WEBVTT

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I'm here to speak
about the elephant in the room.

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I know, but it's there for all of us,
in one form or another.

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It's this dissatisfaction and unhappiness
with what we have in our lives.

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Maybe if you're here or watching this,
you have all the basics covered -

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food, water, safety, shelter.

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But somehow, we long for something more.

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As a psychologist, I've really seen
how we all want to be happy,

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but keep chasing it in the future.

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And I know that myself, really well,

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because I had everything in life.

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I had loving support, education, career,

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but it wasn't enough,


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and that really frustrated me.

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Eventually, I discovered
the real, obvious reason.

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It's really obvious.

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It's our mind.

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It really gets distracted
and lost in negatives,

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and has a difficult time being right here

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in the present moment.

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What helped me see that so clearly
was mindfulness meditation.

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I came across it
in the research in my field,

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and started using it with clients.

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And that took me on a personal journey,

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which eventually led me
to this ridiculous gut feeling

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of what I had to do,

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which was drop everything in my life

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and go to a six-month meditation retreat

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in Southeast Asia, in a forest monastery,

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in silence.

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I tell you, it was the most difficult,
unpleasant, painful six months of my life.

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(Laughter)

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But it really taught me profound lessons
that have inspired me to be here today.

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So I'm here to really share with you
my personal insights

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and professional understanding
of mindfulness meditation

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with the hope that you give it a chance,
so you can see for yourself

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how it can redefine the way
we approach happiness,

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satisfaction,

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and reduce the suffering in our lives

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from the pain that's already there.

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Okay, so back to some
not-so-good news about our mind:

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it has the tendency for a negativity bias,

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or evolutionary psychologists
refer to it as a survival mechanism.

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So, if there's a bunny in the bushes,

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and there are sounds,

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our mind is ready with a stress response,
for a flight-or-fight response -

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I did it backwards actually -

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(Laughter)

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fight-or-flight response.

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Even if there's just a bunny,
we're getting ready for a tiger.

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And neuro-psychologists refer to that

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as our brain being
like Velcro to the negatives.

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(Thoop)

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Latches on to negatives.

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Anyone familiar with that?
Just hang on.

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And being like Teflon fabric
to the positives.

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(Whoosh)

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Letting them all slip away.

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Okay, so it's not all bad news.

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With the advances in neuroscience,

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mindfulness meditation has been shown
to change the structure of our brain.

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And you don't have to do a six-month
retreat in a [forest monastery].

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That's the good news.

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Even in eight weeks
in mindfulness programs,

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practicing 40-45 minutes a day,

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we can improve concentration,
decision-making, compassion,

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and, life satisfaction.

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So, what exactly
is mindfulness meditation?

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It's one form of meditation,

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and basically it's training
the brain to be present.

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It's based on thousands of years
of wisdom tradition in Asia.

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And how we do it, one way,
is we place our attention on the belly,

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to watch our breath.

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But we do that in a particular way,

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or as Jon Kabat-Zinn,
who brought mindfulness to medicine,

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which is quite big, actually,

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he defines it in four words:

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we pay attention on purpose,
so with an intention.

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And in the present moment,


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so, right now,

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and the hardest part for all of us:

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non-judgmentally.

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Really tough.

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So, let's say this is our attention.

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We place it right on the belly.

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Guess what's going
to happen with our mind?

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(Whoo)

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We're going to get distracted.

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But, without pushing against the thoughts
or hating the thoughts,

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or clinging onto them, good or bad,

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[we bring it] right back.

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Now, you can get
a sense of that if you like now,

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if you'd like to join me,

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by placing your hand on the belly,

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and we're just going
to observe two breaths.

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Natural inhale; natural exhale.

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Even slightly.

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Inhale...

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exhale.

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Inhale...

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exhale.

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Okay, now, when we do that,
and some of you maybe noticed that,

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there will be thoughts,

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emotions,

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or sensations.

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But we don't get lost in them.

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We bring our attention back.

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And every time we do that,
guess what we're doing to our brain?

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We're strengthening the muscles
in the brain, every time.

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It's a gym workout for the brain.

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And in the process
of doing that, patiently -

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I mean it takes a lot of patience -

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and compassionately,

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we learn to work with our mind,

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and be present with whatever is here.

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We don't have to like what's here.

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When I first arrived
at the forest monastery,

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I asked the monk, "Is it true there
are poisonous snakes on the compound?"

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He said, "Yes, yes. Deadly. Deadly."

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(Laughter)

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"Just stay away from them.
Walk mindfully."

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Great.

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(Laughter)

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"Use a flashlight at night."

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And I love this one too:

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"Check your meditation cushion
before you sit on it."

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(Laughter)

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I mean... I could have died.

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That was, you know, a possibility.

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But the best part, he said,

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"Send them love."

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(Laughter)

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"They were here before us."

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Okay, Mr. Monk,
I wasn't ready for that yet.

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(Laughter)

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But I did notice, even before
going to this long retreat,

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I noticed some changes in my mind
and how I reacted,

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just from daily meditation.

