#193 — Meditation in an Emergency
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Summary
In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, many of us are struggling to keep our heads straight in the midst of the chaos and fear that is spreading across the globe. In this episode, Dr. Aaron Sorkin discusses the importance of mindfulness in the context of a growing emergency, and why meditation might be the best tool we can use to keep ourselves, and others, safe in the event of a pandemic like the one we are experiencing now. This episode is dedicated to the families affected by the current crisis, and to anyone else who needs to get their head straight in a crisis like this one, because we are all at risk of falling prey to the spread of fear, panic, and bad ideas that are being spread by the media, social media, and the media itself. I hope what I have to say is useful to anyone who is struggling to stay focused in the face of a rapidly increasing sense of panic and fear, or who wants to know what to do in a situation like this to help keep themselves, their family, friends and the rest of the wider world safe and secure. If you are struggling with anxiety, insomnia, or another medical problem, please talk to a doctor if you can. I understand that being able to see a doctor and receive treatment is a privilege that not everyone has, and that you can t afford to take care of yourself in a way that is safe and effective in a world that is not only for you, but also for you and your family and your loved ones. friends and family. Thank you for listening and supporting this podcast. I appreciate it greatly. - Aaron - thank you so much, and your support is greatly appreciated. Thank you, thank you for your support and support is so much appreciated, and I hope you can find some solace in this episode and your continued support is appreciated. - your support helps us to keep us all on this journey through this difficult and stressful time, and it helps us all to keep moving forward in the coming days and weeks, and we can keep on going forward in a better place. -- thank you, and keep on keep on coming back and forward, and more of these things in the next one, thank you! -- Thank you - Dr. . - Aaron, Aaron - and thank you is a kind message, Thankyou, Dr. David by Dr. Salkin
Transcript
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I'm recording this on March 17th, 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic becomes a reality
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Many of us are at different stages in our understanding of what's happening.
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And the United States, as of 48 hours ago, it seems, has finally understood what's coming.
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And it's clear that that understanding has come too late to respond in a way that really
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So I want to talk about meditation in the context of a growing emergency.
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Because, on the one hand, it can seem like the most dispensable of things.
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That's the wrong way to think about your resources in any emergency.
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But, particularly in this one, all the usual considerations are reversed.
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This is an emergency in which the most effective contribution you can make to your own well-being
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Unless your presence out in the world is critical for the survival of others,
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if you can possibly afford to stay home, you should do that.
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I won't rehearse the epidemiological arguments here.
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So you are being forced into a kind of retreat, right?
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And now you're left alone with your mind and with the stream of information coming to you
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through social media and the news and the phone calls from worried friends and family.
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And now you have a choice of what to do with your attention.
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This is something that most of us have never experienced.
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And at this point, the reality of it is only beginning to set in.
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This is also a situation in which, because we're dealing with a contagion, a biological contagion
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and a social contagion, the spread of fear and bad ideas.
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I mean, contagion is the order of the day here.
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Because that's the case, our responsibility to get our head straight seems unusually acute.
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But we affect people very directly in a crisis like this, all too directly.
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If you don't take sufficient care with your hygiene here, you literally put the lives of
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And mindfulness, a basic awareness of what you're doing with your hands, is in many cases
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the only tool you have to keep you and others safe.
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Many of us grimly laughed at the video of the public health spokesperson who at a press conference
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was insisting on the importance of no longer touching one's face in public, only to then
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demonstrate her total lack of self-awareness by licking her fingers before she turned the
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I think I tweeted at the time, how can we avoid touching our faces if we have no idea what
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And I'm speaking to those of you who understand the value of meditation and have made it a
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And I know that even many of you who have a practice are struggling now to do it in the
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context of this increasingly stressful situation.
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But I'm also speaking to those of you who are just beginning and are not yet sure of training
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And I'm speaking to those of you who are frankly skeptical of the whole enterprise.
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I'm sure many of you think that something as effete and apparently inward and impractical
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as paying attention to the breath or to the nature of your mind can be safely ignored under
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But before I begin speaking about meditation per se, I want to linger on this point about
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I'm talking about the way we affect one another, talking about our ethical and emotional entanglement
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with our friends and family members and with the wider world at this moment, right?
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Everything we say and do and how we say and do it affects the minds of others, right?
