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Speaker 2: Mostly with people who postpone a lot of things. When
Speaker 2: you ask them, when they are satisfied, they have a
Speaker 2: very very high standard. They want to do everything very perfectly.
Speaker 2: That makes them that it's never the right condition to start.
Speaker 3: Wow, welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great
Speaker 3: thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have.
Speaker 3: Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
Speaker 3: you think ring true, and yet for many of us,
Speaker 3: our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 3: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 3: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 3: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 3: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent
Speaker 3: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 3: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 3: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 3: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Paul Luman's,
Speaker 3: a founder and coach at Unraveling Stress in Amsterdam, where
Speaker 3: he works with individuals and groups, helping them to regain
Speaker 3: a sense of calm in their lives. Paul has been
Speaker 3: a zen monk since nineteen eighty four and runs the
Speaker 3: European Zen Center in Amsterdam.
Speaker 1: Hi, Paul, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 1: I'm excited to have you on. We are sitting in
Speaker 1: a studio in Amsterdam. Yes, And I was talking to
Speaker 1: an old friend of the show, Oliver Berkman, last week,
Speaker 1: and as we were talking he mentioned you and said
Speaker 1: that you were in Amsterdam and you were both a
Speaker 1: Zen monk and wrote a book about time management.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 1: As a longtime Zen student myself, I thought, well, I've
Speaker 1: got to meet this guy, and I emailed you and
Speaker 1: like the next day, here we are sitting in a studio.
Speaker 1: So thank you for being so easy to show up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's marvelous. It's marvelous that you see an occasion
Speaker 2: and you jump in it. That's also time serving.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's also Zen.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: We're going to get into your book, which is called
Speaker 1: time Surfing, but before we do, we'll start like we
Speaker 1: always do with the Parable.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 1: In the Parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with their
Speaker 1: grandchild and they say, in life, there are two wolves
Speaker 1: inside of us that are always at battle. One is
Speaker 1: a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery
Speaker 1: and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like greed and hatred and fear. The grandchild
Speaker 1: stops and they think about it for a second, they
Speaker 1: look up at their grandparents, they say, well, which one wins,
Speaker 1: and the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 1: like to start off by asking you what that parable
Speaker 1: means to you you in your life and in the
Speaker 1: work that you do.
Speaker 4: Well, it's a nice question.
Speaker 2: What do you do with the things in yourself you
Speaker 2: don't like or you think it should change it? And
Speaker 2: most of the people are starting a battle with them.
Speaker 2: And when you battle with your weaknesses, with the things
Speaker 2: you don't want, you make them stronger. So I would
Speaker 2: say accept them, accept them and try to know them
Speaker 2: very well, and to become friend with them, to not
Speaker 2: see it anymore as a wolf, but to see it
Speaker 2: as a friend. A friend who might be afraid of something,
Speaker 2: might not know something, might want to go in another direction,
Speaker 2: and you look at him and you try to understand him,
Speaker 2: and then you say, well, come we go.
Speaker 4: Nevertheless, we can do this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the same you do with the other one,
Speaker 2: because the other one, I think it's much more right
Speaker 2: to become in a relationship with your intuition, and your
Speaker 2: intuition sees your fear, but seees also your courage and
Speaker 2: taking part of everything that's in you. Your intuition says
Speaker 2: to you, go there, and that's the leading one in
Speaker 2: your system.
Speaker 1: We'll get to intuition later on. Yeah, but first, you're
Speaker 1: a long time zen monk, an intensive practitioner for thirty
Speaker 1: years now, forty years now? Tell me about a zen
Speaker 1: monk writing a book about time management. How did those
Speaker 1: two things connect?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 2: When you practice zen meditation, you deal a lot with
Speaker 2: time all the time. All the time you deal with time.
Speaker 2: You're sitting without moving, facing a wall with your eyes
Speaker 2: half closed. You let things pass by. In fact, the
Speaker 2: only thing there is is time. Time passes by, and
Speaker 2: you see what yourself you are struggling with the time.
Speaker 2: Are you embracing the time? What is your relationship with it?
Speaker 2: Can you forget the time? And time is like the
Speaker 2: beats of your life? You have a lot of beats
Speaker 2: in your life. It are small items you are all
Speaker 2: the time. We are in an item now and afterwards
Speaker 2: you will be in another item. And how are they colored?
Speaker 2: Which is the color of your item? And can you
Speaker 2: accept this color and live it? Live it completely?
Speaker 1: Yep, the analogy you just made there, I just want
Speaker 1: to share it with listeners. And you make it in
Speaker 1: the book at a variety of different places. Is that
Speaker 1: if you think of a necklace, right, each bead on
Speaker 1: there is a little thing of time.
Speaker 2: Exactly, yeah, exactly, And well I brought this. It's a
Speaker 2: case of this is what we were during sales and this.
Speaker 2: When you are a monk, you make one way yourself.
Speaker 2: It takes maybe to make it. I'm very slow. It
Speaker 2: took me one and a half year my first case.
Speaker 2: Have to saw it, and it's made me very small points.
Speaker 2: So you make point after point after point after point,
Speaker 2: and every point is concentrated because you see the line
Speaker 2: you make on it. You could say it's concentration. It's concentration,
Speaker 2: or better you could say it's attention. And you wear
Speaker 2: this like for a monk. It's the most important thing
Speaker 2: you possess. You could even say it's the only thing
Speaker 2: you possess. You take care of it, You take care
Speaker 2: of it above everything else. It's a rule, of course
Speaker 2: that you take care of it. But it's also you
Speaker 2: feel it like that the more you are sitting practicing
Speaker 2: zen meditation, the more it becomes important. This growth to
Speaker 2: you and it seems material, but it's not material. It's
Speaker 2: your entrance in the practice, it's the way you practice,
Speaker 2: it's you, it's your soul, or it's.
Speaker 4: The cosmos if you want it.
Speaker 2: To more important than everything else that you can could possess,
Speaker 2: and it's nothing.
Speaker 4: It's just attention, attention.
Speaker 1: And so practicing meditation got you thinking about time. I've
Speaker 1: set a lot of zz enz and meditation and long sessions,
Speaker 1: you know, longer retreats, and yeah, all you have is time.
Speaker 1: Sometimes time is flying by, sometimes you don't notice it.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it is going so painfully slow, but you're just
Speaker 1: like when when is this over? So you get a
Speaker 1: real opportunity to work with that. So how did that
Speaker 1: translate into youth thinking about how people manage their time
Speaker 1: outside of a sitting practice.
Speaker 4: Well, which is beautiful in the way we practicing.
Speaker 2: So I'm a zen monk, but we are as investigated
Speaker 2: in the social life as in spiritual life. So at
Speaker 2: that moment that I started thinking closer about time, I
Speaker 2: was an actor and a director of physical theater.
Speaker 4: I had a family with three young children.
