How to get over sh*t and be happy | Brad Banton | TEDxCluj

This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences.

Brad Blanton Phd. is a psychotherapist, trainer and american writer, author of the "Radical Honesty" bestseller, a book and a theory that challenges a fundamental and almost unchallenged belief of our society. In a truly honest talk, maybe brutally honest, Mr. Blanton convinced the audience that honesty, and not politeness or political correctness is the essence of human relationships and a fulfilled life. Maybe being radically honest all the time is difficult to accept, maybe it is even an idea that a lot of people cannot digest but it is surely an idea that at least has to be intellectually entertained.

OK, so what about honesty?

What would it be for you,
just among your friends

to change the degree of honesty?

What if you're just honest all the time,
with everyone that you know?

People that you already know,
and you weren't too worried

about being tactful, or diplomatic
you just said whatever you thought,

like a kid, like a child.

What do you think it would do
to your relationships?

What would be different

if you were radically honest?

There's a story of a woman
who interviewed for a job,

and her potential boss
asked her a question in the interview

What do you consider
to be your worst fault?

She said, "Honesty".

He said, "I don't think
honesty's a fault."

And she said,
"I don't give a fuck what you think."

(Laughter)

I really like that joke.

I think, would you hire her
if you were the boss?

I would.

I would want someone
that I could depend on not to cater to me.

That I could rely on
to handle things and be honest.

There is this problem about being honest
about what's going through your mind,

and the problem is
that we have three minds.

We have at least three minds,

and we've been taught all of our lives
that our mind is a very valuable thing,

and that thinking
is the most important thing.

I don't think that's right.

Our first mind is called the reactive mind

and that's basically
we are a recording device,

we've been recording
multisensory recordings

of what happens to us
since we were in the womb.

We didn't have vision in there
but we have these multisensory recordings

of successive moments of now.

We have them filed
in a somewhat orderly fashion,

some of them weren't recorded too well,
some of them were a little off

but they still are built into us,
we have these records of things

we've experienced.

They're not just sight and sound,
they're tasty, touchy, feely, smelly

proprioceptive recordings.

So that's one mind,
that's called the reactive mind,

And that's because
whenever something was recorded

it had a little bit of trauma in it
or some shock or something like that,

that got recorded with it.

Then every now and then
those things just kind of pop up

later on in your life.

So that's the reactive mind.

The next mind is called
the personal construct mind.

That's based on replicated experiences.

We have this experience of something
over and over again.

Say the baby has the experience
of nursing, and then not nursing,

and then nursing and not nursing,

and after a while,
after many, many repetitions of this,

a little construct begins
in the mind of the baby:

nursing time and not nursing time.

Then the baby cries when it wants
nursing and gets nursed,

and after a while that gets in there,
and she starts operating on the construct:

nursing, wanting nursing, crying,
and then getting nursed.

It works just fine except
when she wants nursing, and she cries,

and she doesn't get it,
she gets really really pissed off.

We have all these little things in there,

of expectations associated with constructs
that we built in our minds.

That's what we call
the personal construct mind.

Then we have the categorical mind,

or the planning mind, the linear mind,

the one we usually think of as our mind.

It's mostly verbal skills
and has to do with

having definitions of things
and points to objects and ideas;

the mind the way we think of it.

The problem is that these three minds
turn on and off more or less at random,

and they're not very accurate.

In fact, there is a section
of one of my books, titled--

- it's a take-off on the advertisement
from the American Negro College Fund,

they say, "a mind
is a terrible thing to waste" -

and my book says a mind
is a terrible thing wasted.

These minds
are very unreliable instruments,

and one of the things
that makes them unreliable

is that they tend to get mixed up,
they confuse each other.

Like our categorical mind
likes to take responsibility for things

that just popped into our head.

We think it's basically just used
to rationalize the impulse

that came from the reactive mind.

So then what are we to do?

Well, a New Yorker was stopped
by a tourist and said,

"How do I get to Carnegie Hall?"

She said, "Practice, practice, practice."

Practice is what we need,
and what you need to do is practice

knowing the difference
between noticing and thinking.

Knowing the difference
between noticing and thinking

and in a new context
that is you've been taught

that thinking was the most
important thing your whole life

- that's wrong -

noticing is much more important
than thinking.

Thinking is an unreliable mess.

We have three minds
and all of them are screwed up,

and they're interfering with each other

and the reactive mind is always trying
to come up with things,

and the construct mind
came up with an idea

that wasn't accurate in the first place,
and now it's forgotten about half way,

and it interferes with the linear mind,

and we all try to take credit
for the ideas that come to us,

but basically,
we didn't come up with them,

they just jumped out of our mind.

So basically, the mind
is not a very reliable thing.

In order to get some clarity,
we need each other,

because my faulty mind needs to have
a report delivered to your faulty mind

and we have to be able to talk about it,

which means, if we're not honest,

we'll just be even more fucked up
than we already are.

So what we're after
is some kind of clarity,

what we're after is something
called co-hearted co-intelligence,

and I'll get to that in the end.

So what are we to practice?

We practice distinguishing
between noticing and thinking.

Now, stick with me here,
with a whole awareness continuum,

everything we can possibly be aware of
can be divided easily into three parts.

You can be aware of
what's going on outside of you right now,

I could be aware of you,
you could be aware of me, right now.

