[Applause]
how many of your thoughts today helped
you get towards your goals in life and
how many of them hindered you are you in
control of what you think as I first
learned the answer to these questions I
was shocked I was staying at the
Buddhist monastery suan mokkh in the
forests of southern Thailand four years
ago as you can imagine life at the
monastery is quite Spartan you sleep on
a wooden pillow when a straw mat you
wake up at 4:30 meditate for 10 hours
every day eat nothing but rice and
vegetables and shower with a bucket one
specific morning meditation session I
had a breakthrough moment it suddenly
struck me just how little influence I
had over the content of my mind I look
back on my life ever since I was a child
and I could clearly see that my mind had
always been constantly wandering
distracted unable to focus and the
reason why well because I’ve lived the
way I have like any modern person over
stimulated it was my lifestyle that had
produced this unsettled mind of mine
which had now become nearly impossible
to control for 20 years I had been
unable to recognize this phenomena
within myself simply because my mind had
never been provided enough space to
observe its own functioning there is a
Swedish ex monk named beyond live Linda
blood who lived as a Buddhist monk for
18 years before returning back home to
ordinary life just a few years ago upon
his return a journalist interviewed him
and asked beyond from 18 years as a monk
with hours of meditation every single
day and no distractions what’s the one
key insight that you took with you home
is answer I no longer believe in
everything
I think sound so mundane and yet it’s
not and this my friends is why I’m here
today to introduce the radical concept
that you are free to choose your own
thoughts and thereby become an architect
free to construct your own life by
design for some of you this idea might
be familiar it lies at the core of most
meditation techniques or perhaps it’s a
completely new one having yet to enter
your mind or maybe just maybe you are
now feeling that this is becoming a bit
unscientific and you’re silently
wondering how an overdressed hippy got
to the Ted stage well regardless of your
current stand point I humbly ask you to
suspend any disbelief or belief whether
you are a corporate CEO or a surfer I
invite you to enter an open state of
mind for the next 13 minutes
now we find ourselves in a world where
for the first time in history more
people die from eating too much than
eating too little more people commit
suicide
every year than are killed by war
criminals and terrorists combined I wish
to show you some data on our current
health profile as a species
this graph shows that as for today
seventy five percent of the u.s.
population are overweight for Sweden
that number is almost sixty percent this
one shows the ten year increase in
amphetamine based medication being
prescribed to children under the age of
17 for being labeled with attention
deficit disorders and this one shows
that as for today nearly one tenth of
the Swedish population are now being
prescribed antidepressants for us that
number is even higher now these are some
quite alarming data however it could
have been my personal data just a few
years ago as I have experienced many of
these states myself it started 10 years
ago now and in a horrific series of
events my mother hastily died in an
accident which was unforeseen and left
me in chaos I was 14 at the time a few
years after that I had developed
addictions I had become addicted to
cannabis to sugar to tobacco to video
games for some years I lived a life
where I was constantly distracting
myself from the pain of the fact that
the woman of my life had left me forever
in our culture we are raised from the
very beginning of our lives to crave
stimulants and the world we live in is
an obvious reflection of this and I’m
not only talking about drugs I think of
anything we do watching movies watching
sport events eating cream cheese
listening to music the list is endless
and all of these
Humanity’s they are produced as a
response to human need we have lost
control of how we used and have
ultimately let them gain control over us
and how we think this was to the highest
degree true for me and my past behavior
and whether you are a tech billionaire a
Buddhist monk a military officer or a
high school teacher you are to some
degree being unwillingly dictated by
your own thoughts but also free to
change that the American psychologist
and philosopher William James said that
thoughts become perception perception
becomes reality all through your
thoughts alter your reality the world in
which we live in its quality its
character is nothing but a reflection of
our own minds and the only way to
influence in which world you want to
live in or in which world you want your
children to live in is to learn how to
influence your mind I wish to share with
you today what I have developed as the
two most important methods on how to
stop thoughts from controlling you and
ultimately take charge of your mind and
thereby reality it’s the realization
that made me process the trauma of the
death of my mother
the key insight from 18 years as a monk
by bjorn linda blood and a core idea
method number one practice meditation
developing a habit of doing this for
just 15 minutes at a time four days a
