Hi friends, wow what an extreme delight to get to speak to such stunning human
beings in such a stunning location and thank you Mia for that ridiculously
kind intro and thank you to Vishen and the entire A-Fest team for creating this.
Now if any of you guys have heard me speak before you probably thought that I
was going to get up here and talk about how meditation can improve your
performance and honestly it would have been easy for me to get up here and talk
about the neuroscience behind why meditation is the ultimate brain hack,
how it can help you have better skin and increase your neuro plasticity and
decrease inflammation and reverse your body age and get rid of depression and
anxiety and insomnia and give you better parking karma and even give you a better
boner, without the injections.
And that's all true and it does. I got such a lady boner right now. But you guys,
I gave that talk at Dave's Biohacking conference last year and I've still got the
brain octane oil to prove it
and don't get me wrong I love biohacking and I love orgasms but as we are facing
more and more dire circumstances as a species
I increasingly don't care what your resting heart rate is unless you're
going to take action with your newly toned body, so I bravely titled this talk
'How to save the world in 2 simple steps' You guys wanna know what the steps are?
I bet you do but that would make for a very short talk and I've got 19
minutes left to go.
And before we can talk about how to save the world we have to first get
clear about what we're saving it from.
Alright, so in my humble opinion we are saving it from climate change,
terrorism and the fact that much of our food isn't food anymore.
A trifecta I affectionately refer to as the three big Scaries. Now,
I know that we can't solve all three of these problems in the next 20 minutes
but what we can do is create a new model so that we can reframe how we see these
problems so that we can start to take personal accountability for the
solutions.
So if we look at the fact that much of our food isn't food anymore, if we see
that as the symptom
what's the underlying imbalance? Greed. And if we look at terrorism, the
underlying imbalance under that is separateness and if we look at the
collective decisions that have led us to climate change
I propose that the underlying imbalance is actually something called the 'I'll be
happy when syndrome which is the mistaken belief that you can somehow
acquire your way to happiness. Alright, so let's start with food.
We all have to eat right and here's the thing most of the food that we're eating
these days isn't actually food,
its food-like products. It doesn't resemble anything that came out of the
earth.
I was teaching meditation course in San Francisco recently and I went into a
grocery store
in the lower-income part of town and I really quickly realized that there was
nothing there that I could actually eat. It looked a little something like this.
You guys, our food has been genetically engineered, covered in pesticides, filled
with preservatives and the animals that are bred for consumption are often times
given hormones. They live in filth and they're killed in ways that are
unthinkably inhumane.
Then it's wrapped in plastic, we consume it and we're confused as to why we have
allergies, depression and obesity.
Right, yes yes, why is this happening? Because most of us are
shopping for food that is cheap instead of high quality, right and corporations
have lobbied our politicians to protect the profit of the corporations making
the food and not the health of the consumers consuming it, right.
So what's the underlying imbalance here? Greed.
Now, corporations are feeding the majority of humanity right now which is
very different than what it was a few short decades ago, right. We used to grow
our own food or get it from local farmers. Think about how different our
grandparents' food was than ours is. All their vegetables were organic,
imagine them eating a Lunchables, right.
Gross. So corporations have one priority and that trumps all
other priorities and that's to make a profit, right, and their success is
not judged by the quality of the product but based on how profitable
they are. Now look, I like money as much as the next meditation teacher and
we're all like guilty of this, right because we're all running around trying
to make money that we don't really take the time to prepare our food. Can you
imagine taking the time to grow and prepare three meals a day, right like who
has the time for that?
But here's the thing, if our food is making our children sick
it might be time to re-examine our collective values. So the next big story that I
want to take a look at is terrorism.
So according to the global terrorism index, in 2014 the world experienced a 61
percent increase in terrorism, 61 percent.
Imagine if you increased your body weight by 61 percent.
I bet you'd do something about it. Now the same study said that the main factors
associated with terrorism
are hostilities between different ethnic, religious and linguistic groups and also
high levels of grievances between groups.
So basically, we have a lot of unhappy individuals viewing some people as same
and some people as separate. Now before you can terrorize someone you must first
have an enemy and before you can have an enemy you must first see them as
separate. It's a lot easier to do things like this to someone if you feel like
you're harming an enemy and not harming yourself.
Now terrorism I feel like something that's like way far away and none of us
are personally guilty of it but if we agree that the underlying imbalance is
actually looking at life from a place of separateness then we're all guilty of it.
The last time you cut someone off in traffic, you flipped someone of, you got mad
at your mother in law,
you chose, you know competition over collaboration.
These are all acts of separateness and if we continue to act under this
illusion of separateness we know how the story plays out, it's never a good one.
