Learn how to dissolve the box

hi good morning i'm alistair ben and you're watching the zen haggis in this week's video i want to talk about the concept of dissolving the box this this imaginary box we talk about in terms of creativity thinking outside the box and that seems to be like this utopian thing is thinking outside of the box but we don't talk about what the box is so that's the purpose of today's video is to explore not just what this box is that we hypothetically talk about all the time but how to not just think outside it but how to dissolve it all together now i'm not referring to the box that we work in like an office cubicle or an office space or a home office or in a factory or in a store or whatever it is we care to do for a living i'm talking about this imaginary box that's in our head now a lot of that box if we want to think outside of it first of all we have to understand what it is and for me the concept of thinking outside the box seems very perverse because it's why should there be a box in the first place now we live in the west coast of scotland it's a beautiful place to do so and it's quite common for us to go out and see holiday makers and tourists and occasionally other photographers coming here to enjoy the countryside and i think it's a fairly well understood thing that the countryside is a good place to come and relax and enjoy the outdoors and to feel free and unconstrained there's a few midges out here this morning that's what we're enjoying now is there a relationship between being in the countryside and being relaxed or are we bringing just a different version of ourselves into the countryside than the one that lives in an office in the city if it was the countryside that was the variable then everyone who lives in the countryside would be chilled but that's not the case i know for a fact where we are in the highlands of scotland anxiety depression alcoholism drug abuse domestic abuse child abuse all of these things exist here just as much as they do in the cities even on a per capita basis so the fact that everyone who lives in this in the countryside isn't chilled all the time we can't just say well living in the countryside is good for you there are definite benefits but i know from my own past experience i've been miserable living in the countryside and i've been miserable living in cities so it seems to me that it's something else it's not the location that's the variable it's us that's the variable the sun's just about to come spilling over the ridge here so i'm going to get bathed in gold and light as the midges eat me so it's a it's a changing situation the thing i'm most interested in is understanding where this box comes from now i think all of us are familiar with the idiot who lives in our head that tells us that we're no good at things that tells us that we can't do things that tells us that we were rubbish and we shouldn't even bother trying and i think that's defining language i think this person who knows us best knows our insecurities the best knows our fears the best they're not our best advisor and i think unfortunately the box that we refer to is self-made i i don't want to belittle or make insignificant the impact that other people can have on producing that box i know from my own personal experience and close family and friends how significantly other people's lives have been changed by the behavior of other people partners parents grandparents children even we all have relationships with other people and other people can impact our behavior and the way we perceive ourselves people can make you feel small people can make you feel insignificant people can make it feel as if what you say isn't valid but at the end of the day as we grow up and mature part of growth part of growing up is this realization that we have a certain element of control over our own being and certainly the one thing we have the most control over or need to have the most control over is this it's the idiot inside our heads who's telling us stuff that is not good for us now this box that we're supposed to be living in if it's completely hypothetical then we can change it at any point in time we're not talking about a fixed space if you want to move house you have to sell one and move to another if we want to change the relationship with the idiot in our head all we need to do is change the language or how much we care what the the idiot in our head is saying so very much today we're going to be talking about how to get rid of the stupid idiot in your head that doesn't really do very much good for you now as i said before there's nothing easier than being out here in the countryside and being free and feeling as if the world is infinite and some of you may know already that i actually do a formal meditation practice and i've been doing this for about four or five years now and uh whether i'm traveling or i'm at home i have a space i have a cushion and i sit on that for at least 20 minutes to half an hour every day and even if i'm in my office which is a like i said it's a small box sound insulated there's cameras and lights and computers and guitars and printers and there's technology everywhere and it's a very small space and it feels terribly confined and it doesn't matter if i'm sat there or i'm sat on a rock out here by the law the state of mind that i can generate in myself is exactly the same where i'm pushing out my consciousness beyond the physical space that i'm in so even if i'm in this little closed box that i live in or i work in i can still push my thoughts out out of the room into the rest of the house out of the house into the garden out of the garden into the village out of the village into the forests and mountains and locks around me and up into the air to the atmosphere and out into well the cosmos to make it sound a little bit cheesy but at the end of the day pushing out my consciousness so that my world is infinite frees up my mind it it releases any boundary on it and it's the same when i'm trying to write an article or to write a book an empty page seems like the most daunting