launched the Indian version called Indian Idol. In 2009 Season 4 concluded.

Reality TV is here to stay, whether we like it or not. Even if we loathe it, most of us have watched some of the exploits of contestants going through some grueling exercise and wonder what entices them. Well money, a trophy, a job, celebrity status to name a few. But more importantly what makes so many of us feel so glued to their actions and reactions to the circumstances they put themselves in day after day, week after week? The pull for most of us is that it shows us human behaviour in the raw so to speak and as observers it makes for riveting viewing. No-one could have predicted how hooked people can get to being observers of human behaviour (something we do naturally anyway) and yet the number of people entering psychology as a profession has quadrupled in the past 20 years which should explain why we are obsessed with our own and others’ behaviours.

Why can watching reality tv be good for us?

1. Well, firstly, we get to see others’ actions and reactions to challenging situations first hand. It’s safe, comfortable and we can loathe and / or love the contestants from a distance depending on whether we agree or disagree with their way of acting and reacting – we can shout, taunt, mock and praise and cheer at them from the comfort of our own settees. If we get emotionally involved, as in, bothered by their behaviour it can be cathartic i.e. liberating our emotions, even the ones we usually keep bottled up which is far better than reacting negatively to the ones we are with.
2. Secondly, we use their predicaments whether it’s to cook up a two-course meal in 40 minutes or lose 5 kgs in a week, or have worms crawling over their faces as proof that ordinary people can do extraordinary/new/strange things. Watching them can help us to stop thinking about our problems as insurmountable and instead start to see them as challenges without the elimination process! In short, seeing others’ having a go can helps us to triumph over our own biggest fears and gain something quite useful – courage!
3. Thirdly, and perhaps very significantly we can see that there may be only one winner but in essence none of the contestants are failures, they merely had a go, were prepared to put themselves on the line and see what happens. This is to be applauded regardless of the type of show they are in especially considering the constant observation and judgment of them. Their efforts can teach us that failure is subjective and as such doesn’t mean anything. Especially if we look at it from the standpoint of having a go as opposed to looking at it from the standpoint of the judge and jury, it can propel us into trying new things / persevering in the face of our doubts, concerns, fears etc. Essentially watching reality tv can help us gain some good insights into ourselves and others if and here’s the big IF viewed sensibly.

So, why is it bad for us? Reality TV has an addictive quality which by its nature keeps us wondering what will happen next, who will leave, who will stay, the next challenge and the next and before you know it, your evenings are all taken up with the adrenalin rush of what next.

It’s a problem because being in a state of anticipation can be fun but when it stops you from doing things that enhances the quality of your life, like any addiction it turns bad. If at the end of the whole series you feel quite flat and end up pining for the whole thing to start up again, you need to have a serious chat with yourself as to why you need to be bothered about others’ awesome adventures as opposed to having some adventures of your own.

It’s a classic psychological flight into fantasy (flight as opposed to fight reaction), which, is easier than dealing with anything as real as our own problems.

Let’s face it, zoning out occasionally can helps us to come back to our problems with a fresh ‘head’ so to speak, but when the zoning out takes up all our free time it can have the most devastating of effects, inaction! We cannot escape our own problems permanently as much as we would like to because inevitably they lead to bigger problems, dissatisfaction with our lives to name one.

The other negative relates to the need to judge others’ behaviour. Again fun to do when the person is not in front of you and you can be the voyeur without any backlash but what if all the judging doesn’t end with the programme. We can all judge eachother but at which point do we accept that people are the way they are and that includes us. The issue is that most of us like to think that we are good at judging others but the truth of the matter is that we are in no position to really judge.

We cannot possibly know the potential of another regardless of how they appear in any given situation. We almost always accept that the situation in which the behaviour was portrayed as suggesting something about that person but whatever is gained is only relevant for a similar situation at best and at worst cannot predict what that person would do in any other given situation.

The idea that a person is predictable makes assumptions that put us in a bubble of our making and keep us from the truth. Everyone can be inspired to do things differently and no one can predict which way a person will go and that mystery is best kept a mystery, its what separates us from the animal kingdom and allows us to be in the driving seat of our lives always. The biggest problem is that when we do the judging to ourselves (based on all the ways others have said things to us) we can end up believing our limitations even though all is just a ‘make believe’ story. It has no roots in truth. The only truth is that we can decide at any given moment to steer our ship in a different and better direction.

Bon voyage!