I just want to check in with you guys how you doing. This guy's face is like "Um I
thought this is going to take a relaxing guided meditation and I'm looking at
pictures of like terrorism."
I bet so I bet if you are watching this on Youtube you probably hit pause and go
watch a cute animal video on Youtube.
Well sir, here you go.
Pretty cute, huh.
Yeah there's actually polka music under this.
I mean it's adorable but it also illustrates that we're stronger together
than we are when we separate ourselves from one another,
yeah.
And now back to our regularly scheduled program of the three big scary.
So this term climate change, right, we hear it so much but it's easy to get
desensitized to it and I think it's the easiest of the three to ignore because
even though the science is in, we think that's not my problem, like I
recycle, I don't smoke I was a brita, I'm good, right.
And also, the only way that it's impacting most of us right now is when
complain about the weird weather over an iced chai latte and a plastic cup and
then head back to work. But let's take a deeper look at how climate change is
actually already impacting our species.
New Orleans is supposed to be underwater in less than a hundred years.
That means that your grandkids will never go to Mardi Gras, right.
Sea temperatures are rising. By 2050, there is going to be more plastic in our
oceans than fish.
Florida is already experiencing mass extinctions of species and some of the
plastic drinking straws that we're using, they're ending up in the nostrils of
these ancient beauties and this video was so upsetting, I couldn't show you, I
just wanted to show you a screenshot but the next time somebody gives you a plastic
drinking straw maybe you recycle that or just say no straw, please.
Americans use 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour. I must say that again
Americans use 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour. To use something one
time that takes 70 million years to go away
doesn't make any sense.
Now my dear friend and student and Tony Award winner with a killer Twitter
feed tweeted. Her name is Laura Benanti and she goes "Sometimes I throw
something away and then I realize oh wait there is no away,
there is only the earth and the ocean, right. Now I'll give you, you know plastic
has some redeeming qualities. It's cheap, it's light and it's convenient but when
countries are going to war over water we're gonna see how truly inconvenient
it was. So if climate change is the symptom, what's the underlying imbalance?
The 'I'll be happy when syndrome',
right which is the mistaken belief that we can somehow consume our way to
happiness and the 'I'll be happy when syndrome' it shows up in achievement,
it shows up in relationships but most of all money. We think, If I could just make
ten thousand dollars then I won't have to stress about my rent and then I will
be happy and if you manage to do that you think I could do a hundred thousand
dollars, that would be great and if you do a hundred thousand dollars then you think I bet could do a a million and once you get a million dollars then you think I bet
could do a hundred million dollars and once you get a hundred million dollars
then you want a jet and once you have a hundred million dollars and a jet
then you just missed the days you could get high and go to the park and not have
to worry about managing your money all day, right.
So our happiness becomes a little carrot that just gets further and further and
further and further away and then we die. And I'm really sorry if this is bad news
but your happiness does not lie on the other side of any person, any place or
anything.
It doesn't lie on the other side of an engagement ring, or an acquisition of a
company, or a million people on your mailing list. Your happiness exists in
one place and that is inside of you and it exists in one time and that is right now.
Right, and any attempt,
any attempt to fill an internal void by reaching to an external disposable thing
wrapped in plastic is an addiction and that addiction is fueling our need to
consume.
We're all so busy running, you know, trying to make money that we don't take time to pack our food so we grab a plastic to-go container. And we're all so
busy achieving that we get our coffee in a plastic to-go cup and they we're so
caffeinated that we can't sleep
so we oversleep our alarm and we don't pack our food and it's so we consume and
we throw away,
we consume and throw away, we consume and throw away. It is a vicious cycle and it
is time for it to stop.
Yes yes, it always seems so fun when Lisa Nichols does this. I just wanted to try it.
So if we agree that food, terrorism and climate change are actually the symptoms
of the underlying imbalances of greed, separateness and the 'I'll be happy when
syndrome',
then how do we solve the underlying imbalances? So I figure if i don't talk
about the solution soon someone's gonna jump out a window.
So what's the fastest way to up-level your state of consciousness, right?
What's the thing, what's the number one thing that's impacting every single
decision that you make? Your state of consciousness.
Remember when Dave was talking about you can either let your life be led by a
little labrador puppy or a very well trained service animal, right, so your
state of consciousness is the thing that's going to be impacting that. Now
Einstein has already told us that no problem can be solved at the same layer
of consciousness with which it was created.
So how do we up-level our state of consciousness? Meditation. Right,
meditation takes your brain to the gym like nothing else.
And I know that might seem like an over simplified solution but science has
proven that when you meditate and I'm not talking about any all-guided
visualization.
I'm talking about an-every-day, twice-a-day practice that helps you access a
verifiable fourth state of consciousness.
