Episode 18 – 3 things that are wrong with religions today, and how we can solve them (22 min)
No one listened to the Buddha, that is why we have Buddhism.
unknown (maybe Jiddu krishnamurti)
In the modern world, there are three broad kinds of issues we face when it comes to perceiving and talking about religion, god and spirituality.
Join me as I walk you through these three problems and how we can go about solving them. After all, the greatest merit in pointing out problems lies in at least trying to put forward solutions too. That’s exactly what I’m doing in this episode.
The content here is not specific to any single religion, or even any specific train of thought. I claim that it is applicable to all the religions out there.
Is that too much to claim? Only one way to find out. Dig right in.
There is a very powerful quote that you’ll find at multiple pages on this website. Here it is again:
If we ever hope to glimpse the true nature of the divine, we must unlearn everything we have been taught about god.
THE 14TH CENTURY CHRISTIAN MYSTICAL TREATISE, ‘THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING’
A first look at this quote always leads to the interpretation that it is meant for people who are followers of one religion or the other. However, I would like to put forth the idea that this quote is not just true for theists, or believers. This quote is also equally true for the atheists, the agnostics and also for the ones who claim to say that they don’t know enough or even care enough to have a foot in the game.
All the above opinions about religions and God are incomplete.
And more than anything, that is the central theme of this episode of The Unlearning Playground Podcast.
As a follow up to this episode, I’m sure my playlist on understanding God, religion and spirituality would definitely appeal to the keen listener.
Episode 17 – 3 reasons to unlearn victimhood & why it’s important today (12 min)
If you don’t heal what hurt you, you’ll bleed on people who didn’t cut you.
UNKNOWN
It appears to me that in the present day and age, our entire society seems to be rigged with this virus of victimhood. And that is a real problem.
An old quote of mine reads, “More than being identified with the victim in your story, be identified with the observer of it. The latter is closer to the truth.”
In this episode of The Unlearning Playground, I expand on what I mean when I say this.
Like most of my everyday-life advice episodes, this one is also centred around wisdom that’s applicable to and is pragmatically focussed on our day-to-day lives.
And you’ll also see why this is quite a necessary collective message for our times too, because like I just mentioned, if you look closely, we seem to be collectively rigged by this virus of victimhood.
If I was to summarise the need for this episode and the message therein, I would summarise it in this beautiful quote whose author I am unaware of, “If you don’t heal what hurt you, you’ll bleed on people who didn’t cut you.”
Tune in to the episode to know more and know better.
And please don’t forget to like, share and subscribe and leave a rating/review for the podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
If only we could realise how much this statement is true, and how much this applies not just to others but to our own lives as well!
Victimhood, like most things in life really, requires discernment of the highest order.
You see, all of us undergo some sort of trauma in our lives. This could be related to incidents or situations from our childhood, could be triggered by stuff we grew through as teenagers or adults, and so on. The ups and downs of life ensure that all of us see difficult times, that all of us are in situations when we are can’t help but feel like victims.
Now as we grow up and start to call ourselves mature adults, a major chunk of our work lies in outgrowing this trauma and the accompanying victimhood, a process you can very easily call healing.
And I know that some of us don’t like to use terms such as trauma and victimhood for our own life situations, but I still hope you’re getting the gist of what I’m trying to convey. Call it whatever you want, coming out of the identity that such situations build within us is a part of growing-up-101.
And this is especially important advice for our times. If you are at all active on social media these days, you can really see this pattern emerge out of the conversations that we have publicly these days – people on all sides of all possible dichotomies fighting it out to lay their claim on the trophy of who is the biggest victim there ever has been. Whether it is the conservatives or the liberals, the men or the women, the Hindus or the Muslims, the Indians or the Pakistanis, the gays or the straights – everyone has one hand on the “trophy” of victimhood these days.
Surely there could be victims on both sides of all of these dichotomies, of course!
But if the mere fact that you are on one side as opposed to the other is making you feel like a victim, therein lies your work, my fellow human!
Someone very wise once said, “If you don’t heal what hurt you, you’ll bleed on people who didn’t cut you.”
If you let it, these few words have the power to trigger a change in you that your future self will thank you for.
Episode 16 – 2 modern-day examples of The Framing Effect | Being pro-life or pro-choice & The wage gap | Cognitive biases #4 (22 min)
Your task is not to seek love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you’ve built against it.
rumi
The framing effect is one of the easiest cognitive biases to understand and make sense of. Join me, Chetan Narang, in this episode of The Unlearning Playground podcast as I walk through an easy explanation for the same.