Speaker 2: I was responsible for a Zen center, European Zen Center
Speaker 2: in Amsterdam, so I had a lot of things to do. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and to not forget anything. I made lists, and my
Speaker 2: lists they were very detail ild, and that shows something
Speaker 2: from me, that shows my approach to not forget anything,
Speaker 2: to be very responsible. I had three lists, one for
Speaker 2: the acting poll, one for meditation, and one for the family.
Speaker 2: So I saw myself each evening navigating between my lists
Speaker 2: and there all this I have done. That's good, and
Speaker 2: oh I wouldn't forget this. And I was trying to finish,
Speaker 2: to have everything done. That was my motive. I did
Speaker 2: a step back and I thought, is this what I want.
Speaker 2: I'm teaching people in the Zen Center to be more
Speaker 2: close to themselves, and I am just trying to finish
Speaker 2: all the things that I'm doing that one day I
Speaker 2: can say I've finished, I've done everything. And then I thought, no,
Speaker 2: this is not what I want anymore. What I want
Speaker 2: is I want to live out of calmness. That's a
Speaker 2: starting point. I wanted to live out of calmness, and
Speaker 2: I knew it was possible because in the Zen you
Speaker 2: know people who live out of calmness. The end does
Speaker 2: give this a little bit to you of some people.
Speaker 2: More as I know several people who lives out of calmness,
Speaker 2: they are always, always ready. You ask them a question
Speaker 2: and they are ready for you, and they have nothing
Speaker 2: in their head?
Speaker 4: What is their secret? How do they do? And that's
Speaker 4: what's the starting point from my research with time surfing.
Speaker 1: You say that time surfing is intended to transition us
Speaker 1: from control to trust.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 1: Trust is a very interesting thing because it's something I
Speaker 1: think about a lot in what can we trust? Yes,
Speaker 1: so in the time surfing model, what is it when
Speaker 1: we make this transition that we are trusting?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, it's a very important question because I would
Speaker 2: say that's the beginning and the end of time surfing.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: Trust and time surfing shows you how you can approach
Speaker 2: life that you can trust because trust needs some conditions
Speaker 2: to trust. If you don't know what is going to happen,
Speaker 2: it's difficult to trust. You can trust and you can
Speaker 2: go in, but it's better to know a little bit
Speaker 2: what everything concerns. And everything is dealing with time surfing.
Speaker 2: When you take all these actions you can do in life.
Speaker 2: What time serving does do? Is this item? I want
Speaker 2: to work on it. This is important for me. Okay,
Speaker 2: look closer, look closer what it is, Look closer to
Speaker 2: the continents of this What you want to do and
Speaker 2: ask yourself questions so that you very well know it,
Speaker 2: and then the moment you know it, you can let
Speaker 2: it go. And you do this with every action in life,
Speaker 2: with everything you want to realize in life. You're looking
Speaker 2: close until the moment it becomes a friend of you,
Speaker 2: you know it very well, and then you let it go.
Speaker 2: And the trust comes at the moment that you are
Speaker 2: going to decide what am I going to do now?
Speaker 2: And then I can trust my intuition because my intuition
Speaker 2: will choose out of all this actions, all these things
Speaker 2: I want to realize in my life, and because my
Speaker 2: subconsciousness knows them very well, and so my intuition can
Speaker 2: choose out of all of them what he thinks that
Speaker 2: is the best to do now at this moment.
Speaker 1: At first listen or first read of that, my mind
Speaker 1: has fifty objections. Yes, however, that's the last step in
Speaker 1: time surfing, is this ability to let your mind surface
Speaker 1: what you want to work on. Let's not start at
Speaker 1: the end. I know it is the beginning and the end,
Speaker 1: but let's walk through the seven instructions, yes, so that
Speaker 1: we can get to a place where that is going
Speaker 1: to make a little bit more sense.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 1: So the first instruction is a straightforward one, a very
Speaker 1: zen one, which is to do one thing at a
Speaker 1: time and finish it. Say a little bit more about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's an instruction, but it's also a condition. If
Speaker 2: you want to experiment calmness, it's a condition just do
Speaker 2: one thing when you're doing two things. Right now, I'm
Speaker 2: talking to you, and there is coming some person in
Speaker 2: and each time I have to say in something you're
Speaker 2: not calm. You're not calm, and you won't be effective.
Speaker 2: It's a condition, and it's very simple condition. And the
Speaker 2: last part of this instruction is very important.
Speaker 4: Finish it.
Speaker 2: So I'm going to do something and it's ready, and
Speaker 2: the last part is finish it. Finishing can be what
Speaker 2: do I want to do with this in the future.
Speaker 2: Finishing can be I clean the table and make an
Speaker 2: empty space, but finish it, because when you finish it,
Speaker 2: there comes new room for new space for the next bad.
Speaker 1: If the big bad that we're trying to create, say
Speaker 1: something like writing a book. Yeah, you're not going to
Speaker 1: sit down and finish the book. You're going to finish
Speaker 1: some part of the book or some chunk of time
Speaker 1: that you work on the books exactly say, how we
Speaker 1: think about that with these tasks that are bigger than
Speaker 1: like clean out the closet, right, Okay, do that finish?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 1: A lot of things that we do in life are
Speaker 1: projects more than their tasks.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, I will give you an example, and this example
Speaker 2: that shows really how time surfing is working. For example,
Speaker 2: I write every Tuesday morning, I write a small article
Speaker 2: about something that I met, something about stress, some experience
Speaker 2: I had in this week. Every Tuesday morning at eleven o'clock,
Speaker 2: that's the deadline.
Speaker 4: It's finished. I start working on this during the week.
Speaker 4: I see if there.
Speaker 2: Are some occasions, some possibilities, so I think, oh, this
Speaker 2: could be possible, Oh that could be possible. I could
Speaker 2: I could write about this experience. I could write about that,
Speaker 2: But I don't decide. And then comes Saturday, Sunday, and
Speaker 2: then at a moment and everybody is gone and the
Speaker 2: house is completely silent. I'm going to sit at my
Speaker 2: desk and I write it, and it comes immediately. I'm
Speaker 2: sitting and I decide what I'm going to do. I
Speaker 2: write it down, and in three quarters of an hour
Speaker 2: I've written the text. I finish it and I close it.
Speaker 2: And then comes Monday, and Monday I look at it again.
Speaker 2: And when I look at it again, then I clean
Speaker 2: it up and I write some other sentences and it's
Speaker 2: better and it's finished. And then the last part is
Speaker 2: I have to put it in the program, and the
Speaker 2: program they'll send it to everybody.
Speaker 4: There's really time serving each part of it.
Speaker 2: For each party is do one thing at a time
Speaker 2: and finish it for each part of it. But all
Speaker 2: these parts together they make a project. And you see
Speaker 2: also in the beginning part that I let simmler things
Speaker 2: in my subconsciousness and I let my intuition decide what
Speaker 2: I'm going to do. And that's why on Saturday or Sunday,
Speaker 2: it's very easy for me to choose something because it
Speaker 2: has already simmered in my subconsciousness before.
