This is living now.

Have you ever found yourself cursing the waste of time that comes from waiting in a queue? Have you ever found yourself looking for faster and faster ways of getting things done? I have. I used to pride myself in finding the most efficient way of doing things. If I could type an email and answer the phone while the kettle was boiling and the computer was working in the background, I pretty much thought I was being super efficient.

But in being super efficient I would find myself lying in bed at the end of the day asking what happened? Usually it was at the end of the week because the days flew by so fast and were so busy that I hardly noticed the interruptions of sleep.

What happened? How was this day any different than all the others that stretched before it? And in the confusion of speeding through my days and my to-do list I lost track of my thoughts. My mind was constantly racing. Constantly projecting different scenarios and out-comes. Constantly reviewing past events and replaying different ways they could have happened. In short I was either living in the past, with memories of what had happened, or in the future, with plans of what would happen. The present moment for me was just a waiting room in anticipation of future events. A thing to endure in my race to some perceived goal always tomorrow.

This contempt for the present moment lay like a fog over the events that happened in it. Nothing was ever clear or wholly enjoyable in its own right. Everything was just a means to an end. And life had lost its magic.

Do you remember how you felt as a child?

You could play for hours not noticing the time until it was getting dark and your mother was calling you in for supper. When I was young we lived in a village and our house bordered the cane fields that stretched over the hill. Some builders had dumped a pile of stones next to us for a house they were building and I had found an old piece of metal. I remember spending hours on that pile hitting stone after stone off into the cane fields. Being thrilled when I nailed a stone and it flew for miles. Such a small thing, and yet such a profound memory for me.

Why was it such a profound memory? Because at that time I was doing what all children are able to do, I was in the moment. I wasn’t preoccupied with what had happened before nor was I worrying what would happen in the future. I was simply there. But along the lines of living I lost that simplicity. I got caught up in better, faster, harder, quicker, more. I love the line that the media uses for this. Work hard, Play Harder.

Across the world people are awaking to the fact that faster is not always better. Multitasking is not the most efficient way to get things done. The occurrence of depression from work related stress and burnout already costs the UK government 20 million pounds a year. And what do we get for all this better, faster, harder? A fog of doing that obscures the only true experience of being.

How do we recapture the experience of being? What can we do to get it? And the truth is you can’t do anything. You can only be by allowing yourself to be in the moment. This means to give your whole attention to the specific thing that you are engaged with at all times.
The easiest way to focus on the present moment and not get caught up with past ideas of what should happen or future imaginings of where it could lead is to practice acceptance of what is. There is a great story that illustrates this type of mindset.

A wise man won a sports car in a competition. When his friends heard they all proclaimed how lucky he was. “Isn’t this great!”. To which he would reply, “Maybe.”

He drove his new sports car around enjoying it for a few weeks and then one day a reckless driver jumped a red light and smashed into him. Waking up in hospital the wise man found all his friends surrounding him all lamenting his fate. “Your new car is totaled and you’re lying in hospital with a broken leg. What a horrible thing to happen.” To which he again replied, “Maybe.”
That night as he was in hospital a torrential storm hit and his house was crushed under a landslide. When his friends found out they all marveled at his luck. “Aren’t you lucky that you were in hospital that night otherwise you would have been killed in the landslide?” To which again the wise man replied, “Maybe.”

So to recapture the simple joy of being; be present, release judgment and slow down. This is living now.

Happy Makers

A Lion from the lion park up maritzburg way wanted some fresh sea air and so trekked all the way down N3 to Crusaders. He forgot to pack any pad-kos and so was a little bit peckish, felt like a bite to eat and walked through the door right now. What would we do? Most likely we’d all move, very quickly, to the other end of the room holding chairs in front of us to keep from being eaten. Its not a hard situation to mentally picture. We don’t need to bring a lion in here to see what would happen because we are able to simulate our reaction to the situation. This ability to imagine simulations is one of the traits that sets us apart from all other animals. We’re gifted with an experience simulator called the pre-frontal cortex.

