Life HD™
There’s been a lot of hype recently by various different companies promoting the next level of television experience, namely, HD TV or High Definition Television.
When I first head about HD TV I thought it was a whole load of hoo har. What difference could it really make to my viewing experience? Anyway, I liked the way my TV showed me pictures. They were clear, more than watchable and pretty damn good quality. What possible benefit could this new fangled idea of HD TV ever have for me?
I think there was possibly a point in thinking this that I caught myself dismissing something before I’d even given it chance, but then I thought “Well, I already know I’m right so there”.
Within the next few months I decided to buy a new TV since the one I had was just a small portable thing and I wanted something with a bit more kazzaz. While I was searching around I noticed that part of my criteria was that the TV be “HD Ready”. I justified this to myself by saying “Well, it wont make any difference to my life but if they switch everything over to HD I’d rather be ready. Plus it sounds good”.
Now while the TV I’d got was “HD ready”, I wasn’t actually able to get any HD channels and so the picture I got was just the same as it had always been, and I liked it. I remember looking at it one day thinking “yeah, this is how i like it. It’s perfectly fine as it is”.
A few weeks later I moved into a new house with some of my friends and we decided that digital TV was a must. We tried out one company offering satellite TV for a while and then decided to switch to another cable TV provider due to more choice and better rates. When we made the purchase we were given the option to upgrade for a small fee to the “HD Package”. My friends thought this would be great and considering it didn’t cost much more, we decided to give it a shot.
This was the point at which something inside me changed because when you allow yourself to have a new experience, even one that “isn’t going to be any different” or “wont work because it’s all just BS” then something shifts and you create inside yourself an ability to give stuff a go and see how it works for you.
The first thing we watched on our new HD Package was a rugby match and this is when all of my old ideas went straight out of the window. As the players walked onto the pitch every colour of every shirt was more vivid than I’d ever seen before. The skin on each players face was so detailed that I could see every bump and blemish, each hair on their face and every thread of cotton hanging from their shirts.
As the camera zoomed out and the grass came into view, each and every blade could be seen perfectly as an individual blade of grass. Before, grass was just grass and it was a large thing that was green, but now, I could see each drop of water as perfect as crystal.
While the game progressed there were times where I’d forget about the quality of each individual part of what I was looking at, but as i saw the overall picture, I knew it was brighter and more powerful that it had ever been before and this got me thinking about the way in which I operate my own life.
There have been times in my life, where things were just so. When everything I knew and experienced was as good as it was going to get and things were what they were. The thing about that is that I didn’t mind. I was quite happy bumbling along in my own world where stuff was as stuff is and that was it. It wasn’t until I began to look at the smaller details and notice that they were out of focus, not as sharp and bright as I would have like them to be, that I began to make new decisions.
The decision I made was to take my life to the next stage. Life HD™.
An experiment:
- Think about some small detail in your life. Perhaps it’s the first thing you think when you wake up in the morning, perhaps it’s the way you say hello to your partner after a long day at the office or perhaps something else in your life that’s relatively small in scope.
- Ask yourself the question: If the way I currently do this or experience this is less than High Definition, what would make it so it was the most clear, wonderful, inspiring thing that I did that day.
- Take what it is you do and decide to make it the most important thing for today and make a decision to do it in the most wonderful way you can imagine.
Perhaps when you wake up in the morning you usually say to yourself “oh shit, another day at the office” and then you make a crappy old dark picture of what it’s going to be like when you get in. When you decide to make this experience more HD, take what it is you say and change the tone, change the pitch and say something new to yourself like “wow, another fantastic morning. I wonder how many new experiences I’m going to have today” and then make a picture in your head of you having a fantastic day.
When you make the small things in life more fun and enjoyable so that each and every detail is the best it can be in that moment, and you do it in a way that’s fun and enjoyable for you, soon enough the big picture will begin to change and you’ll begin to experience life in HD.
Love, Jamie