Speaker 1: So it sounds like part of this is again, if
Speaker 1: what we're trying to be is more calm, which is
Speaker 1: what part of time surfing is intended to do, is
Speaker 1: to make us more calm. Some of that calmness descends
Speaker 1: upon us by trying to do one thing at a time,
Speaker 1: so that our attention is a little bit more focused
Speaker 1: and it has a chance to be a little more settled.
Speaker 2: Exactly exactly what is so beautiful is when you act
Speaker 2: out of calmness. I never put productivity in front of
Speaker 2: what I wanted to do to be more productive, more effective.
Speaker 4: I wanted to do everything out of calmness.
Speaker 2: And what is so beautiful is when you act out
Speaker 2: of commness, you become more productive. You are much more productive.
Speaker 2: When I was time starting, I was much more productive
Speaker 2: than I was before with my lists because I did.
Speaker 4: Do things at the right moment.
Speaker 2: My choices were better, I was more opened, I was
Speaker 2: more creative. I could also think this is not so
Speaker 2: important that let it go. My decisions were more clear.
Speaker 1: So instruction too is to be aware of what we
Speaker 1: are doing and accept it. Yeah, tell us about this one.
Speaker 2: That's the Zen instruction. Okay, you're recognize it. No, the
Speaker 2: n instruction is in the Zen temple. You have the
Speaker 2: afternoon and we have and Samu, that's the work we
Speaker 2: do for the temple.
Speaker 1: Work practice, yeah, work practice.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And there's one person who says who wants to clean
Speaker 2: the toilets and then put your hand on and say
Speaker 2: I want to clean the toilet okay, and we need
Speaker 2: three persons to work in the garden.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: See, I'm waiting until the garden comes up. I'm letting
Speaker 1: the toilet go by. And when they say garden, my hand.
Speaker 2: Goes up very good. But for a zen monk, it's
Speaker 2: all the same. It's all the same. Are you working
Speaker 2: in the garden or working in the kitchen or cleaning
Speaker 2: the toilets? What you are going to do is you
Speaker 2: don't do it in practice, But it is as if
Speaker 2: you close your eyes and you say, this is the
Speaker 2: most important thing I'm going to do in my life,
Speaker 2: and then you open your eyes and you start doing
Speaker 2: it calmly, with an open mind, and then you enjoy it.
Speaker 4: You don't think you I still have to clean another toilet.
Speaker 2: No, you just make it clean and see, Okay, it's
Speaker 2: well done, and you're satisfied about the work you have done.
Speaker 1: Yes, you say in this instruction number two, it's useful
Speaker 1: in the beginning to intentionally name the activity, so to
Speaker 1: be very clear about what we're doing. I am cleaning
Speaker 1: the toilet, I am writing my article. Why is this
Speaker 1: naming important?
Speaker 4: It helps?
Speaker 2: It helps because we as human beings, we are so
Speaker 2: in the future. Oh, I'm doing this, but I still
Speaker 2: have to do that and afterwards. I have to do
Speaker 2: that all the time, thinking about the future and naming
Speaker 2: the action. I'm now on my bike going home. That
Speaker 2: means that you're.
Speaker 1: Biking, yes, and not trying to come home, right, biking yep.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: You also talk about elevating his tasks to an art form.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's what's happening. When you repeat tasks. A lot
Speaker 2: of times they become art when you, for example, well,
Speaker 2: I think everybody knows that with the way he puts
Speaker 2: all the stuff into the washing machine. You know, and
Speaker 2: in the beginning you put them like this, but at
Speaker 2: a certain moment you want to have you want to
Speaker 2: have them like this because that's the way it works
Speaker 2: the best, and it becomes art.
Speaker 1: This becomes a source of dispute in many partnerships, the
Speaker 1: proper way to load the dishwasher. I think here's art.
Speaker 1: I'm modern art. She might be more impression impressionistic, or
Speaker 1: you know, a more classical Dutch art Rembrandt right.
Speaker 4: Or ironing.
Speaker 2: When you're ironing, like it do to do ironing, I'm
Speaker 2: not so good at it, But this time i'm ironing,
Speaker 2: I have my way of doing it. I'm just and
Speaker 2: I try to become better in it, and I have
Speaker 2: my way.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's strange with things like that or cleaning, because I
Speaker 1: notice there's sort of a natural aversion to doing them.
Speaker 1: But if I pay attention while I'm doing them, I
Speaker 1: noticed that it's actually very pleasant.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yes, I would think my brain would update and be like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is enjoyable, and it sort of does. But there's
Speaker 1: still a little resistance.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, jump off with this resistance, it's good to
Speaker 2: name the action. Okay, at a certain moment, you don't
Speaker 2: need to name anymore because it becomes a habit that
Speaker 2: whatever you do, you jump into it. But in the beginning,
Speaker 2: you can feel resistance with some actions, and then it's
Speaker 2: good to name them.
Speaker 1: So onto instruction three, which would be to create breathers
Speaker 1: between activities, alternate times of focused attention with moments where
Speaker 1: we let go of focus.
Speaker 2: I always say to people, when somebody asks me what
Speaker 2: is the most important instruction of the seven, I would
Speaker 2: answer I can't say you need them all seven, but
Speaker 2: when I have to make a choice, I will choose
Speaker 2: the third one about the briefs. It's the most important
Speaker 2: one because when you don't do the briefs, the briever
Speaker 2: is such a source of everything else. If you don't
Speaker 2: do them, you're much less creative. You don't have a
Speaker 2: view about everything you want to do. The intuition doesn't
Speaker 2: work anymore. The brief is giving this all to you.
Speaker 2: A briefer is also it gives you you have done
Speaker 2: something intensely. Afterwards, you want to breathe out, and the
Speaker 2: best way to breathe out is to do something where
Speaker 2: you don't need to be focused. Because when you do
Speaker 2: something where you are not focused, for example, cleaning something
Speaker 2: or making a cup of tea, or you do something
Speaker 2: where you are not focused, your mind starts simmering. You
Speaker 2: call it simmering. Your mind starts simmering. And this simmering
Speaker 2: you have ideas and you think, oh, yes, this I
Speaker 2: want to remember, Oh yes, this I want to do later,
Speaker 2: and this I shouldn't forget. And at the same time
Speaker 2: you become calm. So you have done. You have given
Speaker 2: a lot of energy, and during the brief it's as
Speaker 2: if the energy comes back to you, and very quickly.
Speaker 2: So in my courses they last for two hours and
Speaker 2: then after sixty seventy minutes, I say we now stopped
Speaker 2: for five minutes, and then I explained to people, what's
Speaker 2: a briever. So I said, don't take your phone. Don't
Speaker 2: take your phone, avoid communicating with other people. Just take
Speaker 2: a briefer. Go stand for the window, go cleaning something,
Speaker 2: go to the toilet, go outside, just for a couple
Speaker 2: of minutes. And then people come back and they are fresh.
Speaker 2: They are fresh, and they have understood much better what
Speaker 2: we have done just before.
Speaker 1: I find this to be a really important one. Also,
Speaker 1: I'm working on a book, and the way I do
Speaker 1: it is I write for thirty minutes, yes, and then
Speaker 1: I get a little thing that tells me it's thirty minutes.
