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March 2014

Post image for The First World’s biggest addiction

My people have a ritual, and in fact I performed this ritual as I sat down to write what you’re reading.

It goes like this: I take a spoonful of special seeds and grind them down into a powder. I run hot water through the powder, and collect the dark liquid that seeps out. I take the cup of hot liquid and bring it to my desk because I believe drinking it will make for a better working experience.

Coming to the desk with this liquid is a tradition for millions of us because getting down to work first thing in the morning is traditionally a less-than-comfortable moment. We welcome anything that seems to make it more comfortable.

This liquid does that. As I drink it, I can feel it has immediate effects on my experience. I kind of feel like dancing, but instead of dancing, I type. I always look forward to the next time I have a chance to do it, sometimes even before I’m done. I don’t do it too often because I know that by the third time in a day, the ritual makes me tired and cranky.

I’ve made the ingestion of this substance an ordinary part of my day, and in fact I own specialized equipment for preparing it: one that grinds the beans into a powder for me, and another machine that makes the powder into the drinkable liquid. Mine is a fairly fancy one that makes a super-concentrated form of the liquid. If you don’t have one (or even if you do) there are also stores whose sole purpose is to have professionals make this liquid for you.

Interestingly, these seeds don’t grow within two thousand miles of me. But I have steady supply through a convoluted channel of farmers, marketers and middlemen. We call the seeds “beans” even though they are actually the pits of a tropical berry, which most of us have never seen.

The bean-liquid industry is worth 100 billion dollars worldwide, but there is another mind-altering liquid whose sales are expected to exceed 1 trillion dollars this year. It’s prepared differently, through fermenting plant materials. We have tried fermenting almost everything to make this stuff, and so there are all different types.

Its effects on your consciousness are a lot more dramatic. It gives you a certain confidence and sense of freedom. Its side-effects are quite reliably awful though. It makes you more careless and less intelligent. If you drink a lot of it (and it is common to drink this amount on purpose) it will make you nauseous, irresponsible and difficult to be around. Still, it is almost as popular as food.  Read More

Post image for A tale of two species

A man sits on a park bench up on a slope, and looks down to the city skyline. A tiny blue bird lands next to him.

“Beautiful day,” the man says. “Much nicer than the weekend.”

After a moment, the bird says, “It is beautiful.”

They sit and watch the city for a while.

Finally the man turns to the bird: “So, how do you think your species will fare over the next fifty years?”

“That depends,” the bird says.

“On what?”

“What’s a ‘Next fifty years?’ ”

 

***

 

One day about a week later the man returns to the bench. After a few minutes, the bird lands next to him again.

“It is beautiful,” the bird says.

“Not so much today. I have big problems.”

The bird looks the man up and down for a moment. “Where are they? You look fine.”

“Well, I guess they’re down there,” he says gesturing to the city.

“That’s great!” the bird says. “Imagine if they were up here too.”

 

***

 

One day a month later, the man comes back to the bench and sits in his usual spot.  Read More

Post image for 15 unexpected side-benefits to living in the present moment

Keeping your attention in the present is the world’s most useful (and underrated) skill. Last week’s post on shutting up your mind throughout the day was a big hit, but it only hinted at the benefits.

The presence habit does much more than make for a peaceful walk to the store. There are actually hundreds of practical applications to practicing everyday mindfulness, even if you have no spiritual aspirations at all.

Here are just a few:

1. Cravings become obvious and easier to overcome.

All you have to do to quit smoking is notice when you’re having a craving, and respond to it by doing anything other than putting a cigarette in your mouth. That is the entirety of the goal, and it’s small enough to be achievable any time. If you lose sight of that, you might misunderstand quitting as some big, abstract goal that can never be done now, such as “Maintain perfect self-control for the rest of your life.” It works the same with anything else.