This prefrontal cortex also allows us to predict if certain situations will make us happier than others. For example which would you prefer? To win the lottery? Or to become paraplegic? It might seem like a silly question because you will say that winning the lottery will make you happier than becoming paraplegic. But there is actually data on the two groups of people. And much to the surprise of everyone, one year after the event lottery winners and paraplegics are both equally happy with their lives.

How can this be? The reason why this is, is that we are able to automatically simulate happiness with our situation. Not given a choice we are automatically happier with what we’ve got. You might not believe me and so I’d like to share and experiment that was carried out by researchers at Harvard called the Free Choice Paradigm. Volunteer subjects were brought into a room and asked to rank 6 art prints from most liked to least liked.

Which they did. They were then told that, as luck would have it the researchers had some extra prints of number three and four and as a reward they could choose a print to take with them. Naturally almost every one took their number 3. Two weeks passed and the volunteers were called back and asked again to rank the same art prints. Watch as happiness is synthesized. Number 3 moves up and 4 moves down the list. What they are saying is the one I’ve got is great the one I left behind’s horrible.

Your response is yeah right. They’re just telling themselves that they’re happy with what they’ve got. Let me show you now the second half of that experiment. The researchers then took their prints to hospitalized patients with anterograde amnesia. Basically these people could remember their childhood but could not form new memories. The prints were put in front of the patients and they were asked to rank them from most liked to least liked. And then again as before the researchers told the patients that they had extra prints of number 3 and 4 back at the office and they could choose which one would be mailed to them. As with the normal control group all the patients chose number 3. The researchers said great, we’ll send it to you in the post, gathered up all their things and waited outside for half an hour.
At the ping of the egg timer they walked back in and said hey remember us we were just here? And the patients would apologize profusely. I’m so sorry I don’t know who you are. I’ve got this memory problem. And the researchers would say not a problem we just want you to look at a few art prints. But firstly can you tell us which one is yours? The patients would look at the prints.
The normal control group responded with 90% accuracy which one they owned. The amnesiacs guessed. As a result their strike rate was 1 in 6 or about 15% chance of getting it right.

Then without being told which one was theirs they were again asked to rank the prints from most liked to least liked. And watch again as happiness is synthesized. Again they ranked the one they owned higher the second time around than one they didn’t own. They automatically changed their affective reaction to the prints without conscious knowledge. They’re not saying they liked it cos they were trying to make themselves feel better. They genuinely liked the one that they owned more without knowing that they owned it. They automatically were happier with their choice.

I recently lost my phone. When I went to get a new one I looked at all the different models and choices of contracts. And there are hundreds. I agonized over making the right decision. Would I need an mp3 player, would I need a 5 mega pixel vga camera? Would I need a phone that did everything including sending emails, doubling as a data projector and an espresso maker?

Finally I decided on a straight forward phone.
I chose a phone that was a phone. I remember saying to my friend Bryan who was with me when I was going through my ring tones trying to decide on the right one.

Why don’t they just have a simple ringing sound? Why can’t I get a phone that sounds like a phone when it rings. I don’t want the Ride of the Valkyries playing when someone calls me I’m not that much of a Wagner fan.
But ringtones aside, I’m very happy with my new phone. It looks nice, it sounds nice, it doesn’t have all the sliding, popping up, whizzing contraptions that can break and malfunction that the other phone that I didn’t choose had. And I know that my happiness with my phone is genuine because I know that my prefrontal cortex is able to synthesize my happiness with the choice that I make.

And so it boils down to the fact that you will be happy with the choice that you make because being human means that you are able to synthesize your own happiness.

Choose Life

Choose Life.

A line from the movie Trainspotting. The movie dealt with the horrors of heroin addiction and the catch line of the main characters monologue was choose life. It’s obvious to see an addiction such as heroin abuse. There are needle marks on their body, loss of weight, sallow skin, mood swings and risk of disease.