Speaker 1: If I feel like I'm really in it, I'll just
Speaker 1: allow myself to go a little longer.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: If it gets to an hour, then I'm like, okay,
Speaker 1: time to get up, time to do something different to
Speaker 1: sort of replenish that energy. I have something I can't
Speaker 1: decide if it's a bad habit or not. I think
Speaker 1: it well, sometimes it is, which is One of the
Speaker 1: things I like to do for a breather is to
Speaker 1: play Solitaire on my computer. The reason I like to
Speaker 1: do it is it for me the mind turns off,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't serve the purpose of getting me away
Speaker 1: from my computer and my screen. So I try and
Speaker 1: make myself sort of get up and take a walk
Speaker 1: or do something like that. But sometimes that works for
Speaker 1: me as just my mind goes somewhere semi blank.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, what's important with the instructions of time serving?
Speaker 4: That are no rules? Okay, it are just indications.
Speaker 2: For example, I like playing chess, and often when I've
Speaker 2: done something, I make a chess puzzle and by the
Speaker 2: chess person I'm really concentrated because if not, they cannot
Speaker 2: find it.
Speaker 4: But afterwards I take a briever. Yeah, yeah, so I
Speaker 4: do both.
Speaker 1: Yep ye. Instruction four is a really interesting one and
Speaker 1: I really like it. It makes a lot of sense
Speaker 1: to me. Says give your full attention to drop ins,
Speaker 1: creating a relationship with everything you want to do. When
Speaker 1: something unexpected happens, take it seriously rather than rejecting it.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about this one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's also a real send instruction because people in
Speaker 2: CEN they don't study this nowhere is the rule is
Speaker 2: written on the wall.
Speaker 4: But because of the end practice, people are open.
Speaker 2: And so when someone knocks on the door, when someone
Speaker 2: is coming and asks you a question, and what do
Speaker 2: you want?
Speaker 4: They are open to something else.
Speaker 2: And when we are working, it can be that you
Speaker 2: are working and you're really in something and you're really
Speaker 2: concentrated and you have creativity and everything. You don't want
Speaker 2: to be interrupted. At that moment, you do everything to
Speaker 2: not be interrupted. You close the door and you say
Speaker 2: we are here, we are talking. But if it happens
Speaker 2: that someone comes in and says, ex use me, Paul,
Speaker 2: I know you're busy. I have a question, then I
Speaker 2: say one moment, one moment, I finish my sentence. Yes here,
Speaker 2: I can stop, yeah, tell me, And then the person
Speaker 2: will tell me what is going on and why he
Speaker 2: interrupts me. And then I will think, am I going
Speaker 2: to do this now or am I going to do
Speaker 2: this in the future. So when it's a short question,
Speaker 2: I will tell him, yeah, it's okay, you can do it.
Speaker 2: When it's a bigger thing, I say, okay, I understand you,
Speaker 2: but I want to finish this first. So let's say,
Speaker 2: when do you have time? Can we see this in
Speaker 2: two hours? Maybe so, but I give him full attention
Speaker 2: so he feels himself hurt.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 2: And also because I switch one hundred percent, I can
Speaker 2: very easily come back to what I was doing. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I can very easily find the same creativity, et cetera
Speaker 2: again when I would have been into in between the both.
Speaker 2: Oh you ask me a question, yes, what is it?
Speaker 2: And I'm still working on so at my own screen stress.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I find this one is really interesting because it
Speaker 1: ends up not being good for either person. Like someone
Speaker 1: interrupts me and I'm trying to give them half my attention,
Speaker 1: keep half my attention on what I'm doing. They're not
Speaker 1: feeling like they're heard, right, so it's not good for them,
Speaker 1: and I notice it in myself. I get irritated. Yes,
Speaker 1: I feel irritated when I do sort of what you're suggesting,
Speaker 1: which is stop, say okay, hang on a second turn
Speaker 1: and give them my attention. That works much better. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'll notice it. Like I'm just sort of let's say
Speaker 1: I'm reading in the morning. My partner Ginny finds something
Speaker 1: really interesting as she's doing her reading or whatever, and
Speaker 1: she says, Hey, I had a tendency in the past
Speaker 1: to sort of listen and sort of keep doing what
Speaker 1: I was doing, And I've learned. I don't do it perfectly,
Speaker 1: but I've learned a little bit more to stop turn
Speaker 1: and either say, oh, tell me about it, or to say,
Speaker 1: like you said, this isn't a good time right now.
Speaker 1: I'd love to hear it, but could I hear it
Speaker 1: later kind.
Speaker 2: Of thing, exactly, A very good explanation of the fourth instruction.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the things I noticed in the past was
Speaker 1: when there are multiple things coming at me at once,
Speaker 1: I get very irritable. And so by doing sort of
Speaker 1: what you're suggesting, like just trying to not do three
Speaker 1: of them, do one, then two, then three, that internal
Speaker 1: irritation seems to drop down.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and just before you have paid some attention to
Speaker 2: one and to two, because you're doing three, which you
Speaker 2: paid some attention to the other two, which will come later,
Speaker 2: and because you gave them attention, they come down inside
Speaker 2: of you. Yeah, that's also the fourth instruction. The instruction
Speaker 2: is also drop ins. Give full attention to drop ins
Speaker 2: in your head.
Speaker 1: So when your mind interrupts you with something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for example, there would be I would say, oh,
Speaker 2: I must not forget this evening. I have to that's
Speaker 2: a drop in in my head. Yes, So then I
Speaker 2: have to drop in my head and I look at
Speaker 2: it and I think Oh yeah, I'm going to do this.
Speaker 2: Not I have to do it, but oh yes, I'm
Speaker 2: going to do this later, okay. And then I return
Speaker 2: so I give also the drop ins in my head
Speaker 2: full attention. Then they go into my subconsciousness.
Speaker 1: Which leads us into instruction five, which I'm just going
Speaker 1: to read the sentence and let you explain it. Beware
Speaker 1: of nine rats and transform them into white sheep.
Speaker 4: Yes, what does that mean? Reds?
Speaker 2: When my children were young, we had rats. Reds are
Speaker 2: very nice animals. Okay, one red who had died, and
Speaker 2: we had just still one red left. And she was
Speaker 2: coming into our kitchen and it was Mia was her name.
Speaker 2: And she came into our kitchen and looked and so
Speaker 2: and then she saw the meal of the cat, and
Speaker 2: she took the meal of the cat and put it
Speaker 2: into her mouth, not eating it, but putting it into
Speaker 2: her mouth and hiding it somewhere at her places.
Speaker 4: And then that evening we couldn't find her back. She
Speaker 4: was disappeared. Mia.
Speaker 2: Where's Mia? Well, never mind, we're going to sleep. We
Speaker 2: will find her tomorrow. And we slept. In the middle
Speaker 2: of the night, I woke up and I heard under
Speaker 2: the bed knack knack knack knack. She was eating the
Speaker 2: meal of the cat. Yeah, under the bed. So it
Speaker 2: awakes you, and things you postponed, they awake you. They
Speaker 2: are like g knowing reds. They awake you in the night.