week can change your life in many ways
it did for me by definition it’s the art
of developing mindfulness it’s practiced
by consciously directing and maintaining
your attention on an unstimulating
object such as the breathing and doing
this for lengths of time
this practice produces a more calm mind
less prone to overreaction more rational
and higher performing but the ultimate
goal of meditation is to start
objectively observe the mind let me give
you a visual example of what I mean
imagine yourself a web made up of
thoughts every thread a possible thought
path leading to different places after
some meditation training one is able to
identify thought patterns see where they
will lead and choose to take another one
and this is what happened to me at the
monastery as I started to see which one
of my sort path led me to anxiety and
had done so for so many years I was
actually able to direct my thoughts
towards something constructive instead
and this means that as you gradually
learn the structure of your own web of
thoughts you become able to actively
predict which thought will lead to in
which emotional state which will make
you able to actively choose dates such
as calmness serenity and high focus over
stress anxiety and anger in theory quite
clear but again it can only happen as
the mind is provided enough space and
silence without being constantly
stimulated
method number two restrain your mental
and physical input they’re saying that
you are what you eat certainly applies
to food but have you ever thought of the
notion of bad information having the
same effect making us mentally unhealthy
obese addicted in our age of information
an unprecedent that junk data load
enters our minds every single day and
this junk data then influences our minds
it effects our values it creates our
it’s our responsibility as individuals
to carefully feed our minds with
selected input and that input them if
chosen wisely will produce this
desirable mental environment in which we
can start to understand our minds
properly enough to control them I want
you to ask yourself is it constructive
for me to be bombarded daily with
newspaper tabloids of death sex fear and
terrorist in my mind the majority of
newspapers are more important for
terrorists than terrorists themselves
choose your media source wisely because
they are seldom designed only to
transmit information more often and not
their primary objective is to spark your
interest using catchy headlines fueled
with fear and sex which happens on
direct expense of fact social media such
a brilliant tool when used right and so
catastrophic when abused no stimulant
has ever got in a society so addicted so
immersed in such a short time
did you know that the term facebook
addiction disorder has emerged as a
valid disorder causing with Rawal
excessive use and long term anxiety
there is a recent study from the
University of Pittsburgh has now showed
that the more we use social media the
more socially isolated we feel and the
more socially isolated we feel the more
we want to use social media so just like
a drug we feel that by getting a
newsfeed fixe injected to our minds
it’ll make us feel better but it
actually makes us feel worse so friends
you have to take control over your use
of social media otherwise social media
will start to take control over you
advertisements are also sources of often
polluted information think for example
of sugary unhealthy food products quite
a few commercials out there for them and
now sugar the substance sugar is our
global number one health threat as a
species killing more people every year
than heroin cocaine and amphetamine
combined so what can we do
stop sugar and sugar based products from
being sold and marketed of course not
because they’re not inherently bad sugar
is great for a lot of people alright the
problem does not lie in the externality
we need to take responsibility over our
thoughts and impulses when being exposed
to and consuming these products and
their commercials and realize that their
incentive for your consumption is not to
benefit you now think of this the human
operating system is designed through
millions of years of evolution to reward
the behavior that promotes survival in
an environment of constant territorial
threats and scarce resources in that
world eating as much honey as possible
meant survival so did killing other
tribes when intruding on your territory
but man has come out of the jungle where
there was not enough and we built a
whole ethic around not having enough
as our environment has completely
shifted our mental operating system has
gone dangerously obsolete it’s time for
an upgrade
we need to transition from being smart
monkeys and become conscious beings you
are like me a homo sapiens wise human
member of the first known life want to
develop consciousness you are the
pinnacle of evolution
now please reflect upon the stories of
told which are yours and decide what you
want to do with them because friends
it’s not the harsh traumatic or horrible
events themselves you should fear the
most in life but your own unwillingness
to control your reaction to those events
ultimately it’s your capacity to take
full responsibility for your thoughts
that will dictate the course and growth
of not just you but our entire world
thank you so much for letting me be part of this
how many of your thoughts today helped