This is an obvious addiction to see and I am not here to talk about this addiction. What I am here to talk about is another addiction. An addiction that I too am fighting. An addiction that is socially acceptable to the point that “Choosing life” is a deviation from the norm. That addiction is that of eating meat.

Already I’m aware that there are a few people who on hearing that line have ceased to listen having been bombarded over and over again by Patrick Holford Bible Bashing Vegetarians who wear Ché Guevara t-shirts and tie their dreadlocks back with hemp rope while signing Kumbaya.

I’m not going to tell you not to eat meat. What I am going to tell you is some of the facts on eating meat. Facts that went toward changing my mind. Facts that I hope will make you investigate this idea of not eating meat further.

From a humanitarian point of view, eating meat is the height of selfishness. This year alone 23 million people will die of malnutrition. One child every 2.3 seconds. Think about that. By the end of my speech 130 children would have died. How does this correlate to eating meat? If the US alone reduced its meat consumption by 10 % 100 million people could be fed off the land freed from cattle farming. One acre of land can be used to produce 129 kg of edible beef or 18 000 kg of potatoes to feed the hungry.

Environmentally, we are all aware of the drastic changes attributed to global warming. As we speak the south east of Britain, China, Thailand and the Philippines are all experiencing floods. Australia and Central Africa are having their worst drought in 60 years while the whole of the Gulf of America is trying to recover from their 3rd category 4 hurricane. A recent German study on the effects of farming on the environment showed that an individual diet with meat is responsible for producing in a year as much greenhouse gas as driving 4758 km. That’s from here to Cape Town and back, twice. Where as an organic vegan diet, 281 km. Here to the Berg. This doesn’t include the 260 million acres of forest land that has been cleared to make way for crops to feed the meat industry attributing to the loss of 1 000 species a year. Meat farming is widely accepted as the second largest contributor to greenhouse gasses after industry with cars a distant third.

In addition meat eating is devouring our oil reserves. It takes 78 calories of fossil fuel to produce 1 calorie of beef as opposed to 2 calories of fuel for every calorie of soybean for example. Doing the math if every human ate a meat centered diet, the worlds known oil reserves would last 13 years. While if we stopped eating meat altogether we’d be able to extend our reserves by 260 years.

What about health? A 100g serving of beef has 43% of its calorie count as protein but 57% as saturated fats while broccoli has 50% of its calorie count as protein, more than the beef, and the rest as carbohydrates and fiber.
As for milk it is wondrous for a calf. Milk is designed to assist a calf to double their weight in 47 days and reach 130 kg by its first birthday. As a result it is more than 50% fat and has 3 times as much protein as human breast milk. We have long been fed the lie that you need milk to grow strong bones. The opposite is actually true. The high protein content of milk results in raising the ph level of your blood. To counteract this excessive acidity the body leeches calcium from the bones to neutralize the blood actually causing long term calcium deficiency.
Statistically you’re 3.8 times more likely to develop breast cancer as opposed to your vegetarian neighbor, 3.6 times for prostate cancer. Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in the western world killing 1 person every 45 seconds. The average meat eaters risk of death from a heart attack, 50%. The average vegetarian, 15%.

Lastly I want to look at the ethical reasons. Forget about religion, philosophy, karma, dharma and dogma and let’s just look at compassion. In the US alone 660 000 animals are killed for meat every hour. An average person will eat in their lifetime 11 cows, 3 sheep, 23 pigs and 1 100
chickens.
Mahatma Gandhi said “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be measured by the way in which its animals are treated.”

As I said I’m not going to tell you not to eat meat. I’m going to ask if you still want to?

Yes, and...

I’m not too sure if you know this but today is my birthday. Don’t you have a birthday present to give me?Aw thank you, wow! Let’s see what’s inside… graaarrr rraaarrrr DOWN! DOWN BOY! NO!That’s so cool. It’s what I’ve always wanted. What do you call it? Aw! Excellent. A ….. that’s just going to complete my collection. Thank you!