In addition to just talking about the framing effect, I talk about how it is very easily spotted in our modern day public discourse atmosphere via two frames or narratives that sway most of us enough to end up hating the other side of the argument.
One of the topics I’ve picked up is a very hot topic these days – the whole pro life vs pro choice debate, the anti abortion vs pro abortion fiasco. I try to walk through this very controversial topic all the while trying to drive home the point oflooking at all sides of the topic rather than simply picking a side and dehumanising the other.
The other topic is another controversial one – Is there a wage gap between men and women in our society? Again, I explain how the framing effect can fog over our understanding of such simple yet very important topics of our times.
When it comes to critical thinking, I think it is almost a necessary part of growing up to realise a few things about thoughts and how they work.
Not everything that pops into your head is true. The journey from a thought being a thought or an opinion to it being the truth is a journey we should take cautiously and with an open mind and an open heart. At the end of the day, it’s true that you don’t know what you don’t know.
Not everyone who disagrees with what you say is a radical, an extremist or an inhuman, wrongly-motivated individual. I’m not saying that that cannot be the case. I’m merely suggesting that that is not always the case. Listen to the other side too – they might be on to something you missed out.
We all think with the frames and narratives in our minds. Some of them are almost biological – such as the frames which help us avoid pain and injury, while some are social and cultural – such as the ones I talk about in the later half of this episode. It behoves anyone who wishes to think critically to become aware of the frames working under the hood in their own minds firstly, unlearn the attachments to their own favourite frames, and then help others do the same.
The key to learning and understanding the truths about Life, the universe and everything really is to remember to always keep an open mind and an open heart to new discoveries and understandings, because if one thing is certain about Life it is this – change is most definitely a constant.
The first step to letting go of our favourite frames is to become aware of them, and also of the movement whereby our own frames limit us at times.
Sometimes, all that’s needed to do so is an external trigger.
Episode 15 – 1 simple & powerful way to understand rebirth, karma & reincarnation – A nondual explanation (18 min)
No man ever steps in the same river twice. For it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.
HERACLITUS
For almost all of us, the way in which we perceive the idea of reincarnation, rebirth and karma – both believers as well as skeptics – is limited.
Join me, Chetan Narang, in this episode of The Unlearning Playground podcast to go into the depth of understanding these heavy terms. We unpack what these terms do not mean, what are the misconceptions surrounding them in our everyday interpretations of them, what we need to let go to actually digest the nectar of what they were always meant for.
I try to provide a nondual explanation of reincarnation, rebirth and karma that is in line with an understanding of Life that does not warrant any belief or faith or bias – all you need to do is to sit with these words in the most honest way possible, especially when they do not resonate with you. That is, after all, when we need honesty the most.
When it comes to reincarnation, like most spiritual matters, ideas on both sides of the coin – believers as well as skeptics – are limited, incomplete and based on misinterpretations.
Understanding these concepts is hard, not because they require us to learn a lot of new things. However, like most real wisdom, this understanding requires us to let go of our sticky ideas about them first. Or, speaking the language of this podcast, it requires us to unlearn our preconceived notions about them.
If what you hear in this episode is something you have never thought about before, make sure you listen to it multiple times, and makes sure you spend time to meditate on it. You know, just like someone who works out a whole lot but doesn’t get the maximum benefits from it because he does not rest/sleep enough, someone who reads or consumes a whole lot of philosophy but doesn’t find the time to meditate on it doesn’t really extract the juice out of it. I can’t stress it enough how important meditation is in really grasping matters such as these.
Life, at its very root, is a continuous process – a flux. It is more a verb than a noun. And this is true not just for Life in general. It it true for every one and every thing. In fact, that is the central message behind the quote I shared at the very start of this page. Allow me to repeat.
No man ever steps in the same river twice. For it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.
Heraclitus
This quote is one of the most potent ones you should definitely cement in your mind. While it is just very useful everyday life advice too, I would especially emphasise on the importance of this quote with respect to the topic at hand here.
To really grasp the understanding of reincarnation, one has to unlearn a whole lot of preconceived ideas. One big one amongst them is the idea of identifying with a fixed, static image – both for oneself and also for others. While it is a very useful image to help us navigate the world, it has its limitations. These limitations, by their very definition, create blindspots that we simply cannot see, unless we are receptive, open and honest enough if and when triggered externally.