That's one aspect
of the awareness continuum.

The second aspect is you can be aware

of what's going on within the confines
of your own skin right now in your body

- sensations: heat, cold, tingling,
tension, warmth -

where they are in your body,
you can be aware of that.

The third aspect is you can be aware

of what's going through
your mind, right now.

All of these awarenesses are right now.

That's all there is, I call it
inside, outside, upside down.

After my favorite children's book.

So you can notice
what's going on in your body,

you can notice
what's going on outside of you

and you can notice
what's going through your mind right now.

The only problem is if you actually say
to the voices in your mind,

"OK, go ahead, I'm listening,"

all of a sudden, your mind doesn't know
whether to shit or go blind.

It just doesn't say anything

because it's run by resistance.

If you're trying to stop your mind
that's the best way to keep it going.

So the noticing, is noticing
what's happening outside of you,

it's noticing what's
happening in your body,

and noticing what's going
through your mind.

Radical honesty is reporting
what you notice, period.

You report what you notice

without any particular,
common ways of lying,

like politeness and being diplomatic.

Diplomacy works just the way--

the world is completely fucked up,
and it's about diplomacy.

Usually, we talk about either
we go to war or you use diplomacy.

That's not true.

Diplomacy is what causes war.

So what we're after
is to get the value of paying attention.

So if you're going to report
to another person

what you notice in your minds,

you have to report everything
in all three minds.

They'll be contradictory;

your reacting mind
will come up with something,

you'll say that out loud,

and then your linear mind
will come up with something else,

you say that out loud,
they contradict each other.

Then, your personal construct mind
says something else,

and people think, "What are you, crazy?

All these things
are going through your mind?"

Yes, and so are you.

So, we, crazy people,
have to figure out a way

to do a better guess at what's going on.

But if you're lying,

nobody gets the chance
to intervene for you,

and you don't get the chance
to intervene for anyone else.

So what is the value of honesty?

You see, life is trouble. Period.

If you have three minds,
you've got trouble.

If you tell a lie, you'll get in trouble.

If you tell the truth,
you'll get in trouble.

So lying gets you in trouble,
and telling the truth gets you in trouble.

And the question arises,
which is the best kind of trouble?

And the best kind of trouble
is the trouble that's caused

whenever you speak the truth.

Even if it upsets somebody,
or hurts their feelings, or offends them.

I recommend that you offend people,

and I recommend
that you hurt people's feelings,

and I recommend that you stick with them
until they get over it;

It only takes about 90 seconds or so.

(Laughter)

(Applause)

Thank you.

The noticing that you do
has to be in a certain order.

We like for you to notice
what's going on outside of you first,

use your eyes and ears,
and your sense of balance,

and your relationship to gravity,

and notice what's going on
in the world first.

Then report that to who ever's around.

Then secondly notice what's going on
within the confines of your own skin.

I notice there's a sort
of tension in my stomach,

a little tension
in the right hand shoulder over here,

a little movement here, you report that,

and only after you reported those two,

then, you start reporting
what's going through your minds.

Now, the best way to get in touch
with what's going through your mind

is to start from the right place,
and the right place is not in your mind.

You never want to begin
any new project by thinking.

In fact, you want to be grounded
in your experience

which means the awareness continuum.

I ran this eight day long workshop
for about 20 years,

3 or 4 or 5 times a year,
it was 8 days long,

about 16 people each time.

We spent 12, 14 hours a day trying to get

what a year of psychotherapy would do

condensed down into one week.

About 10 years into it,
we discovered this amazing discovery.

We discovered a chant that puts you
on the road to enlightenment;

in fact, you're enlightened
within three minutes.

Now, I usually charge
a whole lot of money for this,

but I'm going to give it
to you guys for free.

This is the chant

that will lead without fail
to enlightenment within three minutes.

(sobbing) Duuuuhhhhhhh...

Duuuuhhhhhhh...

Duuuuhhhhhhh...

And if you slobber,
you get there in two minutes.

So you slobber...

(Laughter)

You used to get dumber than a stick,
dumber than a box of hammers.

Duuuuhhhhhhh...

That's the way you start
if you want to get enlightened.

You don't get enlightened by being smart,

being smart is the biggest
blocked enlightenment there is, all right.

It's not by thinking.

So if you get grounded in your dumbness,
what we call dumbfounded,

if you get dumbfounded,

there is a way you begin to notice

the way you usually interrupt noticing;

which is with your mind.

And the reason for doing all this is this:

when you experience an experience,
it comes and goes.

When you resist experiencing
an experience, it persists.

The major form of resisting
your experience is by thinking.

So if you're thinking,
trying to think your way around things,

what you first need to do

is to stop thinking and feel
your way through things.

When you open up
to your awareness in your body,

and your awareness
of the other being across from you,

and your awareness
of what's going through your mind,

and you report them all,

not as an advocate trying to persuade

how you're right
and they're wrong or something,

but just to report, so you can share
and check each other out,

then, you tell the truth
about what you're experiencing,

because it's vital information
that both of us need

in order for us
to be able to make it in the world.

I believe that your personal happiness
is critically related to this,

is dependent on this,

and I think that the survival
of human kind is too.

So I want you to get out there
and start being radically honest.

Thanks.

(Applause)