2. It takes the edge off physical pain.

It’s the last thing you might think, but turning your awareness towards the feeling in your stubbed toe or aching stomach makes it much easier to bear. If you’re turning away from a sensation of pain, it gets mixed with resentment, wishing, blame, and other kinds of mental neediness. This is what makes pain into suffering. When you put your attention right onto the pain, it’s remarkable how it takes the edge off. It’s still pain, but you know you’re handling it.

3. Working out gets a lot easier.

Your workout might sometimes seem like a big, long grueling thing, but that’s only when you’re thinking about it. When you’re actually doing it, you’re never required to do more than a single moment’s action. You never have to actually “do” a whole workout at all, or even a set — and in fact you can’t. At no point do you have to do any more than complete the current rep. Keep your mind there.

4. Big projects stop being scary.

For the same reason that you can’t actually do a whole workout, you can’t actually do a whole project. All projects consist of single actions, most of which are no tougher than dialing a phone, explaining something to someone, Googling someone’s contact info, or sketching up a model. Once you have a plan, it’s easy to make progress if you stay zoomed in on the requirements of the moment, and only zoom out in order to figure out what they are.

5. Food tastes better and you eat less of it.

Try paying full attention to all the sensations of eating a bite of food. Put your fork down between bites to remind you. For most people this is a much more intimate and involved eating experience than they’re used to. It takes longer, it tastes better, and for some reason you become satisfied sooner. It’s also easier to negotiate that moment when you decide to stop eating, because you’re not already leaning mentally towards the next bite.  Read More

Post image for How to stop your mind from talking all the time

A couple of Sundays ago, I left for a friend’s house to watch the Oscars, and decided to keep from talking in my head the whole way there.

I’ve been doing micro-experiments like this a lot recently, committing to total presence for very short stretches of time. Can I, for example, keep my mind on what’s happening the entire time I’m doing the dishes? After each little exercise I can go back to my normal distracted stupor if I want to.

So for the 30 minutes or so between my door and my friend’s, including a stop at the store, I dared myself to keep my attention on the current real-life scene only, and not get drawn into any mental dialogues. Put another way, I decided to put words aside for a little while, and observe everything else.

It worked. The talkative part of my brain mostly shut up, and I discovered for the 600th time that the world is intrinsically beautiful and peaceful whenever I manage to take a break from thinking and talking about it.

Ideally I’d spend my whole life in this state — when you’re just observing things and it really doesn’t matter what happens, because it’s all very curious and beautiful, and if trouble does show up you’re already in the best headspace to deal with it. You get the specific sense that you don’t need to be anywhere else, which makes you realize how rarely you feel like that.

The most prominent quality of this state of presence is the quiet that comes over the outside world. You can still hear the city noise and traffic, but the loudest thing has gone silent, which is your normal mental commentary.

I’ve had this state happen before, but it always seemed to come randomly. After this most recent experience, I realized something that should have been obvious: if you practice doing it, it happens more.  Read More

Post image for An unlikely-sounding trick for shortening everyday bad moods

Like all creatures, the ultimate ambition of a Bad Mood is to live forever. Once it finds its way into a host, it wants to bed down and arrange its surroundings for a long stay. The Mood does this by discouraging initiative of any kind. It applauds couch-sitting and movie-watching and between-meal eating, because this keeps it alive as long as possible.

Skilled Bad Moods also encourage the host to interact badly with others. If it can get the host to scowl and criticize others, those others will react with faces and criticisms of their own, justifying the BM’s existence to its host, thereby giving it a better chance of long-term survival, and giving it a chance to reproduce.

As it gains experience with a particular host, a successful Bad Mood gradually masters the controls. It can keep its administration going for days, or even weeks, once it’s learned which buttons to push. Some especially talented Bad Moods are able to stay in office for the entire lifetime of their host.

The primary strategy of such Moods is to convince the host that it shouldn’t change anything about its environment or its behavior. The Bad Mood feels threatened by changes in physical surroundings, new habits, curiosity, and any effort by the host to move life forward in any way.

Unaware of these covert motives, the host often responds to the Bad Mood by doing the very things that keep it alive.  Read More

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