Sharpen Your Attention With This Daily Focus Practice | Robert Greene & Dr. Andrew Huberman — Transcript

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1. 0:00There's this Armenian mystic named
2. 0:02Gurdjieff,
3. 0:03right? Amazing man. It was at the turn
4. 0:06of the 20th century and he visited all
5. 0:09of the uh most esoteric cults in the
6. 0:13Middle East and the Far East because he
7. 0:16had this idea that they were about to
8. 0:17disappear and he wanted to glean all of
9. 0:20their secrets and create this new kind
10. 0:22of philosophy that would alter human
11. 0:24consciousness.
12. 0:26And he had this experiment
13. 0:28that he said what makes a human being
14. 0:30human is our attention.
15. 0:33So an animal, and god bless I love
16. 0:36animals, but their attention is
17. 0:37generally somewhat limited to what's in
18. 0:40front of them, to their needs to
19. 0:41survive. They're not looking up at the
20. 0:44sky and wondering about what's going on,
21. 0:47right? They're not thinking about what's
22. 0:48on the other side of that mountain and
23. 0:50what's happening.
24. 0:51So we have the ability of this
25. 0:53incredible attention.
26. 0:55And we when we pay attention to
27. 0:57something and we focus on it, we kind of
28. 0:59alter our brain chemistry and something
29. 1:02magical can happen.
30. 1:04And he had this notion that people are
31. 1:05just sleepwalking through life, that
32. 1:07they're not awake. He said if a human
33. 1:10being were truly awake, there would not
34. 1:12be wars, we would not be killing each
35. 1:14other, would not be all this misery that
36. 1:16we inflict on fellow humans, right?
37. 1:18We're asleep, we're not we're not aware
38. 1:20of what we're doing.
39. 1:22He had this exercise.
40. 1:24He calls it self-remembering. I talk
41. 1:26about it in the book.
42. 1:28And he says
43. 1:29you have an experience in a moment in
44. 1:31life and you focus on it deeply and you
45. 1:33tell yourself you're remembering it.
46. 1:35You're going to remember it. Because
47. 1:37what happens is
48. 1:39what happened three years ago on a day
49. 1:41in July, you'll never remember what
50. 1:44happened there because you were asleep.
51. 1:45You weren't paying attention.
52. 1:48There are moments in life where you're
53. 1:49paying attention where you get some kind
54. 1:50of shock and you remember it. He wants
55. 1:53you to have that kind of focus every
56. 1:55day. So he has this exercise where you
57. 1:58look at things deeply and focus on them.
58. 2:01I'm remembering, I'm remembering, I'm
59. 2:02I'm experiencing it in the moment.
60. 2:06And he had this pupil named Ouspensky, a
61. 2:08very famous mystic Russian mystic, who
62. 2:11was deeply depressed, who was suicidal,
63. 2:13and he became a a a pupil, a disciple of
64. 2:16Gurdjieff. He starts practicing this. He
65. 2:19looks at a vase of flowers in his room,
66. 2:22focusing and attending it. I'm
67. 2:24remembering it. I'm seeing it. I'm here
68. 2:26today. I'm looking at it.
69. 2:29After 30 seconds, your mind wanders. He
70. 2:31can't do it.
71. 2:32But then after a minute, he notices
72. 2:35that that flower starts looking
73. 2:36different.
74. 2:38And the degree of his focus and
75. 2:39attention on it just as it is as he's
76. 2:42telling himself, I'm going to remember
77. 2:43it.
78. 2:44In three years, it'll be stamped in my
79. 2:46memory.
80. 2:47He gets better at it. And then he walks
81. 2:49outside after he gets after months of
82. 2:52practicing this, just looking at things,
83. 2:55simple objects.
84. 2:56And suddenly, the houses look different
85. 2:59to him. They look like they're almost
86. 3:00like alive. Everything is intense. He's
87. 3:03walking outside and he 's got this
88. 3:05attention, this focus. The world is
89. 3:08altering.
90. 3:09And then,
91. 3:10suddenly, he finds himself in a
92. 3:13tobacconist
93. 3:14on completely on the other side of
94. 3:16Moscow or St. Petersburg, but I don't
95. 3:18remember which city.
96. 3:20He was, what happened?
