2927: How to Become Less Uptight in Two Minutes by David Cain of Raptitude on Stop Trying to Control Everything

[00:00:00] [SPEAKER_00]: This is Optimal Living Daily, episode 2927

[00:00:03] [SPEAKER_00]: How to Become Less Uptight in Two Minutes by David Cain of Raptitude.com

[00:00:09] [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm Justin Malik, the guy who's been reading to you every day including holidays since 2015

[00:00:15] [SPEAKER_00]: We're gonna keep that up so let's get right to it and continue optimizing your life

[00:00:19] [SPEAKER_00]: How to Become Less Uptight in Two Minutes by David Cain of Raptitude.com

[00:00:30] [SPEAKER_00]: The classic advice for public speaking nerves is to picture the crowd in their underwear

[00:00:36] [SPEAKER_00]: I wonder if the person who invented that ever tried it

[00:00:40] [SPEAKER_00]: I find it immediately increases the tension of a speaking situation

[00:00:45] [SPEAKER_00]: It makes you more aware of what's at stake, the possibility of embarrassment for the audience too

[00:00:50] [SPEAKER_00]: What does work is to picture the room around you as it was at 4am, empty and silent

[00:00:58] [SPEAKER_00]: Nobody there to need any particular thing to happen or not happen

[00:01:02] [SPEAKER_00]: This simple thought makes it clear that the room itself is harmless and so is speaking into it

[00:01:09] [SPEAKER_00]: Filling it with people changes that sense a little but not so much that it feels dangerous

[00:01:16] [SPEAKER_00]: The mental image of an inert room shrinks the prospect of speaking from a frantic story in your mind

[00:01:22] [SPEAKER_00]: Down to its bare bones again, people in a room, one of them talking

[00:01:26] [SPEAKER_00]: It becomes obvious that however the talk goes, life will continue afterward

[00:01:31] [SPEAKER_00]: The room will be quiet again with no trace of your forgotten lines or botched intro, if they even happened

[00:01:38] [SPEAKER_00]: Even if you never speak to a room full of people, this ability to shift your view of a particular scene in this way is quite useful

[00:01:47] [SPEAKER_00]: You can reduce the stressful effects of lines, crowds, busy subway platforms and family gatherings

[00:01:54] [SPEAKER_00]: Just by imagining that same space as it might feel with no people in it

[00:01:59] [SPEAKER_00]: Either the previous night at 4am or a century from now when it's a dusty ruin

[00:02:04] [SPEAKER_00]: Back in the present, suddenly the place isn't so threatening or intolerable

[00:02:09] [SPEAKER_00]: It's just what it is to the senses alone, a space with people in it and the mind is only adding commentary

[00:02:16] [SPEAKER_00]: This remarkable little exercise works because our feelings towards the moment we're in

[00:02:22] [SPEAKER_00]: typically have little to do with the scene itself

[00:02:26] [SPEAKER_00]: Instead we're wrapped up in our own internal narrative around it

[00:02:30] [SPEAKER_00]: You round the corner to see a line at the food court and the mind immediately begins circulating what it means for your own interests

[00:02:37] [SPEAKER_00]: Your schedule, your caloric intake today, your chances of getting a table

[00:02:42] [SPEAKER_00]: Your feelings respond to all of this commentary

[00:02:46] [SPEAKER_00]: The sight of your office floor immediately summons to mind your responsibilities to your boss

[00:02:51] [SPEAKER_00]: You're wrong on the latter, how close it currently is to Friday at 4.30

[00:02:56] [SPEAKER_00]: And all the existential weight of your story as an almost middle-aged project manager

[00:03:02] [SPEAKER_00]: Unsure of how well he's really doing at all this

[00:03:04] [SPEAKER_00]: All this symbolism obscures what is actually being experienced

[00:03:09] [SPEAKER_00]: Flores and lights, the hum of copiers, idle chatter, the gray pattern carpeting, people looking at electronic screens

[00:03:17] [SPEAKER_00]: The bare facts of the moment what life actually looks and sounds like right now are drowned out and missed

[00:03:25] [SPEAKER_00]: By the time we're adults, we tend to experience most moments in term of their apparent value to our story

[00:03:31] [SPEAKER_00]: We barely get a second of seeing a moment unfold before the mind has stamped it good more of this please

[00:03:38] [SPEAKER_00]: Or bad avoid, or who cares this does nothing for me

[00:03:42] [SPEAKER_00]: And this tendency is painful because it means we always have our emotional well-being tied off to dozens of moving parts

[00:03:50] [SPEAKER_00]: And we control so few of them

[00:03:53] [SPEAKER_00]: Anything topples the wrong way or threatens to and it hurts the heart

[00:03:58] [SPEAKER_00]: That's why it's hugely liberating to imagine that stressful room as it might have looked in the dead of night with nobody around

[00:04:06] [SPEAKER_00]: Seeing that version of the same moment creates relief because the scene is now stripped of your story

[00:04:12] [SPEAKER_00]: And our stress is tied to the story not the scene

[00:04:17] [SPEAKER_00]: The ultimate in stripping your story from your experience is to view a present moment scene as though your story has ended

[00:04:25] [SPEAKER_00]: You've passed on yet you still get to see the world unfold right now

[00:04:29] [SPEAKER_00]: Just take two minutes and watch the people going by the traffic noises, the falling leaves as though it's all happening on its own a year or so after your life has ended

[00:04:42] [SPEAKER_00]: Suddenly you can see it as it would be without any need for it to happen a certain way

[00:04:48] [SPEAKER_00]: It can just be like it is, which it is anyway

[00:04:53] [SPEAKER_00]: This reflection is best done in a public place like a park, a square or an airport terminal