Speaker 2: In the night you awaken you say, ah, I have
Speaker 2: to still to do this. How can I resolve this?
Speaker 2: And I should have done this already. You start blazing,
Speaker 2: aiming yourself that you didn't do it, and knowing reds
Speaker 2: transform them into white sheep. And you do this by
Speaker 2: the books gives a manimal for it. You ask four questions,
Speaker 2: but the four questions they are in fact go and
Speaker 2: look at your knowing red, going to look at it
Speaker 2: and look at it from all sides, and become friend
Speaker 2: with your g knowing Red. And when you do so,
Speaker 2: it transforms it has there's nothing be done. There's nothing done.
Speaker 2: It's not being executed. But you have another relationship with
Speaker 2: you'r g knowing Red. And for me, then it's a
Speaker 2: white sheep. It doesn't harm you anymore. It's there. You
Speaker 2: know it's there. You know it's not done, but it
Speaker 2: will be done in the future sometime, at some moment,
Speaker 2: at the right moment, it will be done in the future,
Speaker 2: so it has you have the relationship from a sheep
Speaker 2: that walks behind you instead from g knowing rets who
Speaker 2: awaken in the night.
Speaker 1: So this sort of blends right into instruction six. So
Speaker 1: we're going to be talking about five and six here,
Speaker 1: which is to observe background program thoughts that keep going.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Right.
Speaker 1: So for example, let's say I have a gnawing rat.
Speaker 1: It's a worry about something and it wakes me up
Speaker 1: and I think, oh, I should have done this by now.
Speaker 1: I think we all know what it's like for that
Speaker 1: to just keep coming. What's happening when I am able
Speaker 1: to use your terminology to make it a white sheep
Speaker 1: versus it continues to just gnaw away. How does the
Speaker 1: transition happen? What's the difference there?
Speaker 2: Well, the sixth instruction is not only about knowing rats.
Speaker 2: It's also about worries. For example, when you have had
Speaker 2: a discussion with your partner and it wasn't resolved, then
Speaker 2: it becomes a background program. You had an emotion, you
Speaker 2: were maybe heard by your partner by someone by something
Speaker 2: he said to you, and your mind starts creating thoughts
Speaker 2: that have a higher speed as normal thoughts. And this
Speaker 2: is because hidden under the surface you have an emotion.
Speaker 2: You are you have fear or you are hurt, and
Speaker 2: you have an emotion and this emotion that makes that
Speaker 2: your thoughts are going to turn into loops and won't
Speaker 2: find any solution.
Speaker 4: So that's the sixth instruction.
Speaker 1: Okay, so before we move on to worry, when you're
Speaker 1: talking about a nine rat, is that normally? Does that
Speaker 1: mean we're talking about a task, a thing that needs
Speaker 1: to be done? Is that kind of specifically what we
Speaker 1: mean when we say turn a nine rat into a
Speaker 1: white sheep? Is it we're talking about these things that
Speaker 1: we think we have to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm talking not only about glowing reds. I also
Speaker 2: talk about rough diamonds. Okay, Gnowing rats are things that
Speaker 2: you should already have done, huh, but you don't do
Speaker 2: them for one reason or another. And rough diamonds are
Speaker 2: plans you have for the future, but they are still
Speaker 2: not clear in your head. But the way you treat
Speaker 2: them is the same. So gnowing red gives you a
Speaker 2: lot of stress, But a rough diamond you should polish it.
Speaker 2: You should polish it because when it's polished, then it's
Speaker 2: much more easy to execute them. And the way to
Speaker 2: do is I have an instruction with four questions. I
Speaker 2: ask four questions about this task. And when you answer
Speaker 2: all the fourth questions, do you know them much better?
Speaker 2: You have nothing done, but you know them much better.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: An example of one of the questions is what don't
Speaker 1: I know about this task?
Speaker 2: You start asking what do I know? But I started
Speaker 2: a good beginning question. Then what do I not know?
Speaker 2: Which knowledge I don't have? Wo but I'm not able
Speaker 2: to do as the second question. The third question is
Speaker 2: do I need some help? Is there a person who
Speaker 2: can help me? And who could be? Is there some help?
Speaker 2: And the fourth question is do I have a worry
Speaker 2: about something? And do I have limiting beliefs? Is too
Speaker 2: difficult for me? I should do it in them. But
Speaker 2: it is as if you walk around this gnoying red
Speaker 2: or rough diamond and you look at all sides and
Speaker 2: until you know it quite well. And then and that's
Speaker 2: important because you have done this again, it is in
Speaker 2: your subconscious. And when it's in your subconscious, may I
Speaker 2: talk now about the subconscious?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 2: Yes, when it's in your subconscious, I use the metaphor
Speaker 2: of a cave. So let's represent a cave, and in
Speaker 2: this cave is stocked everything you want to do in
Speaker 2: the future, all your small tasks in the drop ins,
Speaker 2: all the big tasks, the rough diamonds and ignoing rats,
Speaker 2: they are all in this cave. And in the middle
Speaker 2: of this cave is your intuition. And your intuition is
Speaker 2: like blindfolded. It's yourself in the middle of your subconsciousness blindfolded.
Speaker 2: There is another part of the subconsciousness, and that's the
Speaker 2: important thing. The other part of the subconsciousness is behind
Speaker 2: the wall. You cannot see it, but where is stocked
Speaker 2: Everything you have done in the past, all your experience,
Speaker 2: all your knowledge, is stuck there. And between this first part,
Speaker 2: the future part, and the second part, the past, there
Speaker 2: is unconscious thinking. We do a lot of unconscious thinking.
Speaker 2: When you think about a rough diamond and you let
Speaker 2: it rest, and next day or in two days, you
Speaker 2: come back to it, it has become more rich. You're
Speaker 2: more clear about it. You have more ideas. You have
Speaker 2: done nothing in between, but you have more ideas. It's
Speaker 2: coming closer to you. So the time server suggests to
Speaker 2: put everything into the first part of the cave. Everything
Speaker 2: you want to do in the future and then to
Speaker 2: let it rest. Then the ancient subconscious part, with all
Speaker 2: your memories and all you have done in the past,
Speaker 2: will try to find solutions, will try to find ideas,
Speaker 2: will try to help and send this all to the
Speaker 2: front part of the future part. And then in the
Speaker 2: middle you have the intuition. When you take a briefer,
Speaker 2: it's as if you open the door to your subconsciousness.