you get towards your goals in life and
how many of them hindered you are you in
control of what you think as I first
learned the answer to these questions I
was shocked I was staying at the
Buddhist monastery suan mokkh in the
forests of southern Thailand four years
ago as you can imagine life at the
monastery is quite Spartan you sleep on
a wooden pillow when a straw mat you
wake up at 4:30 meditate for 10 hours
every day eat nothing but rice and
vegetables and shower with a bucket one
specific morning meditation session I
had a breakthrough moment it suddenly
struck me just how little influence I
had over the content of my mind I look
back on my life ever since I was a child
and I could clearly see that my mind had
always been constantly wandering
distracted unable to focus and the
reason why well because I’ve lived the
way I have like any modern person over
stimulated it was my lifestyle that had
produced this unsettled mind of mine
which had now become nearly impossible
to control for 20 years I had been
unable to recognize this phenomena
within myself simply because my mind had
never been provided enough space to
observe its own functioning there is a
Swedish ex monk named beyond live Linda
blood who lived as a Buddhist monk for
18 years before returning back home to
ordinary life just a few years ago upon
his return a journalist interviewed him
and asked beyond from 18 years as a monk
with hours of meditation every single
day and no distractions what’s the one
key insight that you took with you home
is answer I no longer believe in
everything
I think sound so mundane and yet it’s
not and this my friends is why I’m here
today to introduce the radical concept
that you are free to choose your own
thoughts and thereby become an architect
free to construct your own life by
design for some of you this idea might
be familiar it lies at the core of most
meditation techniques or perhaps it’s a
completely new one having yet to enter
your mind or maybe just maybe you are
now feeling that this is becoming a bit
unscientific and you’re silently
wondering how an overdressed hippy got
to the Ted stage well regardless of your
current stand point I humbly ask you to
suspend any disbelief or belief whether
you are a corporate CEO or a surfer I
invite you to enter an open state of
mind for the next 13 minutes
now we find ourselves in a world where
for the first time in history more
people die from eating too much than
eating too little more people commit
suicide
every year than are killed by war
criminals and terrorists combined I wish
to show you some data on our current
health profile as a species
this graph shows that as for today
seventy five percent of the u.s.
population are overweight for Sweden
that number is almost sixty percent this
one shows the ten year increase in
amphetamine based medication being
prescribed to children under the age of
17 for being labeled with attention
deficit disorders and this one shows
that as for today nearly one tenth of
the Swedish population are now being
prescribed antidepressants for us that
number is even higher now these are some
quite alarming data however it could
have been my personal data just a few
years ago as I have experienced many of
these states myself it started 10 years
ago now and in a horrific series of
events my mother hastily died in an
accident which was unforeseen and left
me in chaos I was 14 at the time a few
years after that I had developed
addictions I had become addicted to
cannabis to sugar to tobacco to video
games for some years I lived a life
where I was constantly distracting
myself from the pain of the fact that
the woman of my life had left me forever
in our culture we are raised from the
very beginning of our lives to crave
stimulants and the world we live in is
an obvious reflection of this and I’m
not only talking about drugs I think of
anything we do watching movies watching
sport events eating cream cheese
listening to music the list is endless
and all of these
Humanity’s they are produced as a
response to human need we have lost
control of how we used and have
ultimately let them gain control over us
and how we think this was to the highest
degree true for me and my past behavior
and whether you are a tech billionaire a
Buddhist monk a military officer or a
high school teacher you are to some
degree being unwillingly dictated by
your own thoughts but also free to
change that the American psychologist
and philosopher William James said that
thoughts become perception perception
becomes reality all through your
thoughts alter your reality the world in
which we live in its quality its
character is nothing but a reflection of
our own minds and the only way to
influence in which world you want to
live in or in which world you want your
children to live in is to learn how to
influence your mind I wish to share with
you today what I have developed as the
two most important methods on how to
stop thoughts from controlling you and
ultimately take charge of your mind and
thereby reality it’s the realization
that made me process the trauma of the
death of my mother
the key insight from 18 years as a monk
by bjorn linda blood and a core idea
method number one practice meditation
developing a habit of doing this for
just 15 minutes at a time four days a
week can change your life in many ways