thing in the world until you realize that you've got the infinity of of your perspective to put into it now the the thing with this box that we have in our mind this imaginary box it's made up of beliefs it's made up of prejudices it's made up of experiences and education and opinions not very much of that is factual an awful lot of it is just perceptual and the thing about it is though is that we nail ourselves to a plank of wood with these thoughts these definitions of who we are what we can do what we can't do why we can't do it all what other people think about us external judgment expectations society's expectation it's almost as if our entire existence is defined by what everybody else thinks about us and what this idiot in our head has been telling us for 20 30 40 50 60 80 years it doesn't matter how many years you've been living the box that we try to think outside of is a box of our own design and i think really what i'm trying to suggest today in this video it's not necessarily about sitting and meditating although i would recommend everyone does that but the concepts are that you have to do what we did last week which is notice and once you've noticed wait a minute why am i telling myself that why am i putting myself down why am i telling myself i can't do something when clearly i can or i certainly want to try and this is what dissolving the box is all about and i think in future videos to come we'll be covering some of some of these things more the way we label the way we put ourselves down negative language all of these concepts are very very important in i'll tell you i'll just tell you a little anecdote before we get before we close here you know i used to define myself as a fearful person a panicky person an anxious person and a depressed person and i got to the point where i was waiting to die i just thought that's a this is me for the rest of my life this is who i am i'm anxious i have panic attacks and that's it and it's over three years now since i've had a panic attack in fact longer than that but i certainly don't define myself as anxious anymore i don't decide to define myself as a fearful person anymore i'm quite happy to to just say right i'm alistair ben i'm bloody proud of what i do and how i go about my life and every day is precious so no more waiting for some miracle to happen that's going to change our lives for us it's all about changing that relationship with the person in our head now i've spoken a couple of times about meditating and i know that there's a lot of people who are resistant to it they find that they have a very busy mind they don't consider they have the time to do it and so for people who don't want to meditate the the exercise that you have to look at in how to to deal with your box is noticing now we talked about it last week noticing when there was things in life that weren't making you happy and that they were things that you could consider to change now isn't it ironic that we're in the same place which is we need to notice when we're creating a box for ourself now this box is like i said it's a function of our thoughts and our perceptions and things that other people are saying to us and stuff we read on the internet all of these things define the box so we need to notice so it's like noticing when you're reading too much negative social media we need to step away from that and do something more productive with our time so if you're noticing that reading social media first thing in the morning puts you in a bad mood for the rest of the day that box of social media being bad for you needs to be dissolved if you notice that hanging out with certain people makes you feel bad about yourself then maybe it's time to consider whether those people should be in your lives or not and we do that with friends and it's harder with family of course but you know at the end of the day we need to notice the things that are closing us in it's so beautiful to feel free it's so beautiful to feel detached from that voice in our head now like i said i do meditate on a regular basis on a daily basis and i have periods while i'm sat where i can have all of this chaos going on around me and it just washes over me the classic metaphor is like sitting behind the waterfall and the waterfall is all your thoughts and society and all of these different things piling down in front of you and you're totally dry behind the waterfall now i would strongly advocate people to to try and meditate even if it's just taking five minutes like at the end of this video nice music relaxing imagery and just use that time to notice oh wait a minute there's a stupid thought that's me telling me that i should be looking for cats juggling on youtube whatever it is that distracts us from our true purpose in life so uh yeah that one exercise of noticing it worked for us last week and it will work for us in terms of dissolving the box i hope you find this stuff useful if so please please please give us a thumbs up and subscribe get into the comments below i was so overjoyed with the comments we got last week it was so encouraging the first video to to get such engaging comments from everyone so i really appreciate that and it makes me believe that this content is valuable and you will find it useful so thank you very much for watching and we'll see you next week i will uh kilt my way around the west coast of scotland for some some more [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] you

Channel: The Zen Haggis

Views: 2,100

Keywords: never too late to change your life, motivation, motivational video, make life better, tips, why am I sad, depression, mental health, anxiety, how to, it's never too late, meditation, mindfulness meditation, awareness, zen, relaxation, relaxing, how to relax, practical mindfulness, noticing, noting, happiness, happy, passion, passionate, living life, zen haggis, Alister Benn, Expressive Photography, Thinking outside the box, think outside the box, the box, Think, personal growth

Id: a3hHE-jjGSE

Length: 17min 45sec (1065 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 11 2020