[00:04:59] [SPEAKER_00]: Anywhere you can see the human world carrying on

[00:05:02] [SPEAKER_00]: When you can view the world even for a moment as it will be when you have no story left to fret over, nothing left to control

[00:05:10] [SPEAKER_00]: You discover something interesting

[00:05:12] [SPEAKER_00]: Aside from the story in your head, life is okay as it is

[00:05:16] [SPEAKER_00]: Don't be alarmed but when you die, the world will continue on just fine without you

[00:05:22] [SPEAKER_00]: A few people will be sad, some of the tiny proportion of people who were aware you were even alive

[00:05:27] [SPEAKER_00]: But beyond that, the ripples will disappear into the pond pretty quickly

[00:05:32] [SPEAKER_00]: So if that's the only certainty in life, maybe we don't need to be so uptight about having everything just so in the meantime

[00:05:40] [SPEAKER_00]: Just sit there and really look at it go

[00:05:43] [SPEAKER_00]: The people, the wind, the clouds, carrying on forever, with or without you

[00:05:50] [SPEAKER_00]: After just a minute or two of this kind of uninvolved observation

[00:05:54] [SPEAKER_00]: It becomes clear that your story was never an essential part of the whole world

[00:05:59] [SPEAKER_00]: It was merely incidental even if it was pretty interesting

[00:06:03] [SPEAKER_00]: It's not that it doesn't matter at all, but it's not the only thing that matters as it so often seems to be

[00:06:10] [SPEAKER_00]: As you watch the world carry on around you, it's quite easy to imagine you're not really there

[00:06:15] [SPEAKER_00]: Because as you'll notice, nobody's paying attention to you anyway

[00:06:19] [SPEAKER_00]: There's so much human energy being expended out there and so little of it has anything to do with your seemingly all important story

[00:06:28] [SPEAKER_00]: You get a healthy sense of the spectacular indifference the world has towards your personal needs

[00:06:34] [SPEAKER_00]: And oddly, this is a great relief

[00:06:36] [SPEAKER_00]: In life, you'll do your best or maybe just do your best to do your best

[00:06:41] [SPEAKER_00]: And in any case, it's fundamentally okay

[00:06:44] [SPEAKER_00]: The world can and eventually will exist entirely without your story

[00:06:50] [SPEAKER_00]: Without you there to ache for things to always be falling your way

[00:06:53] [SPEAKER_00]: This exercise is humbling in all the right ways

[00:06:57] [SPEAKER_00]: It can even be a bit embarrassing to realize that you may have for decades now

[00:07:02] [SPEAKER_00]: Never looked at the world as anything other than the place where my life happens

[00:07:07] [SPEAKER_00]: You don't need to pretend you've died in order to let a moment unfold just as it is

[00:07:12] [SPEAKER_00]: But it helps you get used to what that kind of freedom might be like

[00:07:16] [SPEAKER_00]: Then when you go back to being in the world normally, it might feel more exhilarating than difficult

[00:07:22] [SPEAKER_00]: And more interesting than alarming

[00:07:25] [SPEAKER_00]: It won't feel so important to control every little corner of it

[00:07:29] [SPEAKER_00]: You can let it be what it is a lot of the time

[00:07:32] [SPEAKER_00]: While gently trying to make things go your way without ever quite needing them to

[00:07:38] [SPEAKER_00]: In every moment you experience without that neediness, you are free

[00:07:48] [SPEAKER_00]: You just listened to the post titled How To Become Less Uptight In Two Minutes

[00:07:52] [SPEAKER_00]: By David Cain of raptitude.com

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[00:09:10] [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you David

[00:09:12] [SPEAKER_00]: This week has been a lot about optimizing our best qualities

[00:09:15] [SPEAKER_00]: Didn't happen on purpose but just randomly worked out that way

[00:09:18] [SPEAKER_00]: But anyway, I thought it was funny when he talked about picturing the audience in their underwear and that helping with a speech

[00:09:25] [SPEAKER_00]: I agree, I don't think it helps

[00:09:27] [SPEAKER_00]: What I did find helpful was this quote from David

[00:09:30] [SPEAKER_00]: Our feelings towards the moment we're in typically have little to do with the scene itself

[00:09:36] [SPEAKER_00]: Instead we're wrapped up in our own internal narrative around it

[00:09:40] [SPEAKER_00]: And it's so true

[00:09:42] [SPEAKER_00]: Things can be chaotic around us but we feel calm

[00:09:45] [SPEAKER_00]: And vice versa

[00:09:46] [SPEAKER_00]: It's what our minds are choosing to do in the situation

[00:09:50] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna steal a little something my brother talked about a little while back on the optimal health daily podcast

[00:09:56] [SPEAKER_00]: If you don't believe in the power of this mind trick that David talked about

[00:10:00] [SPEAKER_00]: With mental images of an empty room actually lowering our stress

[00:10:05] [SPEAKER_00]: Just think about the times you've only thought about a stressful event like a speech or death or a job interview, anything like that

[00:10:14] [SPEAKER_00]: And surely your heart rate increased

[00:10:17] [SPEAKER_00]: That's a simple example of how powerful the mind is

[00:10:21] [SPEAKER_00]: Or imagine right now biting into a super sour lemon

[00:10:26] [SPEAKER_00]: Really think about sinking your teeth into that lemon straight from a tree

[00:10:31] [SPEAKER_00]: Are you salivating yet?

[00:10:34] [SPEAKER_00]: Again, it's all in the mind

[00:10:35] [SPEAKER_00]: Our minds are crazy powerful

[00:10:37] [SPEAKER_00]: We just have to figure out a way to make it work for us instead of against us

[00:10:42] [SPEAKER_00]: And with that have a great start to your weekend if you're listening in real time and I'll be back tomorrow

[00:10:47] [SPEAKER_00]: Where your optimal life awaits