All it takes is 10 mindful minutes | Andy Puddicombe | TED — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:00Translator: Joseph Geni Reviewer: Morton Bast
2. 0:15We live in an incredibly busy world.
3. 0:18The pace of life is often frantic, our minds are always busy,
4. 0:21and we're always doing something.
5. 0:24So with that in mind, I'd like you just to take a moment
6. 0:26to think, when did you last take any time to do nothing?
7. 0:32Just 10 minutes, undisturbed?
8. 0:34And when I say nothing, I do mean nothing.
9. 0:36So that's no emailing, texting, no Internet,
10. 0:39no TV, no chatting, no eating, no reading.
11. 0:43Not even sitting there reminiscing about the past
12. 0:45or planning for the future.
13. 0:48Simply doing nothing.
14. 0:51I see a lot of very blank faces.
15. 0:53(Laughter)
16. 0:54You probably have to go a long way back.
17. 0:56And this is an extraordinary thing, right?
18. 0:58We're talking about our mind.
19. 1:00The mind, our most valuable and precious resource,
20. 1:03through which we experience every single moment of our life.
21. 1:07The mind that we rely upon
22. 1:09to be happy, content, emotionally stable as individuals,
23. 1:14and at the same time, to be kind and thoughtful
24. 1:16and considerate in our relationships with others.
25. 1:20This is the same mind that we depend upon
26. 1:22to be focused, creative, spontaneous,
27. 1:26and to perform at our very best in everything that we do.
28. 1:30And yet, we don't take any time out to look after it.
29. 1:34In fact, we spend more time looking after our cars,
30. 1:37our clothes and our hair than we --
31. 1:39okay, maybe not our hair,
32. 1:40(Laughter)
33. 1:41but you see where I'm going.
34. 1:43The result, of course, is that we get stressed.
35. 1:46You know, the mind whizzes away like a washing machine
36. 1:48going round and round, lots of difficult, confusing emotions,
37. 1:52and we don't really know how to deal with that.
38. 1:57And the sad fact is that we are so distracted
39. 2:01that we're no longer present in the world in which we live.
40. 2:05We miss out on the things that are most important to us,
41. 2:08and the crazy thing is that everybody just assumes,
42. 2:11that's the way life is, so we've just kind of got to get on with it.
43. 2:14That's really not how it has to be.
44. 2:16So I was about 11 when I went along to my first meditation class.
45. 2:21And trust me, it had all the stereotypes that you can imagine,
46. 2:24the sitting cross-legged on the floor,
47. 2:27the incense, the herbal tea, the vegetarians, the whole deal,
48. 2:30but my mom was going and I was intrigued, so I went along with her.
49. 2:34I'd also seen a few kung fu movies,
50. 2:36and secretly I kind of thought I might be able to learn how to fly,
51. 2:39but I was very young at the time.
52. 2:42Now as I was there, I guess, like a lot of people,
53. 2:45I assumed that it was just an aspirin for the mind.
54. 2:49You get stressed, you do some meditation.
55. 2:51I hadn't really thought that it could be sort of preventative in nature,
56. 2:54until I was about 20, when a number of things happened in my life
57. 2:58in quite quick succession,
58. 3:01really serious things which just flipped my life upside down
59. 3:04and all of a sudden I was inundated with thoughts,
60. 3:07inundated with difficult emotions that I didn't know how to cope with.
61. 3:10Every time I sort of pushed one down,
62. 3:13another one would pop back up again.
63. 3:14It was a really very stressful time.
64. 3:17I guess we all deal with stress in different ways.
65. 3:21Some people will bury themselves in work, grateful for the distraction.
66. 3:26Others will turn to their friends, their family, looking for support.
67. 3:29Some people hit the bottle, start taking medication.
68. 3:33My own way of dealing with it was to become a monk.
69. 3:36So I quit my degree, I headed off to the Himalayas,
70. 3:39I became a monk, and I started studying meditation.
71. 3:43People often ask me what I learned from that time.
72. 3:47Well, obviously it changed things.
73. 3:49Let's face it, becoming a celibate monk is going to change a number of things.
74. 3:53But it was more than that.
75. 3:56It taught me -- it gave me a greater appreciation,
76. 3:59an understanding for the present moment.
77. 4:03By that I mean not being lost in thought,
78. 4:07not being distracted,
79. 4:09not being overwhelmed by difficult emotions,
80. 4:12but instead learning how to be in the here and now,
81. 4:16how to be mindful, how to be present.
82. 4:19I think the present moment is so underrated.
83. 4:22It sounds so ordinary,
84. 4:24and yet we spend so little time in the present moment
85. 4:28that it's anything but ordinary.
86. 4:30There was a research paper that came out of Harvard, just recently,
87. 4:34that said on average, our minds are lost in thought
88. 4:37almost 47 percent of the time.
89. 4:4047 percent.
90. 4:42At the same time, this sort of constant mind-wandering
91. 4:45is also a direct cause of unhappiness.
