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

Translator: Carla GattoneReviewer: Denise RQ 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 diplomaticyou just said whatever you thought, like a kid, like a child.

What do you think it would doto your relationships? What would be different if you were radically honest? There's a story of a womanwho interviewed for a job, and her potential bossasked her a question in the interview What do you considerto be your worst fault? She said, “Honesty”.

He said, “I don't thinkhonesty'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 herif you were the boss? I would.

I would want someonethat I could depend on not to cater to me.

That I could rely onto handle things and be honest.

There is this problem about being honestabout what's going through your mind, and the problem isthat we have three minds.

We have at least three minds, and we've been taught all of our livesthat our mind is a very valuable thing, and that thinkingis the most important thing.

I don't think that's right.

Our first mind is called the reactive mind and that's basicallywe are a recording device, we've been recordingmultisensory recordings of what happens to ussince we were in the womb.

We didn't have vision in therebut we have these multisensory recordings of successive moments of now.

We have them filedin 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 becausewhenever something was recorded it had a little bit of trauma in itor some shock or something like that, that got recorded with it.

Then every now and thenthose things just kind of pop up later on in your life.

So that's the reactive mind.

The next mind is calledthe personal construct mind.

That's based on replicated experiences.

We have this experience of somethingover and over again.

Say the baby has the experienceof nursing, and then not nursing, and then nursing and not nursing, and after a while, after many, many repetitions of this, a little construct beginsin the mind of the baby: nursing time and not nursing time.

Then the baby cries when it wantsnursing 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 exceptwhen 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 constructsthat we built in our minds.

That's what we callthe 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 skillsand has to do with having definitions of thingsand points to objects and ideas; the mind the way we think of it.

The problem is that these three mindsturn on and off more or less at random, and they're not very accurate.

In fact, there is a sectionof one of my books, titled– – it's a take-off on the advertisementfrom the American Negro College Fund, they say, “a mindis a terrible thing to waste” – and my book says a mindis a terrible thing wasted.

These mindsare very unreliable instruments, and one of the thingsthat makes them unreliable is that they tend to get mixed up, they confuse each other.

Like our categorical mindlikes to take responsibility for things that just popped into our head.

We think it's basically just usedto rationalize the impulse that came from the reactive mind.

So then what are we to do? Well, a New Yorker was stoppedby 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 differencebetween noticing and thinking.

Knowing the differencebetween noticing and thinking and in a new contextthat is you've been taught that thinking was the mostimportant thing your whole life – that's wrong – noticing is much more importantthan thinking.

Thinking is an unreliable mess.

We have three mindsand all of them are screwed up, and they're interfering with each other and the reactive mind is always tryingto come up with things, and the construct mindcame 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 creditfor 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 mindis not a very reliable thing.

In order to get some clarity, we need each other, because my faulty mind needs to havea 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 upthan we already are.

So what we're afteris some kind of clarity, what we're after is somethingcalled co-hearted co-intelligence, and I'll get to that in the end.

So what are we to practice? We practice distinguishingbetween noticing and thinking.

Now, stick with me here, with a whole awareness continuum, everything we can possibly be aware ofcan be divided easily into three parts.

You can be aware ofwhat'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 aspectof the awareness continuum.

The second aspect is you can be aware of what's going on within the confinesof 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 throughyour mind, right now.

All of these awarenesses are right now.

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

After my favorite children's book.

So you can noticewhat's going on in your body, you can noticewhat's going on outside of you and you can noticewhat's going through your mind right now.

The only problem is if you actually sayto the voices in your mind, “OK, go ahead, I'm listening, ” all of a sudden, your mind doesn't knowwhether to shit or go blind.

It just doesn't say anything because it's run by resistance.

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

So the noticing, is noticingwhat's happening outside of you, it's noticing what'shappening in your body, and noticing what's goingthrough your mind.

Radical honesty is reportingwhat 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 eitherwe go to war or you use diplomacy.

That's not true.

Diplomacy is what causes war.

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

So if you're going to reportto another person what you notice in your minds, you have to report everythingin all three minds.

They'll be contradictory; your reacting mindwill come up with something, you'll say that out loud, and then your linear mindwill come up with something else, you say that out loud, they contradict each other.

Then, your personal construct mindsays something else, and people think, “What are you, crazy? All these thingsare 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 chanceto intervene for you, and you don't get the chanceto 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 troubleis 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 recommendthat you hurt people's feelings, and I recommend that you stick with themuntil they get over it; It only takes about 90 seconds or so.

(Laughter) (Applause) Thank you.

The noticing that you dohas to be in a certain order.

We like for you to noticewhat'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 onin the world first.

Then report that to who ever's around.

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

I notice there's a sortof tension in my stomach, a little tensionin the right hand shoulder over here, a little movement here, you report that, and only after you reported those two, then, you start reportingwhat's going through your minds.

Now, the best way to get in touchwith 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 beginany new project by thinking.

In fact, you want to be groundedin your experience which means the awareness continuum.

I ran this eight day long workshopfor 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 youon the road to enlightenment; in fact, you're enlightenedwithin three minutes.

Now, I usually chargea whole lot of money for this, but I'm going to give itto you guys for free.

This is the chant that will lead without failto 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 startif you want to get enlightened.

You don't get enlightened by being smart, being smart is the biggestblocked 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 experiencingan experience, it persists.

The major form of resistingyour 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 feelyour way through things.

When you open upto your awareness in your body, and your awarenessof the other being across from you, and your awarenessof what's going through your mind, and you report them all, not as an advocate trying to persuade how you're rightand they're wrong or something, but just to report, so you can shareand check each other out, then, you tell the truthabout what you're experiencing, because it's vital informationthat both of us need in order for usto be able to make it in the world.

I believe that your personal happinessis critically related to this, is dependent on this, and I think that the survivalof human kind is too.

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

Thanks.

(Applause).