[Music]
I will begin by congratulating you
congratulations ladies and gentlemen
boys and girls you’ve made it you’re
here you have arrived at your
destination
welcome to the land of more more and
more of us are living in the land of
more more and more of us are
experiencing an unprecedented amount of
more than ever before never before have
we had so much more
ours is a multiple choice society in
which we get to enjoy so much more of
everything so let’s take a closer look
for instance we have more freedoms more
civil rights and more democracies it was
in the 1990s for the first time in the
history of this planet that more of us
were governed by democracy than a
dictatorship sociologists have noted
that some democracies are a little bit
more democratic than other democracies
so this is clearly a work in progress
we have more schools more colleges or
universities and more chances to enroll
in higher education we have a more
varied career path than ever before gone
is the era of one life one job or even a
job for life we have added more years to
our lifespan so much so that many of us
get to have two or three lifetimes for
the price of one these days anybody here
on their third lifetime already perhaps
yeah maybe even their fourth I mean it
happens we have more money floating
around on the planet than ever before we
came off the goldstone
that’s what made that possible we also
have more purchasing power than ever
before thanks largely to credit cards
and a debt economy we have more shopping
outlets than ever so many shoes so
little time we have these huge huge
shopping villages where you can save
money if you spend everything that
you’ve got it’s an extraordinary thing
we have more travel destinations we have
more adventures we have more journeys to
take and there’s certainly more shopping
to do and more experiences to have the
art of simultaneous consumption in the
land of Moore is a very necessary skill
we have bargains and sales we have stuff
and a great need for storage fortunately
storage is a booming business you would
do well to invest in storage it would
seem I should also add that more of us
have greater expectations than ever
before more of us want to live an
above-average life and more of us are
actually feeling dissatisfied we have
more TV channels I remember in the olden
days my daughter beau once asked me dad
were you alive in the olden days and I
said no and then I realized I was
but in my olden days we had three
channels TV channels and then another
one came along and we all knew it
wouldn’t work there was no need for a
fourth channel and the reception wasn’t
any good anyway if you remember and it
only went on from about 6:00 at night to
late and then we ran out of ideas we
didn’t know what else to put on it but
anyway today we have more TV channels an
average of over 500 channels and we’ve
got nothing to watch
quite curiously we’ve got more and more
beauty products and we’re feeling less
and less beautiful and we have more
choices of tea than ever before and we
are still thirsty for something
so when let’s talk about tea once upon a
time there was just tea
and it was very straight forward
essentially what would happen is a
friend of yours would come round they’d
knock on the door you’d open the door
you’d let them in let’s say hello they’d
say hello and then they’d say something
like should I take my shoes off and we’d
say no you’re fine and then they’d say
you’re sure and we go yeah you’re better
take your shoes off and then we’d look
at their shoes and it’s saying that’s a
nice pair of shoes you say thank you
I’ve got them in a sale oh yeah they
were 50% off with the other three pairs
of shoes I had to buy great so then we’d
walk through maybe to the living room or
possibly to the kitchen and then you
would ask your friend would you like a
cup of tea and they would say yes or no
that’s it it’s very straightforward all
the way until recently fast-forward to
today and when you ask your friend would
you like a cup of tea they say Oh what
have you got it’s changed in the
beginning there was basically two
choices you had a Sam tea a multi bold
strong caramel colored tea fully
oxidized good for the morning good for
getting you going
gorgeous gorgeous thing one of my
favorites and this team is a beautiful
thing and hard to live without it has to
be said and then you see we had this
other tea Darjeeling now Darjeeling was
more floral delicate fruity and muscatel
scent the leaves slightly greener often
describes as the champagne of teas it
was a tea that you often have without
milk and it was a tea for the afternoon
there were some other teas that we were
aware of particularly Earl Grey Earl
Grey was for posh people or people who
wanted to be posh was mostly an oolong
tea and you just added some oil of
bergamot to it and that’s essentially
what made it into our grain Earl Grey or
the Earl Grey mixture his thought was