92. 4:47Now we're not here for that long anyway,
93. 4:52but to spend almost half of our life lost in thought
94. 4:57and potentially quite unhappy,
95. 4:59I don't know, it just kind of seems tragic, actually,
96. 5:01especially when there's something we can do about it,
97. 5:04when there's a positive, practical, achievable,
98. 5:08scientifically proven technique
99. 5:11which allows our mind to be more healthy,
100. 5:13to be more mindful and less distracted.
101. 5:17And the beauty of it is that even though
102. 5:20it need only take about 10 minutes a day,
103. 5:22it impacts our entire life.
104. 5:26But we need to know how to do it.
105. 5:28We need an exercise.
106. 5:29We need a framework to learn how to be more mindful.
107. 5:32That's essentially what meditation is.
108. 5:34It's familiarizing ourselves with the present moment.
109. 5:37But we also need to know how to approach it in the right way
110. 5:40to get the best from it.
111. 5:41And that's what these are for, in case you've been wondering,
112. 5:44because most people assume
113. 5:47that meditation is all about stopping thoughts,
114. 5:49getting rid of emotions, somehow controlling the mind,
115. 5:53but actually it's quite different from that.
116. 5:55It's more about stepping back,
117. 5:57sort of seeing the thought clearly,
118. 6:00witnessing it coming and going, emotions coming and going
119. 6:03without judgment, but with a relaxed, focused mind.
120. 6:08So for example, right now,
121. 6:10if I focus too much on the balls,
122. 6:13then there's no way I can relax and talk to you at the same time.
123. 6:16Equally, if I relax too much talking to you,
124. 6:18there's no way I can focus on the balls.
125. 6:20I'm going to drop them.
126. 6:21Now in life, and in meditation,
127. 6:24there'll be times when the focus becomes a little bit too intense,
128. 6:27and life starts to feel a bit like this.
129. 6:31It's a very uncomfortable way to live life,
130. 6:33when you get this tight and stressed.
131. 6:36At other times, we might take our foot off the gas a little bit too much,
132. 6:39and things just become a sort of little bit like this.
133. 6:42Of course in meditation --
134. 6:43(Snores)
135. 6:44we're going to end up falling asleep.
136. 6:46So we're looking for a balance, a focused relaxation
137. 6:49where we can allow thoughts to come and go
138. 6:52without all the usual involvement.
139. 6:55Now, what usually happens when we're learning to be mindful
140. 6:58is that we get distracted by a thought.
141. 7:01Let's say this is an anxious thought.
142. 7:03Everything's going fine, and we see the anxious thought.
143. 7:05"Oh, I didn't realize I was worried about that."
144. 7:08You go back to it, repeat it.
145. 7:09"Oh, I am worried.
146. 7:11I really am worried. Wow, there's so much anxiety."
147. 7:13And before we know it, right,
148. 7:15we're anxious about feeling anxious.
149. 7:18(Laughter)
150. 7:19You know, this is crazy.
151. 7:20We do this all the time, even on an everyday level.
152. 7:23If you think about the last time you had a wobbly tooth.
153. 7:29You know it's wobbly, and you know that it hurts.
154. 7:32But what do you do every 20, 30 seconds?
155. 7:36(Mumbling)
156. 7:37It does hurt.
157. 7:39And we reinforce the storyline, right?
158. 7:41And we just keep telling ourselves, and we do it all the time.
159. 7:44And it's only in learning to watch the mind in this way
160. 7:47that we can start to let go of those storylines and patterns of mind.
161. 7:51But when you sit down and you watch the mind in this way,
162. 7:54you might see many different patterns.
163. 7:56You might find a mind that's really restless and --
164. 7:59the whole time.
165. 8:00Don't be surprised if you feel a bit agitated in your body
166. 8:04when you sit down to do nothing and your mind feels like that.
167. 8:07You might find a mind that's very dull
168. 8:10and boring, and it's just, almost mechanical,
169. 8:12it just seems it's as if you're getting up, going to work,
170. 8:15eat, sleep, get up, work.
171. 8:18Or it might just be that one little nagging thought
172. 8:20that just goes round and round your mind.
173. 8:25Well, whatever it is,
174. 8:27meditation offers the opportunity, the potential to step back
175. 8:32and to get a different perspective,
176. 8:35to see that things aren't always as they appear.
177. 8:40We can't change every little thing that happens to us in life,
178. 8:46but we can change the way that we experience it.
179. 8:49That's the potential of meditation, of mindfulness.
180. 8:53You don't have to burn any incense,
181. 8:55and you definitely don't have to sit on the floor.
182. 8:58All you need to do is to take 10 minutes out a day
183. 9:02to step back, to familiarize yourself with the present moment
184. 9:05so that you get to experience a greater sense
185. 9:08of focus, calm and clarity in your life.
186. 9:12Thank you very much.
187. 9:13(Applause)