On my way to becoming a Spiritual Life Coach, learning to love myself was probably the hardest thing as an adult that I have had to do.  As a teenager and young adult, I grew up with no sense of worth.  No matter what I achieved in life and I achieved plenty, in my mind it was worth nothing and I was nothing if I didn’t achieve even more.  Eventually over the years I had to accept that my need to achieve and validate myself was like a well that was never going to get filled until I put a lid on it.  It was at my lowest ebb that I came across the power of affirmations.

For me, through the daily use of positive affirmations, I was able to kick the negative statements of ‘I am nothing’ to ‘I am me, that is all’. I realised I no longer needed validation from a perceived harsh world that damned everything that I did.   All I needed was to do things the best way I knew how and leave the appraisals in the bin, where they belonged.  I have taught my children to use affirmations as a buffer against the negative feedback they get from colleagues at school and society in general and now they come up with their own especially when they get frustrated with their efforts.  It can literally turn any bad day into a wonderful lesson of finding that you have nothing to prove except to be you.

Here is one positive affirmation that I find to be one of the absolute best…

One affirmation, ten times in one day, every day!

1. Wake up each morning to one and only one thought:  I love being ME
2. Dress the best way you know how, look in the mirror and repeat: I love being ME
3. Eat your breakfast slowly and deliberately and repeat: I love being ME
4. Speak and then pause and repeat to yourself quietly: I love being ME
5. Arrive at work or school, the cafe, post office, grocers, catch a glimpse of yourself in a window, repeat silently: I love being ME
6. Write an agenda, your homework, a poem, shopping list, presents to buy, things to do and write at the top: I love being ME
7. Ring up a friend & invite them over, chat to a neighbour, wave to kids you don’t know and whisper to yourself: I love being ME
8. Cook up a starter, main meal, decorate a biscuit or just put a frozen meal in the oven and say: I love being ME
9. Stay up late or go to bed early, read a book or watch TV and lastly don’t forget to say: I love being ME
10. Repeat the next morning from number 1 and add all the things that you have done that make you NUMBER ONE

Additional helpful positive affirmations:

• ‘I am here and therefore I am’
• ‘I love because I am love’
• ‘I will survive’
• ‘I have to be me’ …and so on and so forth

The important thing is to make the affirmation positively reinforcing and that you say it a lot, once or twice half-heartedly will not make the changes possible.  Say it loud and proud and you will see the changes in your sense of worth in the next few days!

How to turn your dreams into reality? Dream On! Literally!

Dreams begin with an inspired thought and just like a breeze the thought wafts and you feel a sense of being onto something. It makes you feel happy just having that thought and you roll it round and round looking at the thought at different angles and revelling in the fact that maybe no one else has thought of what you are thinking about.

To pursue the dream requires more inspired thoughts.  This process may take a very short time or very long time depending on how we perceive and view the thoughts and how important they are to us and how much we believe in our intuitions, ability to see things through. At this stage it is vitally important to suspend total reality and start investigating all possibilities. When the dream has been crystallised as worth pursuing it turns into a seed.  The seed of your dream now needs to be acknowledged, taken seriously and be placed in a fertile ground that allows it to grow.  The ground will be the make or break of the dream.  The soil needs to be fertilised in order for survival to occur.

How does that soil get fertilised? Fertilised ground is akin to clearing your own internal catalogue of rubbish: good thoughts not negative ones, letting go of whether it is right or wrong or who believes you or doesn’t and whether the money is there or not, etc.  It’s just a dream after all and basically we are trying to give it a chance and those who dare get planting.  From the point of planting the main thing that is needed is your continuous belief in your dream.

At this stage information gathering and checking all the ways in which it could work is like pure water and nutritious food.  Your loving attention, sense of awe and inspiration is as the sun and through that process you will gradually see that roots grow and a new shoot appears.  The new shoot means that some progress has been made but still the fruit of your labours is not evident.  The tender shoot needs to be protected from many dangers and the biggest danger is mainly you.  To avoid the danger you need to know that the time and effort you are putting into your dream will yield fruit.

You also need to see the end in the beginning and not allow the winds of your distractions make the shoot fall off.  Each day fresh problems occur, infestation, weather conditions, parasites can harm the newly grown shoots of your labour and so focussed attention is need, perseverance, courage, more effort, water, more loving care, inspiration and day after day, week after week, month after month you will forge the dream forward until your dream in fully rooted in reality and toil and labour have resulted in a tree of wondrous fruit…

So how do we turn dreams into reality? Don’t let your dreams be cast out in the wind, believe in their nature, turn your attention to them, you never know where they will lead you to.  Who knows, maybe one day you will have a beautiful oak tree right there in your own back yard.  Be true to yourself, remain in awe and wonder…dream on!

