Moment 3 - John Vincent On How To Live A More Present Life

00:03we live in a world where as you said everything is designed to make us feel significant right the sort of fundamental design of social media is to reinforce us in some way that we are what we said was smart or funny or you know worth sharing what in your perspective are the dangers of our kids and your kids growing up in this sort of social media world well i think it's like it's the old phrase isn't it if you put a lobster or a frog even into boiling water it will jump out but if you slowly boil it then it doesn't realize it's being boiled and i think our kids are being slowly boiled and they don't realize it and i went to a conference the other day where they were talking about how babies are going to be chipped and that mothers and fathers will be allowed to have lower taxes and lower insurance if they allow their babies to be tracked from a health perspective because of course it will reduce the nhs bill and of course it will reduce the policing bill if we know where everyone is and i think we all have to recognize the fact that we will be sold in very what seem to be very rational terms very economically viable terms to track our own health to accept being monitored in terms of our whereabouts and our physical health and i think

01:22we need to recognize that that's shit and that's not good and i think that the dangers are that on the one hand we will lose our freedoms that i think are very dear at a practical and an emotional level and spiritual level for people to actually have freedoms and the other is that we will start to believe our own storytelling and ego and i think when you talk steve it really interesting about we are constantly you know told to create our own online brands to curate our own online brands you know i know you know perhaps when one of my daughters takes a photograph to go on instagram maybe it takes an hour and she chooses one photograph out of a thousand that doesn't happen often sure but i've seen that happen and so therefore people think that what they see online is somehow real and true and we pretend that social media is a window into truth and unfortunately it is a window into artifice and the more artifice and lack of truth that we pervade and popularize the more mental health disorders will be created and i think it's based on the other idea the fact that you know people talk about i and we talk about ego we talk about the people that we are but i think we need to recognize that we don't exist by which i mean the steve

02:40bartlett or the john vincent they're both just constructs or barack obama barack obama is just a construct barack obama is a set of stories that have been told set of media imagery media storytelling. And as we think about our own individual identity, it's worth remembering the we that we think exists is based on a whole bunch of myths that we've told ourselves. So first of all, we're in the car and someone says, Steve, and then you keep hearing this name, Steve, and you're like, fucking hell, this is getting ridiculous. They keep mentioning this word, Steve, what is Steve? And then eventually you realize, shit, they think that I'm separate from them. That's weird. Of course, I'm not separate from them. But hey, I better start believing it.

03:25And then you go to school and they call out your name in class and they say, Steve, and you put your hand up. That reinforces his idea that you're separate. And they say, Steve, you've won the history prize. And you go, hey, Steve's good at history. Now, whether it's true, half true or not true, you create a sense of who you are. It's mostly not true. The Steve that we have in our mind or the John Vincent that we have in our mind, it's a set of myths, a set of stories that we tell ourselves and we tell ourselves because we attach identity and constancy to it what's the danger of us doing that the danger is that we start to become very unwell and we stop being happy now so if i think about the major lessons they are do not seek happiness from a future occurrence. Do not defer happiness to this magical island that exists that once we arrive at this magical island, we will be happy. And do not associate your happiness with money.

04:29Do not associate it with fame. Do not associate it with recognition from third parties. Because as soon as we put ourselves into a situation where we are deferring happiness into the future, we are clearly off balanced in the present moment. And if I look at the tribes people that I meet, certain ones I'd meet in Africa, the ones that my friends have met in Brazil, they are rooted in the present moment. They are absolutely conscious and present now.

05:02And the problem with living your life abstracted online or abstracted in the future means that you You are off balance and you are not getting fulfillment from the now. And, you know, the martial art that I do, it's predicated on fulfillment coming from the practice, not from the result of the practice, not from one day I will win this fight, not one day I will have this glory. I hear what everybody is asking themselves, which is how do you be present?

05:32I read your Twitter bio and it says that you're taking a break from Twitter to be more present. So I was going to ask you about that. So how do I be more present in a very, very busy digital world where notifications are bombarding me and everything is about the future and making plans and schedules and things like this? So we're talking very practically, aren't we? Is that what you mean? Okay. So I think there's a practical element and then there's a sort of mental element.

05:56The mental element is to start by not valuing anything. So by which I mean recognize the fact that ultimately the very act of breathing, the very act of trusting our subconscious processes to drive our immune system or the process of making sure that we're breathing only value that. so that will immediately put you into a situation where all you're valuing is the things that are literally within your own body as soon as you value a prize that you might get or what a girlfriend might think of you you are putting yourself in a much worse position from point of view of your own mental health and almost act as if you're dead and i think some people might think this is a bit strange so i think people are going to have to bear with me here but if you say i am dead i've died it allows you to suddenly revalue the things you really then want to value so if you start with a starting point that says nothing nothing is a value i am dead you then start adding back the things into your life that are only the absolutely critical things and what are those things to you on the practical side i would say breathing is the most wonderful way of becoming present and physical based meditation so some people may have downloaded the headspace app

07:31or some people might have found that you know those sorts of things in terms of meditation help i would say from the point of view of what we've learned in wing chung the physical movement even literally walking and breathing and allowing your body and your mind to synchronize and breathe as you do it something literally as simple as going for a walk and consciously breathing as you do and walk away from your phone walk away from any devices and be in touch with nature as in it could be a tree in a park in manchester it could be a small bush that you find on the estate where you live, but literally find something. It could be a small frog. It could be a spider. It could be a tree, but just observe that. That's a very practical thing that people can do.