News addiction, unlike most addictions, is one that we think we should have. We think it’s important that we stay on top of the news and that we stay informed on what’s going on in the world. We are taught from a very early age that it’s important and necessary to read the daily news or check in on what’s going on in the world.

Today, with 24-hour news channels and constant news alerts on our phones, that morning newspaper read is not really existing anymore. Now we’re getting our news throughout the day, and it’s 99% not useful, not actionable. We’re not going to do something differently because of that information. Every few years, there might be a crisis, a natural disaster, or an election we need to stay informed on. But most of the time, we are getting alerts in our perfect, pleasant, peaceful day — in our perfect, peaceful, pleasant world — that something horrible is happening somewhere in the world. The most horrible thing that is happening is going to be springing up on our phones and laptops when we are going about our life, having fun.

So we really do need to be mindful of how much we’re consuming, how much we’re letting it interrupt our lives, and how much we are letting it disrupt our emotions and make us miserable. Usually, we’ll find that the news is not really showing us the most important things of the day. And it’s not going to show us a fair picture of what happened in the world. It’s going to show us the most horrific, the most gory, dramatic, and tragic stories of the day. And when that is interrupting us 10 times a day, we are going to feel like our world is at war and is on the brink of collapse, even though everything in our personal lives can feel very pleasant.

It’s really important to recognize that those really big stories, those weather storms, we get news alerts on our phone for that, or we can check it before we’re going somewhere. When it comes to the biggest news stories of the day, we almost always hear about them from a friend or a relative. And so we feel like if we don’t do our job and read every article that comes out every single day, that we are going to be ignorant about what’s going on, and we are going to be prone to danger. But even if it’s a stock market crash, these are usually things where it is the fear and the panic that cause all the trouble, not waiting and letting the market come back up. So even in that situation, it is very beneficial to be patient, to wait and see. We don’t need the news the second something happens. We think we do.

In the old days, we read the paper and learned about yesterday’s news the next day. Now, we live with an expectation of immediacy. The impatience and rushing energy you see in newsrooms has begun to infect our lives as well. We become impatient, feeling the need to rush to make a decision or quickly take a side.

And yet, it is almost always better to sit back, relax, and be patient. To stay calm while everyone else runs around like chickens with their heads cut off. When things finally settle, it becomes much easier to move through the world from a calm center—knowing that everything will be fine, that the news is not reality, and that we are free to turn off our screens.