This blog post is intended to help awaken your possible UNAWAREness of how your thoughts, reactions, actions can affect or dis-affect your life with potentially damaging consequences. Things such as pursuance of endless dead ends, meaningless days, unfulfilling relationships and the pit of the stomach feeling to name a few…

Simple Truth: No one has the amazing power to make you feel anything – be it misery, sadness, annoyance, anger or even happiness, joy, gratitude etc., except U, of course.  Simple yet most of us don’t get it because we are UNAWARE of why we react and how good it is to STOP.

Let’s just take a look at how we fail to understand that simple truth.

You know that you are UNAWARE if you are living out your life with sentences that start with:

‘I should, I must, I ought to or, I don’t have to, don’t want to and can run away from’ …and are having one or more of the following experiences on a regular basis:

1. Rows with loved ones and strangers alike
2. Criticising others (only seeing faults)
3. Angry outbursts even over little issues
4. Jealousy attacks
5. Blaming others and never yourself
6. Unable to find a sense of peace within
7. Cry and feel it will never stop
8. Feel numb and indifferent with the people around you
9. A gnawing feeling that life has passed you by
10. A sense of unease, restlessness
11. Don’t know how you feel in any given situation

Experiencing UNAWARE means that we give away our power, our love, our energy, our purpose, our strength, our courage, our gifts to others. The only antidote is to become AWARE. This type of UNAWARE behaviour means that our reactions have a separate root cause which usually cannot be accessed simply by asking the person WHY.  Essentially you are not in control and have allowed unhappy past experiences to dictate how the future has to be.

Why bother to become AWARE?

Well simply put the consequences of carrying on in the same vein are dire to you mainly because the sense of well-being can never occur until what is hidden becomes revealed and no longer saps you.  Here are some examples:

Example 1: Projecting your pain onto others might make others suffer for a little while but you will suffer MORE by being UNAWARE of what to pursue in your life and making your destiny dependent on having people to inflict pain on,

Example 2: denying yourself your dreams, aspirations etc., might make others have a more comfortable life as you cater to their never ending needs but end up paralysing their ability to develop courage to do more and sap up the energy you need to have a more AWARE life.

Example 3: Blaming everyone else for how life has turned out for you might feel like a relief now but doesn’t change the facts that Nothing Can Move On Without YOUR energy!

So there we have it, now that you know all the above there are no excuses, nowhere to hide!  If you identify with the above, you have been caught out!  Don’t forget the ones on the receiving end can see if even if you can’t! Doing something, anything other than living on an auto-pilot of negativity is vital to your being here amongst us on this planet and of course beyond if you can connect to that but more vitally it is about your everyday YOUness.  Don’t waste it!

To find out more on how to identify your UNAWARE ways and live an AWARE life, contact Dr Caroline, today!

Dr Caroline near her Robina Office...

A Spiritual Life Coach helps a person to experience a holistic approach to their life, by combining the elements of mind, body and soul to achieve a true sense of inner happiness, purpose and connection with themselves. Problems usually stem from a lack of alignment resulting in low physical, mental and emotional health.

Spiritual Life Coaching combines both psychotherapy/ cognitive-behavioural therapy, spiritual insight and life coaching techniques to help a person to gain insight and empowerment into the issues and dilemmas facing their lives.  The Awareness Programme devised by Dr Caroline Aazami helps individuals to apply skills and strategies available to them to find solutions to their problems and to cast out unhealthy, unhappy patterns of thought and behaviour that has led to the problems.  In essence the coaching will replace self-doubt with self-expression, negative thoughts with positive affirmations,  lethargy with the pursuit of true life passions related to career, health,  spiritual and psychological well-being.

Specifically you will find relief in many challenging life situations such as grief and loss, financial worries,  psychological ill-health,  family and relationship conflicts, etc.

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“A fully expressed life is what I believe brings about true joy and happiness.”

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About Dr. Caroline Aazami 

Dr Aazami obtained a Doctorate in Psychology from the University of Nottingham, UK. Her passion for Psychology led her to pursue various types of research in the area of education, such as problem solving, moral dilemmas and ethical decision making.   Her own spiritual journey has led her to embrace the truth that she is here for a specific purpose and all her training and experiences have brought her to this point.

She is now a highly sought after Spiritual Life Coach on the Gold Coast in Australia.