Whatever is said or done is interpreted always, and misinterpreted almost always. Well, not almost always, but we do misinterpret others much more than we would want to be misinterpreted ourselves. There is no substitute, after all, to honest conversations.
Chetan narang
So much of our waking lives revolve around words that we barely get time to think about what is the right relationship to have with our own words.
We interpret everything – all the quotes we read, all the videos we watch, all the podcasts we listen, all the conversations we have, all the social media posts we consume – all of it passes through the mental models engrained in our minds.
The path from these interpretations being justinterpretations to them becoming truths should be one we carefully travel, especially when it matters.
It is not these quotes that are limited, it is our interpretations of them that limit the world we see.
Join myself, Chetan Narang, in Episode 14 of The Unlearning Playground Podcast where I talk about how quotes, words and our own interpretations of them can limit us and our understanding of our world.
Yeah, quotes are great. But have you ever caught yourself misinterpreting one to suit your own preconceived story? That is the one of the most potent, generalised use of quotes in my opinion – to take you to the realisation that you (mis)interpret words all the time.
We all have stories in our minds.
Stories about how the people around us are, stories about how people are in general, stories about how certain ‘kind’ of people are, stories about how the world is,and so on and on …
These stories help us in navigating the world, and do a good job about it.
A lot of times however, our own favourite and cherished stories limit us from seeing things as they actually are. Everything that reaches us passes through, and is coloured by these stories. No matter how brilliant the quote I just came across is – if the mental model it triggered in my mind is not based on truth, I would not be able to squeeze the nectar out of it.
This happens all the time around us doesn’t it?
I, for one, have noticed this happen a lot on social media – I would see someone share a quote or a clip of some wise words; and the interpretation of those words that made them worthy of a share for this person was just one that confirmed their already preconceived notions. Someone who is politically left-leaning would be moved by the same quotes that move a politically right-leaning person, and both of them would happily share the same words in their circles; assuming that the words they are sharing mean what they think they mean, and what they have always thought they mean.
All of this, like most truths that matter, is easier to see in others than it is to see in oneself. Because it is not comfortable to see your own thoughts being proven incomplete and biased. It’s like that powerful quote by Robert Pirsig in his beautiful book, Lila. Yes, the man wrote a book other than the Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance. The quote goes like this:
It’s always the other person who’s ‘deluded.’ Or ourselves in the past. Ourselves in the present are never ‘deluded.’ Delusions can be held by whole groups of people, as long as we’re not a part of that group. If we’re a member then the delusion becomes a ‘minority opinion.’
Robert Pirsig, Lila
All said and done, I hope this creates a little curiosity in you to check out your own interpretations (and misinterpretations) of quotes. Catch yourself the next time you hear yourself say things like
“Yeah, this is nothing new.” “Yeah, I know this already.” “Yeah, so what?”
I’m not saying that these responses are always uncalled for. But be aware enough to see when you’re actually understanding something, and when you’re just substituting it by something you already ‘know’.
If whatever you read/hear immediately falls into buckets like
Episode 13 – How important is money? 3 advices to develop a contrarian thinking about money (22 min)
I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.
Jim carrey
Money is not everything but it is something. While most of us agree on this basic statement, we still do not quite understand what is the right relationship to have with money.
How much money is too much money? How much money is enough? What is the right way to think about money?
These are some questions that remain perpetually unanswered for a lot of us, in the busy lives that we lead these days.
With the employee performance appraisal season right around the corner in the Indian economic cycle, money is definitely one of the hot topics flowing around. And there wouldn’t be a shortage of questions and concerns that pop up in our minds about it.
Am I getting paid enough? Should I switch jobs? Will that promotion make it all worth it? Should I look out to get a higher salary or benefits?
All of these are important questions. And there are better answers to them than “It depends.” or “It’s all relative”.
We just need to open our eyes and see things the way they are, not the way we think they are. Let’s spend some time doing just that. Tune right in.
Episode 12 – 4 utilities of true spirituality | The dream of Life | Engineering a utopia (24 min)
This is the secret of dreams—that we do not dream, but rather we are dreamt.
Carl Gustav Jung
A meditative discourse on spirituality, philosophy and its utility in our everyday lives.
I walk through an understanding of the root of eastern philosophy – The Advaita Vedanta or Nonduality – via the metaphor of dreams.
And then I talk about how the realisations that follow this understanding, can actually lead to a better future for ourselves, for humanity and for Life at large.
Did I do any justice to the big claims? Only one way to find out. Tune right in.
