It is ideal if you can put the TV in a NON-PRIMARY room (we have ours upstairs in a spare bedroom). For awhile I had the TV downstairs in the living room, and it was just magically being turned on a decent amount. I put it back in the spare bedroom and now can’t remember the last time I watched it or wanted to. It’s the old maxim: OUT OF SIGHT OUT OF MIND! But, if you can’t move the TV for whatever reasons or don’t have a spare room, GET A CABINET or cover it with something to get it out of sight. BOTTOM LINE: MAKE SURE YOU’RE IN CONTROL OF THE TV AND NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND.

Other things that go along with that is:

1.) Never watch/listen to commercials (always mute and read your magazine to stop the mind-numbing effect they have on you)

2.) Try to watch your shows online whenever possible to help you eventually switch to getting completely out of your cable tv habit. If a show isn’t online, ask yourself if something that is online might be better (TONS OF GOOD SHOWS/CONTENT ARE ONLINE…i like http://www.c-span.org and http://www.booktv.org). The really big benefit of this is, again with the general theme, YOU ARE IN CONTROL OF WHEN THE SHOW IS ON AND NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND. Once you get accustomed to BEING IN CONTROL OF THE CONTENT you will not settle for anything less!

3.)DO SOMETHING (try cooking dinner “from scratch”, make 3 courses and some desert too, then invite me over). And if you want stimulation while you do something, try LISTENING TO THE RADIO (if your radio stations suck, which they probably do, LISTEN TO INTERNET RADIO STATIONS…the best ones in the world are: http://wruw.org http://wcsb.org http://wksu.org

4.) Go outside and breath fresh air. Nothing gives me a wake up call like just going out the front door. Once I’m out, reality/nature/natural sunlight/fresh air just hits me in the face and says “YOU’RE ALIVE!”.