[Music] [Applause] so the first thing is let's pay some attention to these folks because they are helping us out and uh things wouldn't be as they are at this meeting and at other times if we didn't have sponsor so a hand for the [Applause] sponsors uh now I get to do a shame attacking exercise some people did not follow directions readily and sending in their PowerPoints so Eddie fixed mine up so that it would be the right size and take up all of the uh space that's available here so thank you [Applause] Eddie all right
here I am uh being where you are doing what's important let's start with the being where you are part uh noticing right now what's going on outside your skin just look around feel around smell around and noticing right now what's going on inside your skin those are sort of what it's all about when it comes to being where you are because where you are has things that are going on inside your skin and outside your skin so again take a look and see well what's going on outside your skin what do you hear what do
you see what do you smell what are you touching and depending on whether or not you've got gum mints other goodies maybe you're tasting something too and the second thing what's going on inside your skin and that's pretty much either going to be bodily Sensations or thoughts and images now where your body makes contact with the seat that you're sitting on gives you a little chance to get a sense of I feel the seat and then I feel my bodily Sensations being supported by the seat so at that little Edge that little transition place you
can sort of notice one side notice the other side the thing about uh thoughts and images is they often invite you to go traveling to leave here and now and travel off to then and there and you can choose to remain here and now or you can return having noticed that you've gone traveling to then and there if you once you've noticed you can come back to this place and this moment so you can do this little activity with your eyes open there's nothing magical about opening or closing your eyes but if you just sit
for a moment and notice that some thoughts and images are showing up they're always showing up uh and just see about could I remain psychologically here where I am physically and let those invitations to go traveling a little bit like a taxi cab shows up uh the door opens there's a thought or an image inviting you to get in and go traveling if you just notice the thought or image for a little while then usually what happens is the door to the cab closes the cab leaves another one shows up another door opens another thought
or an image will invite you to go traveling and if you just watch that one for a while then in a while that Bo closes another one leaves and if you should find oh I didn't intend to go traveling but I find that I am at some other place in my life someplace from the past or someplace in the future I've never gone there yet but somehow psychologically I can go traveling uh or I'm at a different time um then once you know it you can just bring yourself back to here sometimes you can control
your thoughts and images for example you could make yourself think I'm a banana I invite all of you to have that thought I'm a banana now this is where uh it's worth noticing that because you think something doesn't mean you believe it and so the reason that it's a BC and not a TC is because we're interested in changing what you believe not what you think you can think all day I'm a banana I'm a banana I'm a banana I doubt any of you will believe it and when you're working on changing your beliefs you
don't have to work on changing your thoughts instead you can just just work on well am I going to take that thought seriously and sometimes you can't control thoughts and images so Jack and Jill went up the pH ho yes good chance that all of the native English speakers got this I don't know if the Danes how did it go there oh not working for you so one thing you have to do is to make sure your little illustrations work for the audience that you're working with most people who pick up uh another language uh
and thank all of you who are speaking English because I'd be out of luck I'd barely get along in my own language let alone another one um they it's very unusual for them to get the nursery rhymes too uh but if you're a native English speaker chances are you got the nursy rhyme and while you could keep your mouth shut it's very difficult to keep Hill from showing up so being where you are means being psychologically present in the moment in which you're physically present rather than psychologically traveling to some other place or time now
is there anybody in this room so far who is going like oh this is way too woo woo for me once well I'm doing okay then cuz for most of you this is not too weird or strange or odd anybody have a like a transcendental moment they feel they're going to leave here and some strange thing is happening to them one okay how about the banana you're a banana that's right you could notice that thought and not believe it all right um so what I want to hopefully stress is these activities to bring a person
uh or to bring yourself whether it's you or somebody else into the moment that we actually physically are in there's nothing spooky or uh necessarily mystical or anything like that about those activities and if you're psychologically in the moment that you physically are in chances are you will handle it better now many times when people are psychologically present in a moment where there's nothing dangerous going on they feel more relaxed and relaxation is not the point if something really dangerous were going on and you were psychologically present in that moment chances are you would not
feel relaxed and you would handle those difficult circumstances much better by being psychologically present with them as opposed to be drifting off somewhere else am I making sense to you so being psychologically present is not about being relaxed although often when you are psychologically present and there's no danger you will find that you are more relaxed than you were when were traveling off psychologically to some place that did seem dangerous so now we got the first part let's look at the second part doing what's important fortunately control of our hands and arms and feet and