named after Charles grey the second Earl
Grey who was the British prime minister
in the 1830s and was also the author of
the reform bill in 1832 and then there
was Lady Grey tea do you remember that
one Lady Grey tea this is with those
little bits of orange and lemon in them
this was actually named after Mary
Elizabeth Grey who was the wife of
Charles grey she was the only daughter
of William Ponsonby who was the first
Baron Ponsonby of him Achille if you’re
making notes
just want you to know that we were aware
of one or two other teas floating around
like orange pekoe and lapsang souchong
and along teas and unities but
fundamentally we were managing our
choices we were in control and life was
okay until that is with the arrival of
herbal teas herbal teas that smell nice
but don’t taste of anything if you’ve
noticed in the u.s. they don’t say herb
all teas they say herbal teas it’s a bit
strange imagine if we did that to other
words humor would be humor which isn’t
very funny help would be help I need
some help please thank you so much for
helping me today it’s a little bit
strange healing would be Ealing which is
a place in London happiness would be
happiness which sounds like a
Frenchman’s appendage if you say it fast
enough
[Applause]
anyway the whole point is that suddenly
out of nowhere and everywhere arrived
these herbal teas and I think it really
started with camomile ginger fennel
hibiscus mint nettle rose hip that sort
of thing rose hip rose hip was one of
the way I just couldn’t do that
that was like red fruity cardboard I
don’t know what it was and I was always
keen to make sure that the bit of paper
the tag didn’t get into the tea because
it would make it taste even more
papering anyway after that came the
combos lemon and ginger apple and
cinnamon blackcurrant and vanilla
cranberry and almond pear and pistachio
licorice and mint lime and creme brulee
and after that if you remember was the
medicinal teas and then there was Shen
Singh and raspberry leaf and echinacea
and Bilbrey
and then there were teas forum for the
liver and teas for the kidneys and teas
for the colon and T’s for the pancreas
somewhere around here how clever these
teas were that they seemed to know where
to go absolutely remarkable
[Applause]
teas for the head shoulders knees and
toes straw Denari teas for insomnia and
stress and fatigue and allergies and
anxiety anxiety because we’ve got so
many choices of teeth so you needed
something for to calm the attention and
then we had the spiritual teas in came
the spiritual teas like yogi teas and
Zen T’s and Kundalini teas and celestial
seasoning and heavenly teas and Quan Yin
teasin holy basil and reishi teas chakra
teas Socrates it’s my only joke okay
that was just a joke and then after that
we had the sort of more eco-friendly
teas you know me had well eco teas and
what as the root teas Roy boss Roy boss
what even is it hard to like first time
I will say but seriously what is Roy
boss is it a leaf is it a flower is it a
root is it even edible I wonder but if
you drink it enough it starts to work on
you so I’m told
and then we had other teas like the
organic teas and the biodynamic teas and
the earth friendly teas where the vapor
would come off the tea cup and heal the
ozone layers up above
[Applause]
and we had the ergonomic ly friendly tea
bags round tea bags and and pyramid tea
bags all to help you stir the tea and
avoid repetitive strain injury because
of so much tea that needed to be drunk
and all of the choices that exist then
there were the flower teas started to
happen lavender and elder flower and
jasmine some of my favorites I have to
say and then after that the colored teas
we had green tea we sort of pretty much
knew about that but all of a sudden
there was now white swirling mists
pomegranate tea Blue Mountain fun dirty
red tea silver Jasmine needles oh
chicken avocado bacon in a salad oh no
that’s a sandwich
basically put the whole point is is that
all of these teas arrived and rather
interestingly even though we have more
tea that is available than ever ever
before
strangely enough we’re still not
satisfied we’re still not happy and
we’re still wondering what’s more there
must be something more to life than all
of this mmm so I’m the creator of a
Happiness Project and I’ve been running
the Happiness Project since 1992 in the
olden days and I pretty much get a piece
of research land on my desk every day
telling me something about happiness
telling me something about this land of
more that we are now all living in and
let me give you a couple of pieces of
research that I think are very
interesting and worth taking note of the
first piece of research has to do with
static happiness researchers have
noticed that in the last 50 years our
levels of happiness have remained mostly
static for instance in the US when
people were asked in the 1950s I think
it was 1960s how happier you
