“Cause Life is So Brief and Time is a Thief”  –  Rod Stewart from the song, “Young Turks”

I had the great fortune of deciding to no longer watch television about two years ago.  I was going through a time in my life where I was taking a very deep look at what it would take for me to go to a higher level both mentally and spiritually.  In the past, I was always the type of person who would like to finish off a long day by watching a couple of hours or so of television.  Sometimes I would watch informative things, sometimes I would watch sitcoms, sometimes sports and sometimes I would just vegetate with some cartoons….they say “The Diamond” is a big kid anyway, right?  Nothing wrong with some cartoons.  To this day, I often get asked to see my ID when I go to a movie theater.  But enough about me.

Here is what I learned when I stopped watching television.  The box we call TV is an absolute thief.  It robs you of your most valuable commodity – time – but it comes wrapped in such a delightful package of convenience with a deceptive notion that we actually need this thing so we can “know what is going on in the world”…

I took the words right out of your mouth, right?  Well, here is the truth ladies and gentlemen, if something is so important for me or you to know about, we will hear the news some other way.  Bottom line.   What inspired me to write this article is that in a rare return to ‘the tube’, I noticed that I spent a day over at my aunt’s house and I was flipping through the channels for a couple of hours.  She has a few hundred channels and I felt like I had too many options.  Literally, there was so much to watch that I couldn’t decide on what channel to actually stay on.  I felt like a kid in a candy store watching one mindless episode of a sitcom and then flipping to a piece of a movie to endless commercials about who knows what.  I realized how quickly the time had passed and how if I had access to this many channels in my own home, I would be back to the same old person watching two or three hours per night (I have only the basic 18 channels or so and I rarely turn the thing on other than to watch a DVD on occasion).

So what has replaced the television?  I’ve devoured twice as many books as I used to read, I began to jog 30 miles per week, put over 50 properties under contract, I started mentoring others in real estate, developed a seminar company, wrote an ebook and began work on a novel, read the entire Bible, completed four classes toward becoming a minister, traveled about 15 times, learned to golf, started journaling my life daily, began writing these articles to you guys every other week and the list goes on and on.  I’ve probably forgotten more than I can remember at this point.  Hey, I only say this not to impress but rather to make you aware of what I’ve been saying all along – time is your biggest friend but it is also your biggest thief.  I close it out by asking you who wants to be a part of the Diamond’s World?  Send me an email and we’ll see what level we can get you started at.  Get at me!