This episode focuses on the importance of cultivating a healthy and balanced news routine to support our mental well-being.

Klaudia shares her personal journey with news consumption, highlighting the emotional toll that mainstream media can often take. She presents five practical tips for achieving a more positive relationship with news.

Hello happiness seekers. My name is Klaudia.

Welcome to the happiness Challenge, the podcast where I test drive the best happiness hacks that science has on offer so that we can create more happiness in our lives. This month, the happiness challenge was all about the importance of positive news and their impact on our mental health.

If you haven't yet, tune in to episode 127 where I interviewed my fantastic guest Amy Davoren-Rose, creative director from Fix the News, and in our discussion we shared uplifting stories from around the globe. We discussed the science behind the benefits of positive news and also offered some practical tips on how to cultivate a more optimistic mindset.

In the episode 128, part two, I dove deeper into incredible insights from science on how news shape our mindset and explored six key factors we need to consider when doing a news consumption audit, which I very much encourage you to do. And in this final part three, I share my reflections when it comes to healthy and balanced news routine.

Join me so personally, my relationship with news has been always very complicated because I often felt that I really want to stay involved, I really want to stay informed. But then ultimately I felt drained, anxious and helpless after watching, listening or reading mainstream news.

So I therefore went through different phases in life of being hyper vigilant and reading every news headline that is there on certain topics. As if, okay, if I consume every news headlines, things will get easier.

Or I was completely ditching the news completely, not engaging in news, and relying on other people to tell me what's happening in the world. And both approaches were far from ideal.

But ultimately I got to understand that since news is everywhere and it has a significant impact on our mental health, we really need to be spending more time on seeking more balanced approach towards that news consumption. So here are my five top tips that helped me to move towards more balanced approach when it comes to news consumption.

Number one is about critically evaluating news, especially when we are faced with negative, extreme headlines. So very much coming from that sense of curiosity of what does that mean? Exactly what other sources are saying about that incident?

What solutions or steps have been undertaken to tackle this issue so far?

I think we really need to move away from that assumption, that new cisrality, because ultimately the news story, the headlines, the way they are portrayed, very much differ and we need to just be able to pause for a moment and critically evaluate what is being communicated to us. Tip number two is about swapping and mixing it up when it comes to our usual news sources.

So this is especially important when it comes to news on social media.

I think by now we all know that the current algorithms show us what they think we are going to like and what's going to give them the best return on adverse endorse content. So we have to make a very proactive effort to diversify what we see. And in order to do that, we have to look at lots of different news sources.

Three, I think it's really important that we give ourselves permission to take break from news, especially when we see that it's taking its toll on our mental health. So for me, when I'm on holiday, I'm definitely on digital detox.

I'm trying not to do any scrolling, reading any articles because I really know that I need that time. And again, it's important to remember that that time that we not spending on social media or news consumption can be spent on other activities.

So in one study, researchers showed that by spending less time on Facebook, participants increased the frequency of jogging and cycling and even decreased the number of daily cigarettes they smoked. So again, let's give ourselves permission to switch off for some time from news.

Number four, for me personally is about having strategies to ground ourselves after seeing distressing news. I personally often like to discuss the headlines with my husband to process the distressing information.

And this month I also tried hard to incorporate the tip given by my guest Amy from Fix the news about finding solution focused approaches to the distressing news stories.

I think that is so important to understand that those approaches exist, they not being feature in mainstream headlines, but we can find that information out. And number five, final tip, it's about incorporating hopeful headlines so the positive news into our news consumption.

Fix the news is just one example of lots of fantastic publications that report on progress and innovation that is happening in the world at the global scale.

Again, I think the biggest misconception we have that we think that positive news are those local good hearted stories, but actually no, they are a stories of real progress and innovation that is happening at the global scale, but because they positive, they do not make the traditional mainstream news.

And this type of slow journalism is very much giving us different perspectives and it allows us to have more holistic views of what is happening in the world. So thank you so much for listening.

For a summary of this month's happiness challenge, visit my website, thehappinesschallenge dot co dot UK and subscribe to my LinkedIn newsletter. I very much as always dare you to be happy.

And I also dare you to visit fix the news website and read the latest articles on what's working in the world. As always, I see you next month thank you. Bye.