please score from one to ten one is not
at all ten is very happy
the average answer was seven point five
out of ten
more recently or when a similar number
people have been asked how happy are you
the average answer is seven point four
out of ten so we are experiencing static
happiness even though we have much more
than ever before another set of
researchers have highlighted a
phenomenon called semi-happy it appears
that many of us really are just semi
happy now in the UK it was in 1957
several hundred people were asked how
happy are you not happy quite happy
happy very happy 52% of people said
they’re very happy so that’s just about
one in two people saying they’re very
happy
more recently thirty-seven percent of
people say that they are very happy so
something’s afoot here we’re
experiencing static happiness and at the
same time we seem to be semi happy even
though we seem to have so much more than
ever before in the land of more and it
one of the most important questions we
can ask ourselves is what do I want
just that what do I want when you know
what you want you stop wanting more of
everything else lady called an Valley
Fox said you can never have enough of
what you didn’t want in the first place
when you know what you want I think
that’s the key to happiness happiness is
knowing what you want success is knowing
what you want freedom is somehow knowing
what you want so every now and then I
think a great thing to do is to be able
to stop and just to consider that
question what do I want now at first
glance it looks like what do I want is
inviting you to think
about what do I want to have what do I
want to buy and what do I want to get
but with Second Sight if we look again I
think we’ll see that what do I want can
be a much more interesting question than
that for instance we can take a look at
what do I want and broaden it out a
little bit expand the edges of that
question and consider for instance
something like what do I want to be what
sort of a person would I like to be in
this world how can I be more authentic
how can I be more of the real me and not
a conditioned me a conditioned me which
because of our culture of more means
that I end up defining myself as a
consumer instead of as a truly spiritual
being maybe when I look at this question
what do I want I can also consider what
is it that I would most like to connect
to maybe I could connect somehow more to
my own heart and also to the hearts of
others after all I think it’s fair to
say that psychologists and mystics and
sociologists and environmentalists will
all agree that really the great cause of
lack and scarcity on our planet is our
perceived separation from one another so
to connect with our own heart to connect
with the hearts of others to connect
with the heart of this earth that maybe
is what we would like to experience more
of well maybe it’s even more than that
maybe we can look at what do I want and
think about how I could recognize my
true nature more fully and more
obviously Thoreau said that the soul
grows through subtraction not addition
it’s often when we take things away that
we actually get an experience of our
true self you know it’s wonderful to
accumulate from time to time but I’ve
also noticed that deep
uttering is a wonderful experience and
I’ve often wondered about that
why is decluttering such a wonderful
experience and I think the sense is is
that it helps me if you like to get back
to what I really really want every now
and then I like to pour myself a cup of
tea sit down and think about this what’s
it like to be me when I don’t want
anything I find this to be a very very
interesting meditation the first time I
tried it I have to be honest I felt
rather disorientated but just to give it
a moment or two to be able to as the
great poet Rumi said rest from wanting
to take a moment to rest from wanting it
can be a great great revelation to be
able just to rest from wanting and to
experience yourself without wanting
anything as for me being truly a great
revelation I’ve noticed that when I am
me without wanting anything I find that
I’m often more open more receptive more
grateful and ultimately I feel more
abundant when I rest from wanting
anything I find myself back in the
oneness back in the garden the original
garden and when I’m in the garden that’s
when I noticed truly that everything
that I truly need is already here and
it’s a beautiful revelation so my
invitation to you is to make yourself a
cup of tea to sit down and ask yourself
what is it like to be me
when I don’t want anything and I think
you’ll make a beautiful discovery and
the beautiful discovery is is that
inside you is everything that you
really want you are everything that you
truly want and if you ever ever think
that something might be missing in your
life it’s probably just more of the real
you thank you very much
[Applause]
[Music]
I will begin by congratulating you