Speaker 2: So during a briefer, these good ideas they come out
Speaker 2: of the subconsciousness, and also your intuition will tell you
Speaker 2: during a briefer the next thing that fits the best
Speaker 2: to the next moment is when the intuition may feel
Speaker 2: everything you want to do in the future and knows
Speaker 2: all the conditions that are around and everything else you
Speaker 2: want to do. The intuition will say, the best thing
Speaker 2: you can do is this task. And so when you
Speaker 2: are taking a briefer, you think, hmm, I'm going to
Speaker 2: do this now, and that can sometimes be very illogical
Speaker 2: for the reginal mind. For example, last weekend, I had
Speaker 2: really a lot of things to do, really a lot
Speaker 2: of things to do, and I had promised my wife
Speaker 2: I would make on the toilet some photographs of the
Speaker 2: mountains in which we had been this summer. I started
Speaker 2: doing that. I worked on it one and a half
Speaker 2: two hours I've worked on it. I something it's very nice,
Speaker 2: but it camped me down. It calmed me down, and
Speaker 2: it made me ready for all the important tasks that
Speaker 2: comes afterwards. So sometimes the choice of the intuition seems illogical.
Speaker 2: But I'm very well listening to her him, very well
Speaker 2: listening because it takes also care of me and also
Speaker 2: for other people around me.
Speaker 1: So this is where I run into problems with the method,
Speaker 1: and it's probably somewhat rational. Brain right, There are two
Speaker 1: sort of challenges that I see. One is memory. I
Speaker 1: do not have a good memory. I don't retain things. Well.
Speaker 1: It sounds like you're saying, if I look at things
Speaker 1: in a certain way, my subconscious will be able to
Speaker 1: remember them in a way my conscious brain isn't. Have
Speaker 1: you found in the years you've been teaching this people
Speaker 1: when they just try and put something sort of into
Speaker 1: the cave, that it never comes out of the cave.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I understand what you say. In the beginning,
Speaker 2: I suggest to people in the beginning, you may still
Speaker 2: use a list, but when you make your list turn
Speaker 2: it around. So you have made a list, and then
Speaker 2: you turn it around, and then you start functioning with
Speaker 2: your intuition.
Speaker 4: And then after a half a.
Speaker 2: Day you can look on your list, didn't I forget
Speaker 2: anything important? And then again you work on your intuition
Speaker 2: and you will see that when the months and years
Speaker 2: pass and you do this, your memory starts to become
Speaker 2: much better because you have taken the habit that everything
Speaker 2: you want to do in the future you've looked validive.
Speaker 2: You don't think in terms of I have to do.
Speaker 2: You started thinking and I want to do I want
Speaker 2: to do this.
Speaker 4: I want to.
Speaker 2: Realize that, and you know also the way to do
Speaker 2: it because you waited a moment. You know, okay, I
Speaker 2: have to do this, and so when I first do this,
Speaker 2: then I can do this, and then you let it
Speaker 2: drop down. So the subconscious is very well in formed
Speaker 2: also about to wait how to execute it, and it
Speaker 2: will drop.
Speaker 4: It on the right moment and you will remember it.
Speaker 1: Years ago, I made a rule for myself, and maybe
Speaker 1: it seems to have served me well, but it's very
Speaker 1: different than this approach, which my general rule is, if
Speaker 1: I want to remember anything, a phone number, something to
Speaker 1: do later a short thing I read in that book
Speaker 1: that was interesting, right, Like, I try and put it
Speaker 1: into my off board memory system, you know, which seems
Speaker 1: to have served me well. But to the point that
Speaker 1: you're making it sort of the polar opposite.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wait a moment. What I'm doing is I
Speaker 2: wait a moment. For example, after this meeting with you,
Speaker 2: I'm quite sure I won't jump on my bike going
Speaker 2: to the next thing. I will walk a little bit.
Speaker 2: I will walk a little bit, and during five ten minutes,
Speaker 2: then I remember, oh, you said this to me, and
Speaker 2: oh that was a nice part and could have explained better.
Speaker 4: And I take time for that.
Speaker 2: I really make relationship with everything I do in the end,
Speaker 2: and also what do I want to do next? There's
Speaker 2: nothing will happen in the future that well for us,
Speaker 2: it was very quickly. That was nice and we were
Speaker 2: both ready to do this. But mostly I know the
Speaker 2: things I'm going to do. I know them, not very detailed,
Speaker 2: but in overview.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 1: So this idea that our intuition will surface the right
Speaker 1: thing for us to work on. A lot of people's
Speaker 1: experience is of procrastination, and sometimes it's procrastination of certain things,
Speaker 1: but for some people without some sort of impetus, it's
Speaker 1: across the board procrastination, not doing anything. What's happening in
Speaker 1: the mind of someone whose intuition is selecting what needs
Speaker 1: to be done and is working on them in a
Speaker 1: calm manner. And somebody who maybe doesn't have lists, doesn't
Speaker 1: have a system, they don't get anything done. They procrastinate.
Speaker 1: What's happening here?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, the theme stress is not only about time.
Speaker 2: The them stress. And you know I wrote two other
Speaker 2: books and in fact there are four themes in which
Speaker 2: you can have stress. And now we touch another theme.
Speaker 2: You have the seller and you have to do your
Speaker 2: first floor first floor. Yeah, the first floor is about time.
Speaker 2: The second floor is about your beliefs. Your beliefs and
Speaker 2: your opinions about things. And you thinks you will repeat
Speaker 2: also your patterns, your patterns of behavior. And someone who
Speaker 2: is postponing a lot of a lot of things, he
Speaker 2: has a pattern, yes, and it's nice to go more
Speaker 2: profoundly into it and to look, why do you have
Speaker 2: this pattern in yourself?
Speaker 4: What is happening there?
Speaker 2: And mostly with people who postpone a lot of things
Speaker 2: when you ask them, when they are satisfied, they have
Speaker 2: a very very high standard. They want to do everything
Speaker 2: very perfectly. Yes, that makes them that it's never the
Speaker 2: right condition to start because they wait that everything is
Speaker 2: in the good condition to start and to make it perfect.
Speaker 2: When the person understands this, and he also understands this
Speaker 2: is an old pattern. It's a pattern that he created
Speaker 2: in his youth. He copied his papa or his papa
Speaker 2: was saying, you have to do better, and so it's
Speaker 2: an old pattern, then he can start. And that's my
Speaker 2: suggestion that I would give. He can start observing it.
Speaker 2: He starts observing it exactly at the moment that you postpone,
Speaker 2: and to feel the tension at that moment, to feel
Speaker 2: the attention from Okay, now it's fear. It's fear, I
Speaker 2: feel fear. Right, I don't want to start, And then okay,
Speaker 2: brief out, in brief out, and the fear will go
Speaker 2: down when you wait, when you do nothing, the fear
Speaker 2: will calm down and then you can make the step
Speaker 2: step to start doing something. And my suggestion would be
Speaker 2: to start doing something not too long for someone who
Speaker 2: is postponing a lot. Just make small beginnings. Make ten minutes,
Speaker 2: fifteen minutes. You work on it. Then you make a
Speaker 2: step back. I say, WHOA, I have started. I've started,
Speaker 2: and that makes it much more easy to continue afterwards.
Speaker 1: So for time surfing to work, your intuition needs to
Speaker 1: be working well. One possible objection could be that you
Speaker 1: are a forty years zen Monk practitioner. Your intuition is
Speaker 1: really well sharpened, it's working very well. Someone who is
Speaker 1: not had any of that sort of practice, who's much
Speaker 1: more frenetic in their mind not so calm. How does
Speaker 1: time surfing work? It sort of seems on one hand
Speaker 1: like you have to have good intuition for time surfing
Speaker 1: to work, but you get good intuition by doing time surfing.