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And many people are worried about spreading panic at this moment.
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Honestly, I've been worried about convincing people that this situation has to be taken
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seriously and that we should have begun the self-quarantine that is now being imposed on
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So whether you think people need to be comforted or have their concern aroused, it really matters
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what you communicate and how you communicate it.
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And I know that in my personal interactions with people in the last few weeks, I've felt
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in myself an agitation which is ultimately unnecessary and unhelpful and quite personally toxic.
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And it is something for which mindfulness as a quality of mind is really the only remedy.
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For instance, if I'm speaking with my wife or my daughters and I have an ambient level of
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anxiety running in the background, I either notice that or I don't.
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And if I don't, everything is coming from that place.
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Whatever message I'm imparting, I'm imparting my own stress in those moments.
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And it's contagious and its effects are there to be seen.
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You know, in those moments, I am no comfort to my daughters.
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You know, one of whom is definitely old enough to understand the situation we're in and to
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And there have been moments where my wife, Annika, has said, listen, you need to take a
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Very appropriately, putting the onus on me to get my act together.
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But without a real insight into the nature of anxiety through mindfulness, I would simply
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have no tools with which to follow that advice.
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But I couldn't actually respond in the moment by releasing the stress, simply letting go
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of it, standing free of it, and beginning again.
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It's every bit as much a skill as being able to ride a bike or perform a handstand.
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And practicing mindfulness is the way you learn to do it.
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So I view mental training very much like physical training as, among many other things, a kind
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Who will you be on the most stressful day of your life when you lose your job or when someone
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You will only have the mind that you have built for yourself.
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You will only have the skills that you've acquired.
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We are all going to experience, in a wide variety of ways, an extraordinary amount of
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There are very few occasions in life when you can more or less guarantee a kind of common
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I think war is probably the only other example I can think of.
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And we really need to take care of ourselves and those around us.
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And again, what is so unusual about this situation is that unlike almost any other crisis, the thing
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that is being asked of us, unless we happen to be doctors and nurses or working directly
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to keep the supply chain moving, the greatest contribution we can make at this moment is
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And many people are saying this could last for weeks.
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I can't say I know what I expect here, but I don't see what the off-ramp would be apart
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from a true breakthrough in effective treatment or a vaccine.
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And I have to believe that both of those things are many months away.
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So virtually all of us have a lot of time on our hands at the moment.
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And the challenge, certainly in every place where quarantine is voluntary, the challenge
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will be to maintain this condition of social distancing.
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And this very quickly becomes a mental health challenge.
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It is quite telling that solitary confinement is considered a punishment inside a prison.
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People seem to prefer the company of even murderers and rapists to the prospect of being
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And that is because an untrained mind, which is to say a perfectly normal one, can be an extraordinarily
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And if it is, you can be sure it's less than ideal company for others.
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So if you care about your own sanity and you care about offering effective support for the
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people around you, it's worth paying attention to the mechanics of your own mental suffering,
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your own anxiety and self-concern and agitation.
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Because the alternative is just to promulgate your unhappiness to others.
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So a few thoughts on anxiety in this circumstance.
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Well, first we should acknowledge that anxiety is very useful.
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It's not something that you'd want to banish entirely from your mind.
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It is the emotional valence of certain thoughts, perceptions, social interactions that gets your
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People who are incapable of feeling fear are deprived of a response to life that has an
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There's no mystery as to why we readily become afraid.
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This has protected us physically and socially for eons, right?
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So it's not a matter of getting rid of anxiety or fear, but what you can do, what you want
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to do, what those who care about you wish you could do is let go of these emotions when
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The difference between feeling acutely anxious in response to new information that demands your
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attention and being made chronically anxious by that information is total.
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Those are descriptions of completely different minds.
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And you really do have a choice of which mind you'll have, just as much as you can choose
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You can choose what to eat and whether or not to exercise.
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You can choose what you do with your attention.
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But to be able to make that choice, you have to notice the mechanics here.
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You have to notice the peripheral cascade of emotion for what it is, right?
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As fully divorceable from the thoughts themselves.
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And you have to learn to pay attention to these processes in a way that allows you to achieve
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I was listening to the New York Times podcast, The Daily, this morning, where they interviewed
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an Italian doctor who's working on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic outside of
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Milan, the part of Italy that has thus far been hardest hit.