Episode 11 – Solving for anxiety | A short, fresh discourse on perfect and good (5 min)
The perfect is the enemy of the good.
Voltaire
Anxiety is a problem that all of us want to solve for, but very few of us actually get to even realise that a subtle change in our perspective can actually work wonders only if we try and sit with it honestly.
Join me in this episode where I aim to offer one such solution. It is a short and fresh perspective about a quote that I find to be amongst the most potent ones ever – “Perfect is the enemy of good.”
I think this episode is far from perfect, but it is good. Practice what you preach, eh?
Episode 10 – Is human memory reliable? Experiencing vs remembering self | Cognitive biases #3 (10 min)
The difference between false memories and true ones is the same as for jewels: It is always the false ones that look the most real, the most brilliant.
Salvador Dalí
Another standalone episode in our series about human cognitive biases and logical fallacies. And I dare say, this is amongst the most “useful” episodes I would do in this series.
If you let it, the concept covered in these ten minutes has the power to change the way you’ve been thinking about your life thus far.
Am I exaggerating? Only one way to find out. Tune right in.
When it comes to any experience, all of us have two selves. One is the self that is having the experience in the moment, which we can call the experiencing self. Another is the self that remembers that experience, which we can call the remembering self.
And believe it or not, they are both different. To confuse one with the other is a very strong cognitive illusion that we labour under in our everyday lives.
What you remember about the past is simply that – what you remember about it. It might not necessarily be true to what you actually experienced then. Especially the adjectives you use to describe the experience now, might not really be accurate and do justice to the actual experience.
In fact, there is a strong recency bias when it comes to our memory of an experience. That is, our memory of an experience is very likely to be overshadowed by how the experience was towards the end, rather than how the experience actually was.
I first came across this idea of the two selves – the remembering self and the experiencing self – in that book by Daniel Kahneman – Thinking, fast and slow.
In one section of this book, he described a certain experiment which brought home this point quite well.
To paraphrase it, the experiment had students dip one hand in uncomfortably cold water for 60 seconds. The students would then remove their hand and be offered a warm dry towel.
After a few minutes, they were asked to dip their other hand in the same uncomfortably cold water for the same 60 seconds but in this trial, after the 60 seconds, instead of taking the hand out, a tap was opened which poured warm water in the tub for the next 30 seconds that raised the temperature of the cold water by a few degrees so that the discomfort was lowered. They were then asked to withdraw their hand and were offered a similar warm dry towel like the first trial.
And then, after a few minutes, they were given a choice to have one of these experiences repeated again for the third trial.
If I remember correctly, close to 80% of the participants chose to repeat the second experience, even though that involved an unnecessary 30 seconds of discomfort. The reasoning is quite simple – the second experience leaves a better, warmer memory than the first and the self that takes the decision for the third trial IS the remembering self and not the experiencing self. And the remembering self thinks what it remembers IS all that ever happened, which could be true in some circumstances but could also be false in others.
Being aware of this can help us identify the faults in the way we act out in the world.
A personal experience comes to my mind which fits the bill here. Allow me to share.
I once worked for a company, and I had a great time working there, especially for let’s say, three quarters of the time. It was only during the last phase that I had a fallout with some of the people there (and there were a whole bunch of reasons for that too – I’m sure I wasn’t my best self too around that time).
But anyway, after I had moved out of that job, whenever someone would ask me about my experience at that company, I would mostly be critical of the culture, the management, etc. It was when I started meditating and paying attention to my own thoughts that I realised that this narrative, like a lot of other narratives in my mind, was coming from a very incomplete standpoint.
Of course my last memories with that company weren’t too rosy, but I sure had a great time for the majority of the time I worked there. And the fact that I was so easily polishing over all this with the comfortable narrative purely based out of my “remembering self” surely did open my eyes to say the least.
Realisations such as this are quite literally the point of this entire series I’m running on this podcast currently. To be aware of your own biases and illusions is important. The point to being more self aware is not to feel low about yourself or even to feel superior now that you’re aware of so much more than others.
It is simply to be aware, to be aware of the truth, aware of the facts about how your own thinking works and aware of how the human mind works in general. Wherever that awareness leads you to, should again tell you more about your own nature than about anything else.
Back to memories, experiences and the two selves, one more example which comes to my mind about this very important cognitive bias is one that I read in David Eagleman’s book, The Brain.