When you do that on a repeatable basis your brain and body not only flood
with bliss chemicals but you also improve your cognitive function so it
stands to reason that if you're happier and your brain is working better
you might be better able to solve these problems that we're facing.
So how do we save the world in two simple steps?
Step 1: meditate in the morning and step two:
meditate in the afternoon.
Yeah.
Because as you heal yourself,
you help to heal the collective and if all this is sounding a little bit too
much like a Miss America platform speech for you,
don't worry I'm about to get to some neuroscience and also full disclosure I
was Florida's Junior Miss in 1997. Don't be intimidated.
Um so let's start with climate change.
How on earth could meditation help with climate change? Short answer. Meditation
is the fastest way to cure the 'I'll be happy when' syndrome because within 30 to
45 seconds of practicing this hour medication that I teach, your brain and
body floods with dopamine and serotonin which are bliss chemicals, right, so it
gives you access to your fulfillment internally so you're not under the
illusion that your happiness lies on the other side of the stuff.
Basically it gives you the opportunity to go through life as fulfilment
looking for need instead of a bag of need looking for fulfilment, and yes,
that's right, I quoted myself.
So how does meditation impact terrorism?
According to UNESCO, violence begins with the mind.
It must therefore be uprooted from the mind.
The simple answer to this is when you meditate you get yourself out of fight
or flight syndrome and terrorism is decidedly fighting. Now, the more complex
answer is when you meditate you light up the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex which
is basically just a fancy way of saying the part of your brain that processes
information about people it perceives as separate. Also, when you meditate you
strengthen the connection between the insula which is your empathy center and
the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex.
So this strengthened connection gives you the ability to have empathy for
people that you perceive a separate. It allows you to put yourself in the
shoes of someone else.
It allows you to go through life realizing that there is only one thing
and we're all it, right and that that as you hurt someone else, you're actually
hurting yourself.
And as you help someone else, you're actually helping yourself. It allows you to
realize that we cannot murder our way to a peaceful planet.
The Dalai Lama said "If we were to teach every eight year old to meditate we
would end war within a generation"
and despite how the news and possibly even this talk is making you feel, we're
actually living in the most peaceful time in recorded history.
Meditation is already being taught in jails to veterans and even in schools.
It's shocking and heartwarming results. In San Francisco they've been teaching
meditation for a year this one particular school and suspension rates
have dropped by 45%, attendance rate has increased by
98% percent and on a citywide study this school had the highest
happiness levels of any other school in the city.
Yes.
So how can sitting quietly in a chair impact our food?
Well, if the underlying imbalance is greed, what's the opposite of greed? Generosity.
Yep, so that same connection that makes you more empathetic.
It also makes you more generous when that dorsomedial prefrontal cortex
lights up and connects to your insulin which is the empathy centre.
It actually makes you want to help others. In a scientific study, meditators
were proven to act with more generosity than non-meditators, right.
And here's I think the other thing I've noticed from teaching like 2,800
people to meditate is that as you start meditating you become so much more intuitive
about what your body is actually asking for and you become so much less tolerant of
food-like products.
So if we can get a significant portion of the planet meditating,
then we might be buying different things and corporations are very sensitive to
what you buy because if you don't buy their product they don't make money so
we all have the power to vote with our wallet.
You guys we have to invest in high-quality foods. Yes, it's more expensive to buy organic.
You can either pay the farmer now or you can pay the doctor later.
So to wrap all this up, right.
If we believe that climate change and terrorism and the food prices are
actually symptoms of these underlying imbalances and how do we solve the
underlying imbalance by up-levelling our state of consciousness and how do we
up-level our state of consciousness? Through meditation.
I know it might seem too good to be true. You're like, wait a minute. You mean I can
have better skin, better parking karma, better sex and do my part to save the
world?
Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus and it's called meditation.
This is an exciting time to be alive.
Neuroscience is catching up to what these Indian dudes have been saying for
6,000 year, right.
You're no longer considered a total freaky hippie-dippie if you step
outside to meditate at work and I know that if you're listening to this,
then you have a deep desire to leave this world better than you found it and
I know that I'm probably saying a lot of things to you guys that you already know but
I want this to be a call to action, right. I want you to commit to your
practice and I want you to go to your tribes, to go to your communities and
let's get meditation taught in every school, let's get it taught in every jail.
So I'll leave you with this.
If you don't yet have a meditation practice,
what the bleep are you waiting for? And if you do have a meditation practice,
how are you using your unique gifts to best save the world because the best way
to hack your happiness that I know is by being of service, by contributing to
making this world a better place when you leave it than it was when you found
it.
That's it. The end
Good bye.