What we just did there was an improvisation exercise that helps an actor develop their improv technique. Improv is a genre of performance where the story line and development of the plot is left solely to the actors on stage and is performed totally off the cuff. Think of Theatre sports and “Who’s Line is it Anyway.”

The beauty of improv is that there are no rules, which means that you can make anything up. This means that the outcome of any scene is completely unpredictable. And the joy of the audience is in the constantly shifting perception of what is happening.

When the thing popped out of the box, who saw a 12 legged monster?Who saw a saber-toothed bunny rabbit? Who saw the alien from… Alien? And then when I pushed it back down saying DOWN BOY! How did your imagining of that creature change? And finally when the toastmaster named it, how did your perception alter even more? The beauty of that scene was the evolution of what you thought was happening.

Now I said previously that there were no rules with improv. That was a little bit of a lie. There is one rule. Although since actors tend to be slightly anarchistic in nature it’s touted as more of a guideline. That rule, guideline, is you cannot refuse what’s given to you. You cannot say “No but...” you can only say “Yes and...” and where this leads you is accepting what’s given to you and building on it.

Earlier on our volunteer gave me a present. By the way that he held his hands, the way he presented it, it looked like a box. He could have given me a tube, he could have given me a ball, he could have given me a basket. But no he gave me a box. And so I accepted the box. I said yes by taking it, and… when I opened it the story developed. Then when I turned to him and asked him to name it, he said yes, there is something there, and… I’m going to give you its name. Through these “yes ands” our picture of what was happening evolved. My reaction to what was inside the box dictated what you saw, as well as what he called it. He didn’t know he’d have to name it. I told him to mime giving me a biggish present. That’s all I told him. I said nothing about what was inside and nothing about my reaction to it. His naming it then changed how we all saw it because I guarantee you, each of our pictures was different.Now through all of this neither of us said “No but”. That way we built on the beauty of the creation.

When you are doing this exercise with a group of performers inevitably someone knows, like they know like they know, that they are the best, funniest scriptwriter in the room. They think “I’m a funny guy. So I should be in charge.” And they try to control the process.

For example “I’m sorry to see you limping, what happened?”(response)“No, no, no. You’re supposed to say, you’re supposed to say, now listen to me now. You’re supposed to say: A dog bit my leg. That way I can say: But I thought you said you dog doesn't bite? And then you can say: I did, it was not my dog. And then it will be funny!” But it’s not because it’s, contrived. We've all heard that joke before. However she didn't say that. She said to me… (her line) How wonderful is this now? Now we’re sitting on a story. Where did this happen? Why did this happen? What will happen when we’re together and it happens again?

That’s where the magic lies. The beauty of the uncertainty of not knowing where it’s going to go. Her giving me that small lead and together us saying “Yes and” building a narrative more interesting, more powerful than either of us could do by ourselves.

By nature parts of this speech has to be slightly improvised. I had no clue what she was going to tell me. Not the foggiest what she was going to throw my way.
But isn't that exactly what we experience all the time? We’re given something, a situation, a reaction from someone, we can’t turn around and say “I’m sorry, I don’t like this line. Take it back. Give me a new one.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t like this situation. Take it back. Give me a new one.”
“I’m sorry; I don’t like this life…”

We have to respond to what we’re given. We have to make the best of the gift of the situation we’re in. We have to say: “Yes and…”
Yes! I accept it. And! How can I change it?
Yes! I accept it. And how can I make it better?
Yes! I accept it. And how can WE make this work?!
There’re no “buts…” You can’t give back a situation once it’s given to you. You can’t say I don’t want it scripted this way. I want it scripted that way. Make it funny that way! Uh-uh.“Yes and…”

So the next time that you’re faced with a situation that you find impossible, that you find intolerable, that you find is eating away at the very core of your soul. Don’t go “No but this is not me. This is not who I want to be! This is not my life!!!”…. Yes and.