He talks about a hypothetical situation where you are invited by a friend to her birthday dinner, where she’s with her boyfriend and you guys sit together, have a great time, share a few laughs, have good food, etc. He then builds it up by asking us to imagine that a year has passed since that dinner, and your friend and her boyfriend have since then had a pretty nasty falling out and are no longer together.
And then he points out that it is entirely possible that your memory of that birthday dinner is now coloured by this new piece of information. It is very likely that you might think that even back then, you could see clues that this guy is a good-for-nothing douchebag who might even cheat on your friend if the opportunity arises.
And it is very likely that you may start to consider all of these thoughts to be true because your remembering self is what is always activated in such scenarios, never your experiencing self.
The experiencing self had the experience of that great dinner, and left memories for the remembering self. And the remembering self can’t help but fit the memories to suit the current story that is unfolding right now. I hope these terminologies are clearer in your psyche now.
Our present colours the way we perceive the past.
And what we remember about something in the past is anyway not necessarily how we experienced it at that moment.
Both of these statements are true and are worth pondering over. I’ll repeat them once more.
Our present colours the way we perceive the past.
And what we remember about something in the past is not necessarily how we experienced it at that moment.
It is only when we become aware of such illusions of our minds that we can hope to unlearn them. Unlearn them not in the sense of ensuring that we don’t think in this manner. We cannot control the thoughts that pop up in our heads. But we can choose which thoughts we act on. And once you do that, you have, in one manner of speaking, unlearnt the attachment to your thoughts. That is when real understanding begins to dawn on you.
You should not always trust the first thought that pops up in your head about anything. And by the same token, you should not always doubt your intuition either. It is a moment by moment choice, and being able to discern what to do when is the key to a mature response to any situation.
To be able to make that choice in the best possible manner, you must be self aware. You must understand that your mind works under a whole bunch of biases and delusions that mustn’t really be trusted.
If you’re aware of the fallacies your mind is labouring under, you can start to see things as they are, not as you think they are. And anyone who thinks that that isn’t something worth doing, really doesn’t have a clear mind and is not being the best they can be.
And we all need to be the best we can be. Both for our own sake and also for the sake of people around us.
And if I may ask you for a favour, please leave a rating and a review for the show on as many podcast platforms as you can. You very well know the impact that can have for the reach of this content.
Episode 9 – Cognitive load, ego depletion & the need for meditation | Cognitive Biases #2 (12 min)
You should sit in meditation for twenty minutes every day – unless you’re too busy; then you should sit for an hour.
Zen proverb
Another episode in our series of episodes about human cognitive biases.
In this one, I talk about Cognitive load, which is an overarching phenomenon that affects our moment-to-moment state of being and thus, affects our ability to make decisions, to understand and process information – in short, it affects how we think. And hence, being aware of it is important.
I also briefly touch upon the need for meditation, and why it is something that everyone should incorporate in their everyday lives.
This episode is as everyday-life as it gets when it comes to pragmatic philosophy, wisdom and understanding. Tune right in. I’ll see you in the playground.
In the previous episode, we talked about the fact that we see the world as we are, not as the world is. We discussed the three levels at which this is true – at the level of our moment-to-moment state of being, at the level of our biological conditioning and at the level of our cultural, social or rather psychological conditioning. If you haven’t checked out that episode yet, I would highly recommend you to. And you can do that even after this episode. It is a good introduction as to why being aware of all this is a big part of growing up and taking up the role of being a mature adult, which in turn is a big part of what we talk about here in this podcast.
Now in one manner of speaking, our decision making capabilities and our capabilities to understand something or process something depend on a whole bunch of factors, and we’re not always our best selves when it comes to any given moment. In this episode, we’ll be discussing one such overarching phenomena which impacts a lot of our thinking capabilities at any given moment – cognitive load.
Cognitive load is quite easy to understand actually. In purely layman terms, it is a measure of how much you have on your mind at any given moment. And it shouldn’t be very tough to understand that this affects the quality of your state of being at that moment. Someone who is dealing with a whole bunch of things, has a wide array of thoughts running through his or her mind at any given moment, is obviously under a lot of load in one sense.
A few things happen in such a state of mind which, it can only benefit us adults, to be aware of.
Our ability to make good choices is not at its best under high cognitive load, especially about things not already in our mind. If you’re driving on a busy road, you’re under a lot of cognitive load. The busier the traffic the more the load. And the more the load, the more susceptible you are to being irrational if an argument now starts with your partner in the seat next to you. It might distract you from driving properly too. Now, it helps the overall situation if both you as well as your partner become aware of this, in that very moment, and take whatever action seems rational then – delaying the argument would be a good starting point to be honest.