it did for me by definition it’s the art
of developing mindfulness it’s practiced
by consciously directing and maintaining
your attention on an unstimulating
object such as the breathing and doing
this for lengths of time
this practice produces a more calm mind
less prone to overreaction more rational
and higher performing but the ultimate
goal of meditation is to start
objectively observe the mind let me give
you a visual example of what I mean
imagine yourself a web made up of
thoughts every thread a possible thought
path leading to different places after
some meditation training one is able to
identify thought patterns see where they
will lead and choose to take another one
and this is what happened to me at the
monastery as I started to see which one
of my sort path led me to anxiety and
had done so for so many years I was
actually able to direct my thoughts
towards something constructive instead
and this means that as you gradually
learn the structure of your own web of
thoughts you become able to actively
predict which thought will lead to in
which emotional state which will make
you able to actively choose dates such
as calmness serenity and high focus over
stress anxiety and anger in theory quite
clear but again it can only happen as
the mind is provided enough space and
silence without being constantly
stimulated
method number two restrain your mental
and physical input they’re saying that
you are what you eat certainly applies
to food but have you ever thought of the
notion of bad information having the
same effect making us mentally unhealthy
obese addicted in our age of information
an unprecedent that junk data load
enters our minds every single day and
this junk data then influences our minds
it effects our values it creates our
it’s our responsibility as individuals
to carefully feed our minds with
selected input and that input them if
chosen wisely will produce this
desirable mental environment in which we
can start to understand our minds
properly enough to control them I want
you to ask yourself is it constructive
for me to be bombarded daily with
newspaper tabloids of death sex fear and
terrorist in my mind the majority of
newspapers are more important for
terrorists than terrorists themselves
choose your media source wisely because
they are seldom designed only to
transmit information more often and not
their primary objective is to spark your
interest using catchy headlines fueled
with fear and sex which happens on
direct expense of fact social media such
a brilliant tool when used right and so
catastrophic when abused no stimulant
has ever got in a society so addicted so
immersed in such a short time
did you know that the term facebook
addiction disorder has emerged as a
valid disorder causing with Rawal
excessive use and long term anxiety
there is a recent study from the
University of Pittsburgh has now showed
that the more we use social media the
more socially isolated we feel and the
more socially isolated we feel the more
we want to use social media so just like
a drug we feel that by getting a
newsfeed fixe injected to our minds
it’ll make us feel better but it
actually makes us feel worse so friends
you have to take control over your use
of social media otherwise social media
will start to take control over you
advertisements are also sources of often
polluted information think for example
of sugary unhealthy food products quite
a few commercials out there for them and
now sugar the substance sugar is our
global number one health threat as a
species killing more people every year
than heroin cocaine and amphetamine
combined so what can we do
stop sugar and sugar based products from
being sold and marketed of course not
because they’re not inherently bad sugar
is great for a lot of people alright the
problem does not lie in the externality
we need to take responsibility over our
thoughts and impulses when being exposed
to and consuming these products and
their commercials and realize that their
incentive for your consumption is not to
benefit you now think of this the human
operating system is designed through
millions of years of evolution to reward
the behavior that promotes survival in
an environment of constant territorial
threats and scarce resources in that
world eating as much honey as possible
meant survival so did killing other
tribes when intruding on your territory
but man has come out of the jungle where
there was not enough and we built a
whole ethic around not having enough
as our environment has completely
shifted our mental operating system has
gone dangerously obsolete it’s time for
an upgrade
we need to transition from being smart
monkeys and become conscious beings you
are like me a homo sapiens wise human
member of the first known life want to
develop consciousness you are the
pinnacle of evolution
now please reflect upon the stories of
told which are yours and decide what you
want to do with them because friends
it’s not the harsh traumatic or horrible
events themselves you should fear the
most in life but your own unwillingness
to control your reaction to those events
ultimately it’s your capacity to take
full responsibility for your thoughts
that will dictate the course and growth
of not just you but our entire world
thank you so much for letting me be part of this
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