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One day I was stuck in a traffic jam,
really early in the morning, 5:40,

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on my way to the gym, and unexpected.

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And, instead of the usual,
"Why aren't these people moving?",

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get uptight, agitated,

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and the mind going into

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"This is going to be a horrible day.
I'm late for stuff,"

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what surprised me is what I heard,
and I thought, "Oh, interesting."

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The thought? "I hope no one's hurt."

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Maybe there was an accident,

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or maybe it's construction
and those workers were up all night,

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and I started wishing them well.

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"May they be safe today."

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Now, I still was late,
so that didn't change,

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but I didn't spiral
into the negativity of the mind.

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And it really showed me,
"Wow, it was worth working that muscle,

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and the daily practice."

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So, let's put together
what I shared so far,

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with a little illustration.

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Imagine this is pain


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It could be anything.

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Let's just say, stomach pain.

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Signals travel to the brain.

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If you magine this is our brain,
our mind, relatively calm.

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We have now a signal of pain.

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But it doesn't stop there.

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We're not usually loving to it.

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We hate it, and we get agitated,
and wish it wasn't there.

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And then what we do, we let negativity

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leak into the rest of our mind.

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"Why me?"

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"Why is this happening?"

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And then?

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We stir it all up with negativity.

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"What kind of horrible thing this is."

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We worry.

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And instead of being
present with the pain?

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We get taken for a ride in our mind.

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I know that really well,

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because I experienced that deeply
at this forest retreat.

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You see, the honeymoon phase
of "Ahh, following my dream,

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meditating for so long,"

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(Laughter)

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that ended after the first night.

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(Laughter)

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You know, everything
that brought me happiness,

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or I thought brought me happiness,

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was pulled from under my legs.

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The people I love, there's no technology,

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no social media,

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no Internet,

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just seclusion and deprivation.

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And there was a wake-up call
in the morning,

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3 a.m. every day.

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But, it wasn't this nice chime of (Ding),

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(Laughter)

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"Good morning, Kasim."

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No, it wasn't that, it was,
(Boom, boom, boom)

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every morning -

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startling -

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which would begin our 13-14 hours
of daily meditation.

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In the heat with the lovely insects,

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scorpions, yeah, scorpions.

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Actually, someone got stung by one

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as they sat on their cushion
when I was there, so...

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(Laughter)

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And sleeping on this lovely wooden bed
with just a little bit of foam.

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Daily hunger.

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Because last meal of the day? Guess what?

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Lunch.

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And when?

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10:30 in the morning.

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(Laughter)

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That was the reality.

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So whenever my mind
got stirred up in any of that pain,

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it was crushing.

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I felt trapped.

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I actually woke up one night
screaming from it all.

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I really saw how when we begin
to fight and resist our reality,

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it gets worse.

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Things began to change for me when

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I just started to look at pain as pain,

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and saw so clearly that it was my mind
that was creating the suffering,

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which is optional.

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Wow.

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All I have to do is just
be in this moment.

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And mindfulness showed me
we can be in the eye of the storm.

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Watch it all pass, moment by moment.

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And there is such freedom
in trusting impermanence in that way.

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And then, really holding our pain
with great compassion.

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Because it's painful already.

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You don't need to hate it more;
just be with it.

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You know, there's
a psychiatrist, Viktor Frankl,

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and he said, "Choice
is the last human freedom."

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Choice.

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I learned that using
mindfulness is a choice.

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And even when all my freedoms
felt like they were taken away,

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I experienced freedom right here.

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And my biggest, biggest epiphany,

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is happiness and satisfaction
is not in the distant future,

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or when I go back home,

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it's actually available
for all of us in every moment.

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It blooms naturally
from a state of mind that's calm,

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not agitated,

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and peaceful.

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So I want to leave you with this... -

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Oh, that was me there -

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(Laughter)

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I want to leave you with this acronym
that captures some of my learning,

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and I hope you use it when you find
yourself lost in any kind of suffering.

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And it's LOST.

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The first letter: L.

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Just know you are lost
in suffering and thoughts.

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Come back to the present moment.

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O: Offer loving kindness.

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You don't have to like the pain;
just hold it with compassion.

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See and smile.

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See pain as pain,

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or, joy as joy,

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without the added agitation of the mind.

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And smile knowing you just did that.

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And T for take a deep breath,
knowing you are not alone;

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we are all dealing
with the condition of the mind.

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So I invite you to join me
in taking a deep breath into the nose.

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(Inhales)

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And exhale.

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(Exhales)

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So to sum up: if we don't retrain
the brain, it can cause added pain,

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and the training can begin
with mindfulness meditation.

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It's not a quick fix

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with magical results,

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nor is it going to make us immune
to the challenges in life.

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But imagine, imagine if half of us
created a daily meditation practice

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to be more present in life
with the good and the bad,

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offer more compassion,

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and feel more moments
of satisfaction and happiness,

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and let that bloom naturally
from a state of mind that's more peaceful.

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That's a recipe for positive change,

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and it can start with you.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)