97. 3:21He realized that he a moment he fell
98. 3:23asleep.
99. 3:25And he wasn't remembering things. And 3
100. 3:27hours later, he's on the other side of
101. 3:29town in a tobacconist buying cigarettes.
102. 3:31>> Wow.
103. 3:31>> And what he realized is
104. 3:34he had this intense focus and
105. 3:35remembering where he's awake.
106. 3:38And now it made him realize that
107. 3:40normally in life you are asleep.
108. 3:43We don't realize how asleep we are
109. 3:45because we don't have that contrast to
110. 3:47what it's like to be fully awake.
111. 3:50So my point is it's an exercise that can
112. 3:53literally alter your neurology in some
113. 3:56way. It can alter how you perceive
114. 3:58things. It doesn't require drugs. It
115. 4:00requires this kind of intense focus. And
116. 4:03meditation can have the same effect. I
117. 4:06do meditation every morning.
118. 4:09They've proven that meditation literally
119. 4:11alters your brain. That's literally
120. 4:13something your thoughts can alter the
121. 4:15matter of your the wiring of your brain.
122. 4:19So you don't need drugs. Drugs are a
123. 4:21wonderful gateway and Huxley described
124. 4:23it beautifully.
125. 4:24But there are practices among Tibetan
126. 4:26Buddhists, Zen Buddhists where they get
127. 4:29similar kind of effects through
128. 4:30meditation, right? Or through some of
129. 4:33these practices that I mentioned.
130. 4:35>> There's this wild finding in
131. 4:37neuroscience, visual neuroscience that
132. 4:40comes to mind uh that I'll just briefly
133. 4:42share with you if you want to reflect on
134. 4:44great and if not then uh
135. 4:46certainly just tell us. So we assume
136. 4:49that when we look at something that our
137. 4:51perception of it is pretty stable, but
138. 4:54there's this
139. 4:55really cool set of experiments where
140. 4:58they paralyze the eyes
141. 5:00of people
142. 5:01>> Yeah.
143. 5:02>> in a reversible way. And and you quickly
144. 5:05find that if you look at something they
145. 5:07can perceive it and then it disappears
146. 5:09because our nervous system has our eyes
147. 5:12move these little saccades as you know.
148. 5:14But it's all about change in the same
149. 5:16way that you walk in a room it smells
150. 5:17really good and then the smell
151. 5:18disappears, but it didn't disappear. You
152. 5:20you've got this habituation.
153. 5:21>> Right, right.
154. 5:22>> happens everywhere in the nervous
155. 5:23system.
156. 5:23>> Right.
157. 5:24>> Then there's this wild finding that if
158. 5:26you continue to have people look at the
159. 5:29same location
160. 5:30>> Yeah.
161. 5:31>> the percept of what was there changes
162. 5:35in in a significant way.
163. 5:38And of course the physical attributes of
164. 5:40the thing didn't change, but the but the
165. 5:42the perception the the conversion of
166. 5:43those photons into what we perceive, the
167. 5:46abstraction of what's out there changes.
168. 5:48I think it matches precisely with what
169. 5:51you're describing.
170. 5:52What's so incredible in the example you
171. 5:54gave is that the person was able to sort
172. 5:58of maintain that shifted perception for
173. 6:01long periods of time. It's almost like
174. 6:02it enters the memory system. We can get
175. 6:03back to this to the perception, but also
176. 6:06the state that we were in
177. 6:08of being quote-unquote awake. I find
178. 6:10that remarkable.
179. 6:11>> Yeah.
180. 6:11>> Because the the the mug, the the vase,
181. 6:14the flower, they're beautiful,
182. 6:17certainly flowers, but in some sense
183. 6:19they're trivial too, right? Like there's
184. 6:21nothing inherently interesting about a
185. 6:23mug until I start creating a story about
186. 6:25it. Like people design this, it's gotten
187. 6:28all these wonderful But you really have
188. 6:29to go down that rabbit hole. So the
189. 6:31question I have is given how malleable
190. 6:34our perceptions are,
191. 6:37what
192. 6:39quality of meaning is actually
193. 6:42meaningful? Because
194. 6:44like on drugs,
195. 6:46and this is one of the problems with
196. 6:47psychedelics or MDMA, for instance,
197. 6:51one has to be very careful, certainly on
198. 6:53MDMA, which this is an empathogenic
199. 6:55drug, right?