mouth does not depend on our thoughts and images and bodily Sensations so let's try a little activity uh this is a couple of I cannot and the first one is I can't walk over to the wall and back would you be willing to help me out oh sure so come up here please and for our purposes that uh yellow rectangle over there is going to count as the wall so I'm going to ask you to begin saying a phrase and while you're saying it I'm going to give you an instruction and I'd like you to
follow the instruction but I'd like you to keep saying the phrase and the phrase is probably pushing up I'm guessing well that's all right people will hear you he's got well all right they they'll hear you okay and the phrase is I cannot walk over to the wall and back now for our purposes that rectangle is the wall so I'm going to ask you to start saying that I'm going to give you an instruction and I want you to follow the instruction okay so I cannot walk over to the wall back I cannot walk over
to the wall and back I cannot walk over to the wall and great keep it up I cannot walk over and while you're saying it walk over to the wall and back I cannot walk over to the wall and back I cannot walk over to the wall and back I cannot walk over to the wall and back I cannot walk over to the wall and back I cannot walk over to the wall and back I cannot walk over to the wall and back I cannot walk over to the wall and back I cannot walk over
to the wall and back great thank you very much for let you go back there didn't you just prove that I'm a good [Laughter] liar what I hope I just demonstrated what you just demonstrated is that even though we are thinking even though we are saying we cannot do things they don't necessarily control what we do with our hands and arms and feet and mouth when it comes to doing things now everybody can participate in this one which is I'd like you all to begin saying I cannot stay seated I must stand up I cannot
stay seated I must stand up I cannot stay seated I must stand up I cannot stay seated I must stand up thank you now for most of you a couple of you couple of you you tell yourself things you have to do them but for most of you you notice that when you are telling yourself I can't do things well I could do them just because I'm telling myself I can't doesn't mean I lose control of my hands and arms and feet and mouth just because I'm telling myself uh I uh can't walk over to
the door in back or the wall in back doesn't mean I can't do it we have lots of control of our hands and arms and feet and mouth even when we don't have so much control of our thoughts and images and bodily Sensations to say it in a short-handed way perhaps we don't have to do what our mind says oops uh we also can travel under different banners so can I get another volunteer someone willing to help me out come on up I think this way will probably prove easier so um I'm going to ask
you to walk over to the wall over there again that's that um um uh rectangle yeah uh only I want you to travel under a particular banner and the banner is I have to I have to I have to and what I'd like you to do as you're traveling I'd like you to travel as grudgingly as you possibly can okay okay now have you ever done anything grudgingly no no so this will be new for you but you probably have friends who told you about doing things grudgingly okay so again and just for drama uh
you may not have a microphone but just for drama out loud uh I have to I have to I have to and do it grudgingly okay okay I have to I have to I have to I have to I have to I have to Great come on back now come on back pretty grudgingly okay so now this time I'd like you to make the same Journey only this time I'd like you to travel under a different banner and this Banner is I choose to I choose to I choose to those the words and the way
I want you to do it is willingly sort of the opposite of grudgingly okay yep and when you get there just stay over there a moment there's one more thing I want to show you sure so I choose to I choose to choose great I stay there moment uh once again excellent work now the first thing I want to point out is he's in exactly the same place the contingencies of the universe did not change the only thing that changed was the way he participated in those contingencies I'm making sense to you and which way
did you prefer to travel I choose to or I have have to yes because I choose to is the way of a liberated human being I have to I have to I have to that's slavery nobody wants to live life as a slave and that option of moving From Slavery to uh a uh a self controlling a self uh running your life human being is doing things by choice now the contingencies of the universe there's plenty of Hal toos there but the way we meet those contingencies we have a say about that if we meet
them willingly if we meet them by choice as opposed to grudgingly or I have to our experience of life is quite different am I making sense to you now as you come back here I'd like you to walk slowly and take small steps is the any moment that you couldn't immediately turn to the left or the right you might run into chairs or things but could you do it yes now what is being demonstrated is that in every moment we have what we might call human Freedom we can radically alter what we're doing at any
moment that we're doing it it's this that usually we don't notice that we have this Freedom that making sense to you but if you do notice it then no matter what you're doing you could keep it up or you could radically alter it okay so thank you very much so um these are ways to be in the world and I want to talk now about what I like to call leading principles and values and I'm I'm not too hung up on what we call it but there are some distinctions here that are worth making now
a leading principle is a direction in which you choose to move uh if you go either East or West you can keep going and going and going in the United States we have this innergizer bunny commercial I don't know if it's making it around the globe but uh you can keep going and going and going so leading principles are not like goals go goals or places you get to if you want to uh graduate high school well usually if you put in the seat time you can achieve that if you want to be the best
educated person you can be when would you finish that no matter how well educated you get the next day you could get up and pursue being the best educated person I can be if you want to get married there's usually somebody okay so you did it you've got married now if you want to be the best mate you could be when would you finish that no matter how good a mate you've been up till now the next morning you get up you could still be the best mate you can be in fact if you've been