congratulations ladies and gentlemen
boys and girls you’ve made it you’re
here you have arrived at your
destination
welcome to the land of more more and
more of us are living in the land of
more more and more of us are
experiencing an unprecedented amount of
more than ever before never before have
we had so much more
ours is a multiple choice society in
which we get to enjoy so much more of
everything so let’s take a closer look
for instance we have more freedoms more
civil rights and more democracies it was
in the 1990s for the first time in the
history of this planet that more of us
were governed by democracy than a
dictatorship sociologists have noted
that some democracies are a little bit
more democratic than other democracies
so this is clearly a work in progress
we have more schools more colleges or
universities and more chances to enroll
in higher education we have a more
varied career path than ever before gone
is the era of one life one job or even a
job for life we have added more years to
our lifespan so much so that many of us
get to have two or three lifetimes for
the price of one these days anybody here
on their third lifetime already perhaps
yeah maybe even their fourth I mean it
happens we have more money floating
around on the planet than ever before we
came off the goldstone
that’s what made that possible we also
have more purchasing power than ever
before thanks largely to credit cards
and a debt economy we have more shopping
outlets than ever so many shoes so
little time we have these huge huge
shopping villages where you can save
money if you spend everything that
you’ve got it’s an extraordinary thing
we have more travel destinations we have
more adventures we have more journeys to
take and there’s certainly more shopping
to do and more experiences to have the
art of simultaneous consumption in the
land of Moore is a very necessary skill
we have bargains and sales we have stuff
and a great need for storage fortunately
storage is a booming business you would
do well to invest in storage it would
seem I should also add that more of us
have greater expectations than ever
before more of us want to live an
above-average life and more of us are
actually feeling dissatisfied we have
more TV channels I remember in the olden
days my daughter beau once asked me dad
were you alive in the olden days and I
said no and then I realized I was
but in my olden days we had three
channels TV channels and then another
one came along and we all knew it
wouldn’t work there was no need for a
fourth channel and the reception wasn’t
any good anyway if you remember and it
only went on from about 6:00 at night to
late and then we ran out of ideas we
didn’t know what else to put on it but
anyway today we have more TV channels an
average of over 500 channels and we’ve
got nothing to watch
quite curiously we’ve got more and more
beauty products and we’re feeling less
and less beautiful and we have more
choices of tea than ever before and we
are still thirsty for something
so when let’s talk about tea once upon a
time there was just tea
and it was very straight forward
essentially what would happen is a
friend of yours would come round they’d
knock on the door you’d open the door
you’d let them in let’s say hello they’d
say hello and then they’d say something
like should I take my shoes off and we’d
say no you’re fine and then they’d say
you’re sure and we go yeah you’re better
take your shoes off and then we’d look
at their shoes and it’s saying that’s a
nice pair of shoes you say thank you
I’ve got them in a sale oh yeah they
were 50% off with the other three pairs
of shoes I had to buy great so then we’d
walk through maybe to the living room or
possibly to the kitchen and then you
would ask your friend would you like a
cup of tea and they would say yes or no
that’s it it’s very straightforward all
the way until recently fast-forward to
today and when you ask your friend would
you like a cup of tea they say Oh what
have you got it’s changed in the
beginning there was basically two
choices you had a Sam tea a multi bold
strong caramel colored tea fully
oxidized good for the morning good for
getting you going
gorgeous gorgeous thing one of my
favorites and this team is a beautiful
thing and hard to live without it has to
be said and then you see we had this
other tea Darjeeling now Darjeeling was
more floral delicate fruity and muscatel
scent the leaves slightly greener often
describes as the champagne of teas it
was a tea that you often have without
milk and it was a tea for the afternoon
there were some other teas that we were
aware of particularly Earl Grey Earl
Grey was for posh people or people who
wanted to be posh was mostly an oolong
tea and you just added some oil of
bergamot to it and that’s essentially
what made it into our grain Earl Grey or
the Earl Grey mixture his thought was
named after Charles grey the second Earl