Addicted to Emotion

I want you to close your eyes and picture. You’re sitting behind the wheel of your car. Carefully driving along the highway. You’re doing about 120.

Its fast but you’re comfortable. The radio is softly playing a tune you like. The car is smoothly responsive. Everything is absolutely fine.
Suddenly out of nowhere this inconsiderate jerk flies up your tail and sits behind you flashing his lights. He’s so close you can see the veins standing out on his neck as you lip read the curses he is hurling at you. You know if you just had to touch the breaks you would both be dead. Why is he being so inconsiderate? So impatient. Such an...

Who got angry there? I got a bit angry. In fact my anger was tinged with uncertainty having to try and provoke you like that. So who did get angry? Good. My opening achieved its goals. The goal was to get you to feel that anger. I wanted you to be aware of the emotion that you just felt. Now I want you to think. What did you just feel? Yes sure we call it anger. We label it with a word but what intrinsically was happening inside of you that caused you to have a feeling that we associate with the word anger?

What was happening inside of you was that your brain interpreted an outside stimulus, it made a value judgment of that stimulus according to past preconceptions and then it reacted to that judgment. The precepts that you hold are those that you label “What best serves me.” In receiving any information you immediately judge if it serves you or not. According to the answers given in that evaluation your brain reacts by inducing an emotion in you.

This emotion aids you in deciding how to physically react to the external stimulus. What I was doing in my opening was making sounds. Sounds which we have accepted as associations with concepts. We all agree that the sound “agree” means to agree. Do you agree?
So in no way could my opening be seen as placing you in any physical danger. Why then did you brain react with the survival instinct of the production of anger? The production of a chemical that floods the entire system and prepares one to react to the physical effect that is causing the emotion.
What I want to look at is the actual chemical process that has caused you to feel what you felt.

Your brain made an evaluation which set off the production of the relevant chemical compound to induce the necessary emotion. This then is flooded through your entire system via your nerves and synovial fluid. It reaches every cell in your body and docks on a receptor site of that cell. The cell absorbs the chemical and reacts to it.
In the example of anger. The anger chemical is released throughout the entire body. This then triggers the adrenal glands to produce excessive amounts of adrenaline which causes the muscles to tighten in anticipation of the fight or flight response and all non essential functions like digestion to stop in order to direct all energy to the muscle system.

What does this mean to us? When a cell divides, in the production of new cells, if the parent cell was constantly exposed to a specific type of chemical it will produce more receptor sites for that chemical when it divides. Hence the new daughter cell would have more receptor sites for anger, in our example, than the previous generation of parent cells. Unfortunately there is limited space on the outside wall of a cell and so producing more “anger” receptor sites means the loss of other receptors for other chemicals, nutrients and waste disposal. Elastin, which keeps the skin supple, is a protein. When you cannot absorb as much elastin as before, because of reducti

on in receptor sites for elastin, your skin ages.

This leads us to an interesting outcome. Any organic system that is put under repeated effects adapts to compensate for those effects. Thus even a cell can build up a tolerance toward a specific chemical, which means that to get the same effect as before the cell will need more of the chemical. As in our example, if you are angry often your cells develop a tolerance for the anger chemical and so more of it has to be produced to get the same result. This leads to more receptor sites which raises the tolerance levels, which leads to more receptor sites. And the circle is vicious and complete.

Any addiction to a chemical leads to dependency on that chemical to experience the similar state. This dependency changes and impinges on the body on a cellular level. So what do we do? Do we live our lives as emotionless automatons? Not likely. One way to avoid over dependence on a chemical rush is to learn to become detached from results. This does not mean lack of preference for a specific outcome it simply means calm and rational acceptance of whatever circumstance has resulted.

So politely change lanes. Allow that driver to disappear into the distance. Roll down the window. Feel the wind in your hair. Turn the radio slightly up. And breathe.