So hello and welcome back.
This story is called Who's this in the shower with me?
I'm going to read the story out and then what I'm going to do,
I'll say a little bit about it,
But then I'm going to share a technique with you,
Okay,
For overthinking.
Who's this in the shower with me?
When you start living a mindful life,
You soon realise that you are not living a mindful life.
When I first started to practice meditation and mindfulness,
I soon realised that I was rarely here doing what I was doing.
Let me explain.
I liked listening to music.
I remember when I was keen on the rock group Queen and listening to them quite a lot.
I remember though,
Realising that I could not listen to a whole track without drifting off to other things.
So I did an experiment.
I said to myself that I would try and listen to a whole track without thinking about anything else at all.
So I lay on the floor in the house with my headphones on.
Here we go,
I thought.
A whole track without getting lost in distraction.
After less than a minute,
Bing!
I realised that I had just been talking to a clown whom I saw on TV the previous day about how he gets into his suit.
Hmm.
So I turned my attention back to the music and this time really paid attention.
30 seconds later,
Bing!
I realised that I had drifted off.
This time I was going over an argument with an old friend which we had never even had.
This happened again and again.
Over the six minutes of music,
This was ridiculous.
I realised that my mind was restless and that I could not even listen to a six-minute music track without travelling the world or dwelling on problems,
Most of which I didn't even have anyway.
I would be going over conversations in my head,
Planning things that had already happened and pondering things that were clearly never going to happen.
I did realise later when I started going to meditation classes that I was not alone.
Not only that,
I realised that a restless mind is universal.
On the courses I run,
I ask people to notice when they are engaged in everyday activities like drinking coffee,
Walking up the stairs,
Doing the washing up and to notice just how often they drift away.
They soon come to realise,
Even though they are washing the dishes with the body,
Their mind is doing something else.
For some,
This can come as quite a surprise at just how much unnecessary thinking goes on.
A few years ago,
I had a small wager with a friend that Chelsea Football Club would win the Champions League.
The Champions League is a cup tournament for all the top teams in Europe.
Or you may know it as soccer.
After all,
They had one of the best managers in the world.
One particular match they were playing at home and the team they were playing had a player sent off.
But they still lost the match.
They were out of the Champions League and I had lost my wager.
They had lost at home to ten men.
The next morning,
I was having a shower and lo and behold,
The then Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho turns up uninvited into my shower.
I prefer to shower alone of course,
But there you go.
I started telling him off.
How could you lose at home to a side from Spain who had ten men?
The team weren't even very good.
I told him where he had gone wrong and how he should have approached the game,
Because of course I knew.
Then,
Bing,
I realised what I was doing.
Jose Mourinho hadn't entered the shower uninvited because I had invited him in.
I let him leave and then decided that whilst I was in the shower,
I may as well have one.
How often do we do this?
How often are we doing an activity only to find we are mentally engaged in a different one?
Living a mindful life is the beginning of noticing this and learning to be present with what we are doing.
The present moment is where we eventually find the joy and the wonder of life which we have been searching for all our lives.
So,
If I was writing this today,
I would change something at the end there.
This is not,
Obviously,
The book,
No,
The story.
This is me saying a few words.
Now,
It's not about learning to be present,
As it says here.
We're already present.
Right now,
Try not to be present.
Try not to be aware.
Impossible,
Isn't it?
Awareness is a given.
Presence is a given.
So,
It's not about learning to be present.
It's starting to see,
And this is the key,
It's starting to see what takes us away or seemingly takes us away from being present and aware.
And what's that?
Only in a hundred percent of the cases is it thought.
Thought is what takes us away or seemingly it appears to take us away from the present moment.
It doesn't,
Of course,
Because even that thinking is only happening in the present moment.
But the stories and images or the words and images are often about the future or the past,
What somebody said to us or didn't do for us or whatever.
But,
See,
Even those images,
When do they appear?
Let's do a little something right now,
A little exercise.