Grey who was the British prime minister
in the 1830s and was also the author of
the reform bill in 1832 and then there
was Lady Grey tea do you remember that
one Lady Grey tea this is with those
little bits of orange and lemon in them
this was actually named after Mary
Elizabeth Grey who was the wife of
Charles grey she was the only daughter
of William Ponsonby who was the first
Baron Ponsonby of him Achille if you’re
making notes
just want you to know that we were aware
of one or two other teas floating around
like orange pekoe and lapsang souchong
and along teas and unities but
fundamentally we were managing our
choices we were in control and life was
okay until that is with the arrival of
herbal teas herbal teas that smell nice
but don’t taste of anything if you’ve
noticed in the u.s. they don’t say herb
all teas they say herbal teas it’s a bit
strange imagine if we did that to other
words humor would be humor which isn’t
very funny help would be help I need
some help please thank you so much for
helping me today it’s a little bit
strange healing would be Ealing which is
a place in London happiness would be
happiness which sounds like a
Frenchman’s appendage if you say it fast
enough
[Applause]
anyway the whole point is that suddenly
out of nowhere and everywhere arrived
these herbal teas and I think it really
started with camomile ginger fennel
hibiscus mint nettle rose hip that sort
of thing rose hip rose hip was one of
the way I just couldn’t do that
that was like red fruity cardboard I
don’t know what it was and I was always
keen to make sure that the bit of paper
the tag didn’t get into the tea because
it would make it taste even more
papering anyway after that came the
combos lemon and ginger apple and
cinnamon blackcurrant and vanilla
cranberry and almond pear and pistachio
licorice and mint lime and creme brulee
and after that if you remember was the
medicinal teas and then there was Shen
Singh and raspberry leaf and echinacea
and Bilbrey
and then there were teas forum for the
liver and teas for the kidneys and teas
for the colon and T’s for the pancreas
somewhere around here how clever these
teas were that they seemed to know where
to go absolutely remarkable
[Applause]
teas for the head shoulders knees and
toes straw Denari teas for insomnia and
stress and fatigue and allergies and
anxiety anxiety because we’ve got so
many choices of teeth so you needed
something for to calm the attention and
then we had the spiritual teas in came
the spiritual teas like yogi teas and
Zen T’s and Kundalini teas and celestial
seasoning and heavenly teas and Quan Yin
teasin holy basil and reishi teas chakra
teas Socrates it’s my only joke okay
that was just a joke and then after that
we had the sort of more eco-friendly
teas you know me had well eco teas and
what as the root teas Roy boss Roy boss
what even is it hard to like first time
I will say but seriously what is Roy
boss is it a leaf is it a flower is it a
root is it even edible I wonder but if
you drink it enough it starts to work on
you so I’m told
and then we had other teas like the
organic teas and the biodynamic teas and
the earth friendly teas where the vapor
would come off the tea cup and heal the
ozone layers up above
[Applause]
and we had the ergonomic ly friendly tea
bags round tea bags and and pyramid tea
bags all to help you stir the tea and
avoid repetitive strain injury because
of so much tea that needed to be drunk
and all of the choices that exist then
there were the flower teas started to
happen lavender and elder flower and
jasmine some of my favorites I have to
say and then after that the colored teas
we had green tea we sort of pretty much
knew about that but all of a sudden
there was now white swirling mists
pomegranate tea Blue Mountain fun dirty
red tea silver Jasmine needles oh
chicken avocado bacon in a salad oh no
that’s a sandwich
basically put the whole point is is that
all of these teas arrived and rather
interestingly even though we have more
tea that is available than ever ever
before
strangely enough we’re still not
satisfied we’re still not happy and
we’re still wondering what’s more there
must be something more to life than all
of this mmm so I’m the creator of a
Happiness Project and I’ve been running
the Happiness Project since 1992 in the
olden days and I pretty much get a piece
of research land on my desk every day
telling me something about happiness
telling me something about this land of
more that we are now all living in and
let me give you a couple of pieces of
research that I think are very
interesting and worth taking note of the
first piece of research has to do with
static happiness researchers have
noticed that in the last 50 years our
levels of happiness have remained mostly
static for instance in the US when
people were asked in the 1950s I think
it was 1960s how happier you
please score from one to ten one is not