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And he's describing the experience of being a doctor in an ICU there.
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He's talking about being inundated with desperately ill people and having to triage them with
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limited resources, literally having to decide whose life to try to save and who to let die.
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And increasingly, these people are his colleagues, right?
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Other doctors and nurses who are coming down with COVID-19, the illness born of this virus.
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And certain things become absolutely clear when listening to this interview.
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We're now hearing from doctors who are scared and overwhelmed and grief-stricken by what they're
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And they are urging us to understand that this is coming to your city too.
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And I'm hearing this in the context of knowing that my city has been very slow to respond.
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So, as I'm listening to this, I can feel that I'm getting anxious.
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I'm hearing reports of a tsunami that is coming.
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And I know that there is no principle of physics that is going to keep this wave from inundating
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Well, there's part of this change in my emotion that is useful.
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It's getting me to record this piece of audio, for instance.
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It was directly upon hearing that where I thought, okay, there's something I need to say on this
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topic that might strike a different note than the podcasts I've recently recorded.
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And hopefully some of you will find this useful in turn.
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But most of the cascade of emotion that began to be kindled there, beyond feelings of just
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compassion for our collective circumstance, most of it is worth letting go of.
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Who I was when I came down to the kitchen to see my wife, it was better for me to be free from
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Because there was nothing that would be helped by my imparting a feeling of urgency.
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So, given my experience with meditation, I was able to notice the machinery here, the thoughts
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that were getting triggered by listening to this podcast, and the emotions that were being
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And if you don't have enough attention to notice thoughts, they simply seem to become you.
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If you think, oh my God, we're 10 days behind Italy.
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In 10 days, our hospitals are going to be just like this.
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It's worth understanding the probability of that.
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It's not worth helplessly ruminating about that, because you can't notice thoughts arise in
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Again, the difference is not a matter of whether or not thoughts arise.
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They're arising right now, competing with your ability to even understand what I'm saying.
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I'm speaking, and you're trying to listen, but your mind is also speaking.
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If you can't notice this process, it just feels like what you are.
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Paradoxically, you feel identical to each thought as it arises in consciousness.
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Health concerns aside, we are witnessing an economic emergency unfold before us.
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The U.S. stock market dropped more yesterday than it has at any point in history.
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Even if there were no coronavirus, even if no one had any heightened health concerns, what's
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happening to the economy at this moment is devastating.
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Again, part of that emotional arousal will likely be useful.
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It will get you to pay attention to things that you should pay attention to, to make decisions.
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But most of the emotional response will be detrimental to anything you want to do, to your relationships,
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to your own creative and emotional resources that you'll need even one hour from now.
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If you have work that you can do from home, right, if your career is relatively spared by
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recent events, how useful is it for you to be feeling excruciating anxiety while doing
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How many minutes of every hour will it be useful for you to feel terrified?
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So, you do want to get a handle on this, whether you ever thought meditation was your cup of
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And all I can promise you is that you can do that.
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And it is training that most of us now have time for, or should have time for.
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Again, the greatest contribution you could make to society now is to stay home.
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And many of you are hearing this in places where your government has told you to stay home.
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So, it's a very unusual situation we're in where this feeling of urgency needs to be channeled
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So, I just want to say that all the resources I think I have to give you direct insight into
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the nature of your own mind in a way that makes a difference, I'm putting all of that
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And I want to reiterate something here that I have said several times on my podcast and
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emailed about and tweeted, both the Waking Up app and the Making Sense podcast are now
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And of course, they have to function like any other business.
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But it's very important to me that money never be the reason why someone can't get access
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Right, so if you can't afford a subscription to Waking Up or Making Sense, please send us
00:20:50.900
And if you're a subscriber to Waking Up, you probably already know that you can give free
00:20:58.640
You can just post a link on social media or text it to a friend.
00:21:03.280
And if you ever hear that someone who has benefited from a month on the app is not subscribed because
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they don't feel they can pay for it, please remind them of this policy.
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Because the last thing I want under these conditions of growing economic stress is to become a source
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And with that, I will leave you to the rest of your day.
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I just urge you to take a few minutes out of it to pay attention to the nature of your mind.