I want you to close your eyes for me.
Okay,
I want you just for 10 seconds to imagine something that happened yesterday.
Okay?
Now,
I'd like you to imagine something that may happen tomorrow.
Okay.
When did they appear?
They both appeared presently,
On the screen of the mind,
So to speak.
The image about yesterday didn't appear yesterday.
The image of tomorrow didn't appear tomorrow.
So,
What does that tell you?
That it's always the present moment.
The future is a useful concept.
We can't live without it,
But that's what it is.
It's only a concept.
But what we do,
Because we believe what the mind is telling us,
When the mind presents images of a future and it may be negative,
We worry.
Now,
For practical purposes,
We need to think about the future.
We need to arrange holidays,
And what time to meet a friend,
And what time to get to work,
Etc.
But that's using the concept wisely.
And the same with remembering things.
For practical purposes,
It's fine.
For remembering nice holidays and things,
Nothing wrong.
But when we take the concept to be real,
That's when we suffer.
That's when we go into worrying and anxiety.
Because the future is so unpredictable.
So,
What the mind wants to do,
It wants to tie it down.
So,
Just during the day,
Just notice how you're almost constantly going into the future.
And often there's an image of yourself in there,
Maybe getting ill or losing a job,
Or it may be fantasy.
Maybe on holiday,
Which is fine,
That's more innocuous.
But the joy of life is already here.
It's in presence.
We just don't recognize it because we are fixated with mind,
With thought.
So,
We learn to drop the thinking mind,
Release the thinking,
Return back to presence.
Ten minutes a day.
Sit quietly ten minutes a day.
Five minutes a day.
And just notice that movement into thought and how,
When you go into thought,
I'm talking about self-centered,
Ego-extended thinking here,
Not practical.
The body tenses,
Contracts,
And we are transported to a virtual world.
And that's what happens.
So,
I'd like to share a technique with you for when we're in lots of emotionally charged thinking.
So,
What I'd like you to do,
I'd like you to close your eyes,
And again,
For ten seconds,
I want you to think a negative thought.
Make it a real life one.
Something,
Maybe an anxious thought or a critical thought.
Make it real.
So,
Silence for ten seconds and go ahead and think.
Okay.
So,
Even under test conditions,
It has an impact,
Doesn't it?
It doesn't make you feel good.
Right.
Again.
I'd like you to say the same thought again and quietly inside.
Sorry,
I forgot to mention that.
Quietly inside,
As you would when you're walking down the street and lost in mind.
Just quietly,
Silently.
I'd like you to say it again,
But this time,
Before it,
I want you to say,
I'm having the thought,
Dot,
Dot,
Dot.
Okay.
Go ahead.
Do it again.
Okay.
Do you see the difference?
Do you see how having a thought,
When you say that before it,
It gives you distance.
It takes the emotional charge out of it.
You realise it's just,
Oh,
I'm having a thought,
Not a dose of reality.
So,
When you're in emotionally charged thinking or those loops you get into,
Do that.
Repeat it back to yourself,
The thought back to yourself,
But before it,
Say,
I'm having the thought,
Dot,
Dot,
Dot.
Okay.
I just want to finish with a short story about one of our students.
About seven years ago,
He came along to us,
A very successful man in the world,
But his life was,
Well,
Not going well in some respects.
He was suffering panic attacks and heart palpitations.
He'd been suffering these panic attacks for 20 years.
Okay.
And he told this story just a few months ago on a retreat.
He still comes along.
And I gave him this technique to do and he took it away with him and practised it.
And at some point,
He realised,
And this is what he said in the group,
He said,
I realised I wasn't having a heart attack.
I was having a thought attack.
He said,
And that changed my life.
He said,
For 20 years,
I'd been suffering from these panic attacks,
Sweaty palms,
Palpitations.
All caused by thinking,
Believing those thoughts.
So,
I'll share that with you.
So,
Thank you very much.
See you tomorrow.
Bye-bye.