a lowy mate for 10 years and you're still married that's how L the next day you could get up and start being the best mate you can be you wouldn't start at the same place but you could start in that direction and I'm making sense to you uh children if you want a kid you could get one the usual way or you can adopt one again the goal has been attained but if you want to be the best parent you can be when would you finish that what they need at two is not what they
need at 32 and a good parent can tell the difference uh but you can go on being the best parent you can be for as long as you're uh around to do so so these directions not goals along the way that's what I mean by a leading principle and usually you can formulate a leading principle by I want to be the best whatever it is I can be now of course you could pick I want to be the most mediocre student that I can be and you could live up to that or I want to
be a really lousy whatever I can be and you could live up to that there's no magic in your leading princip you pick anything you like but mostly when people are are going to do something they usually are interested in doing the best that they can do not the best but the best that they can do I making sense to you now a moment ago we saw walk over the door and back grudgingly or willingly in other words there's a way we do things whatever we're doing we can do them in particular ways if I
wanted to go from here to Baltimore I could travel but I could walk I could go in a car I could take a train I could crawl I could walk backwards there's a lot of ways to do things uh and they might all get me to Baltimore but I would have a different kind of experience depending on the way I did it am I making sense to you so what I want to use the word values for is across a wide variety of domains I would choose to do it the same way being the best
mate I can be has very little to do with being the best fly Fisher I can be and I do have that disease uh in fact being the best mate I can be and being the best fly Fisher I can be sometimes you're not compatible but both of them I could do thoughtfully I make it sense to you so values no matter what domain I'm in I could pick the same way of doing things even though the things that I'm doing are quite different is there any difficulty about this distinction between what I'm calling a
leading principle and what I'm calling a value in other words the direction that I'm going and the way I travel any trouble making that distinction so um using symbols now to see what to do so how many this is kind of a sophisticated audience maybe many people won't know this how many people in this audience have ever Skyped okay so a lot of people in this audience one thing about Skype is that there's a big picture and then there's a little picture little picture is usually of you and then the big picture of whoever you're
talking to now some people that you'll encounter maybe depending on where you are many people you encounter they won't know anything about that but many of them may have either seen or have heard of this television feature of the picture within a picture which means you can uh watch dress uh uh what is it uh what's the what's the wedding thing uh Say Yes to the Dress right there you go see I you can your audience will help you out right Say Yes to the Dress or the football game now depending in my house depending
on who has the controller you which got the little picture and which got the big picture you can work that out but that's what I'm talking about there is the little picture of the moment that we're living in there's no place out we can live except right here right now but we don't have to live only for the little picture of the moment we could live for the big picture of what we want our life to be about those values and leading principles so uh the first thing I want you to do is to make
a symbol of one of those things that you would pick be the best mate I can be be the best facilitator I can be be the best uh uh son or daughter I can be be the best parent I can be something that you would pick everybody got one okay uh now I want you to think of something that would symbolize that uh when I I'm thinking it could be a phrase it could be a picture uh those medieval crests that have you know bunch of pictures and a saying at the bottom something like that
something that for you symbolizes that entire domain is there anybody who can't come up with one okay now I want you to do this take your arm and put your palm up like this okay the other way thank you and on your palm project that symbol everybody do it now look down your arm and see if you can't find a whole lot of behaviors that line up with that symbol that line up with something that represents the big picture and then if you look to either side you'll see a whole lot of behaviors that simply
don't line up anybody I can't do this so far no now what I'd like you to notice is if you do the things that line up with that symbol the things that don't line up will take care of themselves that making sense to you so how do I see what to do I picked my leading principal let's be the best facilitator I can be well how do I see what to do this is a little simple exercise not hard to do make a symbol of IT project the symbol on your palm look down your arm
what are the things that line up with it if I do those I don't have to concern myself with the things that don't line up with it because I won't be doing them I'll be doing something else so let's talk a little bit about habits habits are something you do quickly and easily and without much awareness that's another aspect of habits so if you're going to change a habit the first thing you have to have is raising your awareness now we're right back to being where you are being psychologically present with what's going on oh
look how I'm moving my hands and arms and feet and mouth oh look what thoughts and images and bodily Sensations I'm having and the thing about habits is when you start raising your awareness it's usually oh damn I did it again right awareness starts after you're doing it but if you keep working on uh in the 70s you used to call it Consciousness raising but raising your awareness after a while you'll catch yourself in the ACT oh I'm doing it right now this is your first opportunity to change because all the rest of the times