at all ten is very happy
the average answer was seven point five
out of ten
more recently or when a similar number
people have been asked how happy are you
the average answer is seven point four
out of ten so we are experiencing static
happiness even though we have much more
than ever before another set of
researchers have highlighted a
phenomenon called semi-happy it appears
that many of us really are just semi
happy now in the UK it was in 1957
several hundred people were asked how
happy are you not happy quite happy
happy very happy 52% of people said
they’re very happy so that’s just about
one in two people saying they’re very
happy
more recently thirty-seven percent of
people say that they are very happy so
something’s afoot here we’re
experiencing static happiness and at the
same time we seem to be semi happy even
though we seem to have so much more than
ever before in the land of more and it
one of the most important questions we
can ask ourselves is what do I want
just that what do I want when you know
what you want you stop wanting more of
everything else lady called an Valley
Fox said you can never have enough of
what you didn’t want in the first place
when you know what you want I think
that’s the key to happiness happiness is
knowing what you want success is knowing
what you want freedom is somehow knowing
what you want so every now and then I
think a great thing to do is to be able
to stop and just to consider that
question what do I want now at first
glance it looks like what do I want is
inviting you to think
about what do I want to have what do I
want to buy and what do I want to get
but with Second Sight if we look again I
think we’ll see that what do I want can
be a much more interesting question than
that for instance we can take a look at
what do I want and broaden it out a
little bit expand the edges of that
question and consider for instance
something like what do I want to be what
sort of a person would I like to be in
this world how can I be more authentic
how can I be more of the real me and not
a conditioned me a conditioned me which
because of our culture of more means
that I end up defining myself as a
consumer instead of as a truly spiritual
being maybe when I look at this question
what do I want I can also consider what
is it that I would most like to connect
to maybe I could connect somehow more to
my own heart and also to the hearts of
others after all I think it’s fair to
say that psychologists and mystics and
sociologists and environmentalists will
all agree that really the great cause of
lack and scarcity on our planet is our
perceived separation from one another so
to connect with our own heart to connect
with the hearts of others to connect
with the heart of this earth that maybe
is what we would like to experience more
of well maybe it’s even more than that
maybe we can look at what do I want and
think about how I could recognize my
true nature more fully and more
obviously Thoreau said that the soul
grows through subtraction not addition
it’s often when we take things away that
we actually get an experience of our
true self you know it’s wonderful to
accumulate from time to time but I’ve
also noticed that deep
uttering is a wonderful experience and
I’ve often wondered about that
why is decluttering such a wonderful
experience and I think the sense is is
that it helps me if you like to get back
to what I really really want every now
and then I like to pour myself a cup of
tea sit down and think about this what’s
it like to be me when I don’t want
anything I find this to be a very very
interesting meditation the first time I
tried it I have to be honest I felt
rather disorientated but just to give it
a moment or two to be able to as the
great poet Rumi said rest from wanting
to take a moment to rest from wanting it
can be a great great revelation to be
able just to rest from wanting and to
experience yourself without wanting
anything as for me being truly a great
revelation I’ve noticed that when I am
me without wanting anything I find that
I’m often more open more receptive more
grateful and ultimately I feel more
abundant when I rest from wanting
anything I find myself back in the
oneness back in the garden the original
garden and when I’m in the garden that’s
when I noticed truly that everything
that I truly need is already here and
it’s a beautiful revelation so my
invitation to you is to make yourself a
cup of tea to sit down and ask yourself
what is it like to be me
when I don’t want anything and I think
you’ll make a beautiful discovery and
the beautiful discovery is is that
inside you is everything that you
really want you are everything that you
truly want and if you ever ever think
that something might be missing in your
life it’s probably just more of the real
you thank you very much
[Applause]
[Music]
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