Speaker 1: And we're sort of caught in a little bit of
Speaker 1: a circle. So how do people begin? Is it just
Speaker 1: start at step one and do these instructions to the
Speaker 1: best of our ability, and this intuition will grow over
Speaker 1: time and it'll become something we can trust more as
Speaker 1: we do the other instructions consistently.
Speaker 4: Well, it's the right question. I think.
Speaker 2: Of course, my zend practice will influence me and will
Speaker 2: make it may be more easy for me to have
Speaker 2: a relationship with my intuition.
Speaker 4: But I have seen a lot.
Speaker 2: A lot of people are instructed in time surfing that
Speaker 2: they start to awake their intuition and do courses with
Speaker 2: five times two hours. So each week we work two
Speaker 2: hours together. In the second session, I start working on intuition,
Speaker 2: and then we are in the fourth and the fifth
Speaker 2: session we work together.
Speaker 4: People show that they follow their intuition and they and they.
Speaker 2: Become more calm because you need the whole system, but
Speaker 2: one part of it is the intuition that awakes more
Speaker 2: by doing the other.
Speaker 1: Because you say, trusting the method is an important precondition
Speaker 1: right to trust this method, which is to ultimately trust
Speaker 1: our intuition, when at the moment that we're starting, our
Speaker 1: intuition may not seem so trustworthy. Yeah, but you're saying,
Speaker 1: you see, when people buy in and they do it,
Speaker 1: you can often see their intuition sort of start to
Speaker 1: guide them quickly and they begin to then trust it more.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: There is a touch book about from Professor deekster House
Speaker 2: and it's about the subconscious and he explains a lot
Speaker 2: about the intuition and when you read it, he gives
Speaker 2: also good examples. He says the inventions that human beings
Speaker 2: made the big inventions. They come out of the subconsciousness,
Speaker 2: and they are made by your intuition. That's not that
Speaker 2: the person is standing before and so, oh this is it. No,
Speaker 2: he has thought about it, yep, and then he let
Speaker 2: he let simmer it. And then he's walking in the
Speaker 2: forest and at one moment he said, I got it, right,
Speaker 2: I got it. But the solution came out of his subconsciousness,
Speaker 2: not out of reginal thinking.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: I think part of the challenge, as I see it,
Speaker 1: is that I use this as an example. But I'm
Speaker 1: a former heroin addict, and there was a timeroonetic heroin.
Speaker 1: Yeah I was, but I don't know the word, oh heroin,
Speaker 1: drug opioid.
Speaker 4: Uh oh yeah, heroin. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: There was a time where the messages I was feeling
Speaker 1: they felt very strong, they felt very real. They were
Speaker 1: very destructive. And so I think sometimes I wonder with
Speaker 1: people who have had say trauma, childhood trauma, oftentimes they
Speaker 1: have an intuition, for example, that they are in danger
Speaker 1: when they are not in danger at the moment. How
Speaker 1: do we separate the subconscious repeating destructive patterns from the
Speaker 1: good part of the subconscious. This is intuition.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I told you there are other parts of other
Speaker 4: parts of yes.
Speaker 2: So now we are in the cave, we are in
Speaker 2: the cellar, we are in the emotions, okay, and in
Speaker 2: the emotions.
Speaker 4: That's another part.
Speaker 2: In the second book, it explains that emotions are a
Speaker 2: medicine for us, but a lot of times we mix
Speaker 2: up our emotions with our thoughts. Then they become more
Speaker 2: destructive of the change.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 2: When we have for example, when you have fear, fear
Speaker 2: is a medicine. It says you are in danger. Take care.
Speaker 2: It's what the fear is saying. Then the ratio is
Speaker 2: coming the reginal mind, and the reginal mind says, I
Speaker 2: don't want to experiment this. I don't want to be
Speaker 2: in danger, and this feeling of fear, I don't like
Speaker 2: it at all. So he starts to suppress the fear.
Speaker 2: The fear cannot come out anymore. It transforms into angriness.
Speaker 2: You become angry, Ah, let me alone, and I don't
Speaker 2: want this, and or you become paralyzed. But you have
Speaker 2: another reaction. So in the cellar, I try to learn
Speaker 2: people to become friend with. There also with emotions that
Speaker 2: doesn't feel comfortable, but that are in fact medicines. So
Speaker 2: to become friend with your fears, with your pain, and
Speaker 2: to feel it and not to obstruct it.
Speaker 1: Okay, So Instruction six takes us into this area a
Speaker 1: little bit, right, because we're talking about observing background programs,
Speaker 1: and you say there there are two major kinds of
Speaker 1: background programs that are running. One is worry, yeah, and
Speaker 1: the other is feeling hurt.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then you go on to talk about integrating these things.
Speaker 1: So how do we work with these background patterns? You
Speaker 1: sort of just said it, but I'm going to put
Speaker 1: it specifically on worry and feeling hurt.
Speaker 2: For example, I remember when my children were fourteen fifteen
Speaker 2: years old. You know, as a parent, you have worries.
Speaker 2: You don't know what they are doing. They go out
Speaker 2: and you know, they discover the world. You don't know
Speaker 2: what they are doing. So you have worries.
Speaker 1: Running loose in Amsterdam, there's all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 4: In the city.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the worries they make that your thoughts are
Speaker 2: going to, Yeah, what is you do? I should do this? No, no, no,
Speaker 2: it's not good. No I should do no, I should
Speaker 2: do nothing. No, it's not good to doing nothing. Your
Speaker 2: thoughts they start tuning into a loop. And my suggestion is,
Speaker 2: at that moment the thoughts, you cannot stop them. So
Speaker 2: just observe your thoughts. And that's the sixth instruction. Observe
Speaker 2: the thoughts, observe the background programs. Don't believe them, but
Speaker 2: observe them. They don't give you the solution. And at
Speaker 2: the same time, you're going to your body and you're
Speaker 2: going to feel where is the fear?
Speaker 4: What does it do in my body? You will notice
Speaker 4: that the fear.
Speaker 2: Will be in your hear or hear and fear isn't there,
Speaker 2: and you will remark that you are suppressing the fear.
Speaker 2: And the suggestion I give to people the most easy
Speaker 2: way to be open to your to your emotions like
Speaker 2: fear and hurt is to go for a walk. To
Speaker 2: go for a walk, and not a slow walk, but
Speaker 2: a walk in okay, risk walk. And when you do
Speaker 2: that for ten minutes, fifteen minutes, you will already remark
Speaker 2: that the emotion becomes more calm because it takes off
Speaker 2: your resistance. And when the emotion becomes more calm, your
Speaker 2: head becomes clear.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, your.
Speaker 2: Head becomes clear, and then you think, okay, well, I
Speaker 2: don't know what my child is doing, but in fact,
Speaker 2: in front of me, I have confidence I should just
Speaker 2: stay on speaking terms with my children and not try
Speaker 2: to act out of fear, but out of confidence.