200. 6:57Because you can hear a song and you can
201. 7:00fall in love with your love for that
202. 7:01song on repeat for four full hours,
203. 7:04which is perhaps interesting.
204. 7:06There might be an insight or few there,
205. 7:09but
206. 7:09in some sense it's not like
207. 7:12one could say, well, that's trivial. You
208. 7:14you assigned a meaning to something
209. 7:15that's trivial. And I think that's where
210. 7:17people get scared that if they start to
211. 7:19go through these uh
212. 7:21portals to to the sublime, that they're
213. 7:24going to end up kind of weird.
214. 7:27That they're going to be the person
215. 7:28that's like, did you see how [laughter]
216. 7:31many
217. 7:32ants are crawling up that curb? And
218. 7:35you're like, yeah, it's cool, but you
219. 7:36know, like if you yeah, if you go down
220. 7:38there, I'm sure it's pretty cool, right?
221. 7:40But no one most people don't want to be
222. 7:42that guy or that
223. 7:44lady all the time because
224. 7:46we have a name for that and it's not
225. 7:48kind. None of us want to be the crazy
226. 7:51person who's who's creating meaning out
227. 7:53of the trivial. So how do we cope with
228. 7:55that?
229. 7:56>> Cuz the way I'm looking at it is that
230. 7:58you're actually seeing things as they
231. 8:00are
232. 8:01because your brain is filtering down
233. 8:03things for you and creating this
234. 8:05familiarity and this sameness
235. 8:08so that your mind isn't overwhelmed with
236. 8:10chaos.
237. 8:11>> Mm.
238. 8:11>> So that you can get through the, you
239. 8:13know, um,
240. 8:14Aldous Huxley in in Doors of Perception
241. 8:17was calling the mind at large that if
242. 8:19you didn't have this filtering all you
243. 8:21would be seeing all of these incredible
244. 8:23things, but the mind is like this little
245. 8:26funnel that just kind of filters and
246. 8:27prunes everything that you see.
247. 8:29>> Yeah.
248. 8:30>> So I'm talking the sublime, not as
249. 8:32something crazy, not as like, oh,
250. 8:33there's all this could be a bunch of
251. 8:35ants. I'm actually this is how the world
252. 8:38actually is. You're awakening to how
253. 8:40things actually are outside of the
254. 8:42pruning of your brain. So
255. 8:45I talk in the book about the artist
256. 8:47Cézanne
257. 8:49who was obsessed with vision and the
258. 8:52visual uh arena and how he could alter
259. 8:55his vision by focusing on things, right?
260. 8:58And so
261. 8:59his expression was
262. 9:02we humans are given consciousness so
263. 9:04that we can spread consciousness
264. 9:06everywhere.
265. 9:07So his his his saying was I am the
266. 9:10consciousness of the landscape. I am
267. 9:13making the landscape come to life and
268. 9:16think and be alive, right? So he had
269. 9:18this idea
270. 9:20that mountains are actually living
271. 9:22breathing things and that his mind is is
272. 9:25giving it life and he looked at trees
273. 9:27like that and he would
274. 9:29fall in he would stare at one tree
275. 9:31outside of his house. It was like an
276. 9:33apricot tree and he would just just
277. 9:36every he was like trying to focus on
278. 9:38what what it was, what it actually is.
279. 9:40We don't look at things like that
280. 9:42anymore. We just see the word tree. We
281. 9:44see the category tree. He was seeing the
282. 9:47apricots on it and he was seeing the
283. 9:49apricots getting larger as the sun was
284. 9:51hitting them, right? Getting sweeter and
285. 9:54sweeter and and kind of to him it was
286. 9:56like a neurotic relationship between the
287. 9:58apricot and the sun.
288. 10:00Now you might say that's insane. I don't
289. 10:02think so. I think it's actually
290. 10:04beautiful. I think our minds are allowed
291. 10:06we're not just rational creatures. We
292. 10:09are im- creating emotions through
293. 10:10everything we see.
294. 10:12And so I get I get a little bit
295. 10:15frustrated with how
296. 10:16rational our culture has become.
297. 10:19>> [music]
298. 10:25[music]