it was too late now if you catch yourself like one half a second after you finished it you can do like oh wait wait wait I screwed up I'm sorry I made a mistake right but usually it's three days later and then you realize oh I did it again so that's too late uh well not for human beings cuz it's kind of impressive you can apologize for things you did a long time ago and people go like oh you remembered that rotten thing you did kind of thanks for remembering but in order to change the
Habit you first catch yourself doing it how do you catch yourself doing it catch yourself doing it by raising your awareness and then you do something that won't come quickly and easily and thus it may feel odd and weird and strange and not like me now how many of you have ever changed a habit how many of you found that when you tried to do the new thing it felt odd and weird and strange and not like me exactly the thing is if a person will not put up with that well I ain't going to
have odd and W Str not like me they can't change cuz that's just part of the deal so you might say without the frustration tolerance of doing something that's odd and weird and strange you can't build a new habit it's just part of what comes with the territory so raise your awareness so that you can catch yourself in the moment that you're doing it do the new thing how you going to find the new thing well what lines up and if you keep that up after a while and you guys tell me after a while
you see it coming you don't have to do the old thing before you start doing the new thing you can see oh I'm already you know kind of got that urge to move in that direction I'm having thoughts of moving in that direction I'm having images of moving in that direction and I can do my new thing instead keep that up and after a while the new thing begins to become more and more and more frequent now the thing about old things is we never really get rid of them they're always hunging around I like
to say everybody has a voice inside their head that says how about doing something stupid now what the stupid thing is varies from place to place time to time and person to person but I don't know anybody who doesn't have this voice when I was a kid people told me that I would always hear another voice that told me what I should do and I have to I don't know about you guys but I have not always heard that voice but I have always heard a voice that told me something stupid to do and the
thing is it's often not that creative so it's the same old stupid thing right so sometimes I get a new stupid thing but the old stupid thing that I already know how to do that's always hanging around I make a sense to you so those invitations to go do things that you used to do that didn't work they're always hanging around you can't really get rid of your human history but you don't always have to go along with it and you can build additional aspects to your history so that the new thing comes more quickly
and more easily so when it comes to doing what's important focus on moving your hands and arms and feet and mouth because you have more control over your hands and arms and feet and mouth than your thoughts and images plus they are the way that you actually affect the world how many of you have spent time in school where there was homework how many of you have tried to do your homework by thinking about doing your homework how did it work that s you actually have to sit down and do it that is how it
you know change is affected so uh in my own case uh I used to I went to college in the central time zone where the good programs came on at 700 p.m. and at 6:55 I would sit down I would think very systematically about all the homework that I had to do that evening and then I watched television for 3 hours it turns out this is not effective so hands and arms and feet and mouth cuz we have a lot of control over those I can't walk over the wall in back I can't stay seated
I must stand up knowing what you're doing isn't the same thing as doing it but it really helps if you don't have any idea what you're trying to do the chances are less that you'll succeed but at least if you you can identify your values and leading principles you've got to leg up now the fact that you've identify them doesn't mean that you're going to follow them that's more work but at least it tells you what you're trying to do so here's what I might suggest is the formula for human Liberation by willingly doing something
unpleasant not grudgingly by willing L doing something unpleasant and willingly refraining from doing something pleasant why just to annoy yourself no this this is not just build frustration tolerance you could do that uh but in the service of something you choose to make more important then I never have to be a slave to circumstance whether the circumstances inside my skin or outside my skin this is not a bunch of psychological Hocus Pocus this is really how human beings live life in Freedom rather than slavery so if you want to be where you are and do
what's important then act by which I mean accept the world as it is was or may be you don't have to approve of the world not asking you to approve them but if you don't give your permission for the world to be as it is or was or may be you're in an argument with life how many people have argued with life how'd it work out don't get in that argument right you don't have to give your approval but you could give your permission then choose cuz you get to pick that's the amazing thing you
could pick anything to make important with your hands and arms and feet and mouth so pick the values and leading principles that are the ones that are of interest to you this organization is about the Power of Choice and then willing not grudgingly willingly follow it and finally teach others to do the same there's not enough people in this room but teach these principles and other people teach these principles and other people teach these principles and the Power of Choice will expand and expand and expand thank you according to my watch I have left two
minutes is there anything that you want me to say something about I didn't get a chance to so yes ma'am ideas uh in other places or whatever but it's really sun in through your presentation so thank well thank you I intended to be helpful it's nice to know I succeeded okay [Music] [Music]