Speaker 1: So we're trying to allow the emotion and breathing room,
Speaker 1: allow it to be within us, to pay attention to it.
Speaker 1: But also moving helps that emotion in a sense.
Speaker 4: Move Yeah exactly, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Because I think there's this idea of being able to
Speaker 1: think our way out of something. And my experience is
Speaker 1: similar to yours, which is when the emotional temperature is
Speaker 1: too high, the brain doesn't work, yeah, does not think well,
Speaker 1: it just cycles in, you know, fear thoughts. And it's
Speaker 1: similar to like a two year old when a two
Speaker 1: year old just you know, when a two year old
Speaker 1: gets too angry, you don't try and be like, well, Bobby,
Speaker 1: you really should share your toy because sharing's a foundation
Speaker 1: of Western civilization. And right, like, that's not going to work.
Speaker 1: You've got to get it. You've got it. How do
Speaker 1: I calm the child and then we can maybe have
Speaker 1: a talk about it? Yeah exactly, similar, yeah, similar, Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: we sort of already hit on intuition, yes, but we're
Speaker 1: near the end of our time here. But let's talk
Speaker 1: about intuition. Say a little bit more. How do I
Speaker 1: know when something to do is coming out of my
Speaker 1: intuition versus it's coming out of say, my fear.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I always tell people don't see intuition as something mysterious.
Speaker 4: In fact, you know it already. Your intuition.
Speaker 2: The intuition is dead. What is coming up when you
Speaker 2: don't use your reginal mind. So when I have a
Speaker 2: list in front of me, and it's a rational list,
Speaker 2: you should do this and that, you shoot done, and
Speaker 2: you shoot, you shoot, you shoot, you shoot, and you
Speaker 2: have tensions when you read it, and if oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: I shouldn't forget it, Oh it must be very well done.
Speaker 2: But when it's turned around and you you have looked
Speaker 2: them well at them, and they calm down because you
Speaker 2: know them and so they are in your subconsciousness, you
Speaker 2: turn your list around.
Speaker 4: Then you stand up. You stand up, and.
Speaker 2: You walk to in your room and you make a
Speaker 2: cup of coffee, and then make a cup of coffee
Speaker 2: in your aunt. You think, I'm going to start with this.
Speaker 2: It looks like your reginal minds. But because you have
Speaker 2: no list, it's your intuition. When you have in front
Speaker 2: of you something written, your ratio will work. But when
Speaker 2: you're just walking around and you don't have anything that
Speaker 2: tells you what you should do, your intuition will tell
Speaker 2: you what to do.
Speaker 1: Have you ever heard of the phrase eat the frog first. Yes, so,
Speaker 1: eat the frog first is a I believe it's probably
Speaker 1: an American business phrase. It came out of the American
Speaker 1: business culture, some business writer, which says that you should
Speaker 1: do the hardest thing you have to do first thing
Speaker 1: in the morning. You've got something to do that seems unpleasant.
Speaker 1: You got to work on your taxes. You hate working
Speaker 1: on your taxes. Eat the frog first. Yeah, you're actually saying, like,
Speaker 1: eat whatever you want first.
Speaker 2: There is some reasoning in this, yeah, okay, because we
Speaker 2: all have the same habit.
Speaker 4: In the morning.
Speaker 2: We come into our working place when we work with
Speaker 2: a laptop, becoming up with our working place, we open
Speaker 2: the laptop, we open the email. Yes, And at the
Speaker 2: moment you have opened your email, you're lost because you
Speaker 2: start answering the email, and your email becomes leading and
Speaker 2: what you're doing and it attracts you.
Speaker 4: And so you're in it.
Speaker 2: And then you have worked two hours on your email,
Speaker 2: and then you have not done anything from the big
Speaker 2: things you wanted to do right frogs. So what my
Speaker 2: suggestion is, when you come into the morning, before you
Speaker 2: open your laptop, before you open the email, you wait
Speaker 2: a moment and I call it a wish list. You
Speaker 2: make a vish list. What do you want to do today?
Speaker 2: I make a wish list. This is what I want
Speaker 2: to do today, and that's what I want to do.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's important. And the wish list is a
Speaker 2: wish list. So I don't care about if I have
Speaker 2: time to do it. I just know I would like
Speaker 2: to do it. That's the only thing I would like
Speaker 2: to do it. And then when I made my wish list,
Speaker 2: I shut it down. I'm not capable or to see it.
Speaker 2: And then I opened my email. I opened the email
Speaker 2: and then brood and then I see my email, and
Speaker 2: then I only answer the two or three mails that
Speaker 2: are urgent, but the other emails I read carefully.
Speaker 4: So I see all the emails. I read them.
Speaker 2: I know all the emails in the inbox, and also
Speaker 2: the ones who stay from yesterday, I've seen them. And
Speaker 2: then I shut down my email. So that took me
Speaker 2: maybe ten minutes, ten minutes, fifty minutes and then I
Speaker 2: make a walk and I decide to make my first
Speaker 2: big action.
Speaker 4: That can be a frog, that can be a frog,
Speaker 4: but at that moment.
Speaker 2: It's more probable that I will choose a big action
Speaker 2: that's really important as the first action I'm going to
Speaker 2: do in this day. And then after one and a
Speaker 2: half hour we're working on it, I close down, and
Speaker 2: then I opened the email again. And then it's curious
Speaker 2: because in between, in the one and a half hour
Speaker 2: I worked on this big task, my subconscious was thinking
Speaker 2: about the email. Yeah, in unconscious thinking. So I opened
Speaker 2: my email again and I read the email for the
Speaker 2: second time, and then very quickly I answer, yes, I'm
Speaker 2: doing this or this is my advice I give you
Speaker 2: to you. Very quickly it comes up out of my subconsciousness.
Speaker 2: And so that's another reason why you see that time
Speaker 2: surfing is more productive and without stress, so you get
Speaker 2: more better ideas. But you work, you work less on.
Speaker 1: It because your subconscious is working on it while you're
Speaker 1: doing other things, so when you come back to it,
Speaker 1: able to do it more quickly. Exactly, exactly, excellent. Well
Speaker 1: we are at the end of our time. We'll have
Speaker 1: links in the show notes to where people can get
Speaker 1: your book time surfing, yes, and where they can find
Speaker 1: your work in general. And thank you so much for
Speaker 1: on such short notice agreeing to meet me. Yeah in
Speaker 1: the studio in Amsterdam. It's been a real pleasure.
Speaker 2: Well it was a big pleasure for me. Maybe just
Speaker 2: one thing to tell is the real In January, they
Speaker 2: welcome the second ndition of the book, and the book
Speaker 2: changes from title it won. The name won't be anymore
Speaker 2: time serving. The name will be I've Got.
Speaker 1: Time, I've got time, okay, all right, okay, And like
Speaker 1: I said, links will be in the show notes to
Speaker 1: where they can find you and all of those things.
Speaker 5: Thank you very much, Thank you.
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