This is applicable in general to so many avenues in our life, much more than we would want to acknowledge. Whenever we have too much going on in our heads, we are more likely to not be our best selves, to not take criticism well, to not accept where we are wrong, to not consider that someone else with an opposing viewpoint might have something right in his or her narrative. In short, we are more likely to be everything we ourselves don’t like others around us being.
So, in moments of high load, it helps to become aware of your own state of mind and understand that your decisions and choices may be hampered. Taking a deep breath, and delaying decision making unless you feel still and grounded again, should be your plan of action in such a scenario.
Also, it helps us to understand that a lot of times, we might encounter a situation in which another person we’re dealing with, is under high cognitive load, and hence they are not at their best self. And it helps the overall situation at such times to, again, to slow it down and delay decision making until the other person feels still and grounded again. That is taking action from a place of compassion and love born out of understanding.
Now, there is another phenomenon I want you to consider. Being in a state of high cognitive load for a long period of time, or what the average modern human calls Wednesday afternoon these days!
Jokes apart, put your imaginative horses to work, and picture for a minute that you’ve been working all day long in your office – meetings, discussions, fire-fightings, handling a resignation, and also a new joinee, avoiding a conflict with your manager as well as your subordinate, project work – all of this on the same day, in a span of a few “working” hours. Now, what would be your state of mind at the end of such a day? You’d be depleted, to say the least. You’d be exhausted. And what do you imagine your quality of decision making would be at such times? To put it lightly, let’s just say you would not take your best decisions.
This state of mind is what I understand to be ego depletion. Now that term is a bit controversial in the psychological literature these days, but we’re not using it to mean anything other than the state of feeling mentally depleted or tired. And like everything else we discuss here, that happens with me, happens with you, happens with those public figures we love or love to hate, happens with our managers, happens with our subordinates, happens with our partners, happens with human beings.
It just helps us to be aware of ourselves, our own state of mind, in the moment when this is happening. And also, helps us to be aware when we see another person not being their best self. And in both these scenarios, it helps to take a deep breath and delay making decisions and drawing conclusions, to the extent possible of course, until you feel still and grounded again.
You know, there is this famous saying in Hindi, “Khaali dimaag shaitan ka ghar hota hai”. Loosely translated to English, it means that an empty mind is the devil’s home.
When I started meditating and delving into my own psyche a good few years ago, I remember that one of the first few startling realisations was that this quote is absolute garbage! Anyone who has ever experienced the state of having an empty mind knows what I am talking about, knows that it is an extremely calming, peaceful experience. If anything, it is the home of the divine not the devil!
The problem, of course, is that we never really get to empty our minds in our everyday lives these days. And if a mind full of rotten, incomplete thoughts, which is our default state, suddenly has a lot of time at its hands, there definitely is a recipe the devil would enjoy. So what do we do under the disguise of practicality? We double down our efforts to get busy with whatever it is our minds think is worth it. While what would have been more practical, my dear human, would have been doubling down the effort to try and really empty your mind. Try, and ponder on the realisations that follow. Maybe we could even do a podcast episode together if you really tried it.
Meditation is one practice that everyone should incorporate in their everyday lives. But we’re all so busy these days with whatever swell things we have set out to achieve, that almost everyone says that they simply do not have the time. And that always reminds me of an age-old Zen proverb – “If you’re so busy that you cannot meditate for twenty minutes a day, you should meditate for an hour a day.” That is just lovely isn’t it? You need it much more than the free person does, my fellow busy human being!
To break it down for you, I talk about meditation in terms of the act of observing the flow of one’s own thoughts. For starters, you should try to allocate some time in the day, when you sit down, take some deep breaths, and do that – just observe your own thoughts. That’s it. That’s the entire activity.
And then keep consuming good, potent content to improve the quality of thoughts your mind ponders about. In our information age, it is your own responsibility to filter out all the noise you receive otherwise by default. So, read more books, listen to better podcasts, follow better youtube channels, declutter all the junk from your Instagram feeds, etc. You know the drill.
And of course, DM me on Instagram if you feel like having a word about any of it. I’m always open to honest and engaging conversations, like many of you have already found out.
Well, I guess that’s it for this episode for now. I hope this episode found you in a state of relatively lower cognitive load to enable better understanding.
If not, I hope you find it in you to listen to it again and meditate on it.
