The Addiction You Don’t Notice

I think it's become trendy to say you suffer from ADHD. Yes, it is become trendy. It's like when somebody says that to me, I said, aren't we all suffering from ADHD? Are there?

I don't know. It's like, that's kind of what's happening in the world right now. It's actually also saying that I don't know how to focus my brain and I'm okay with it. But think what the cost is, right?

You know, you spend time with someone you love, but you spend five minutes with your daughter, your husband, your wife, or 20 minutes and you're not even present. You're physically there, mentally completely absent. And your subconscious has taught your mind, your face, do not and go, hmm, that's really

interesting. Wonderful. But you're completely somewhere else. And then you think of the time that's lost.

I don't know in your framework or in the book, is that step one is to be very clear about the bigger goal or the outcomes that you are trying to generate. Is that where it starts? 100%.

But that would be step two, I would say, Eric. And step one would be need to be focused because if I can't maintain a state of self-reflection long enough, how can I look within me

to find what it is I want to focus on? So I agree with you that having a bigger picture, having clarity of who and what's important in my life has a long term vision and being adaptable

as John Oliver says, you know, as things change around us, but I need to focus. If I close my eyes and I say, I'm not gonna meditate, I'm just gonna be reflect on my life

what it is I want and after 20 seconds ago, I wonder what I should have for lunch today. Should I have pizza? Someone calling me? Should I answer the phone?

No, I'll probably leave a voicemail. What if they don't leave a voicemail? And then I'll never find what I want. So first step is focus.

Focus allows us to be self-effective long enough to know what we want. Once we have that clarity, we can make a choice of focusing on that clarity. And the other thing with the phone, you know, Eric, I would say is we should define our relationship with the phone.

So as John was saying, I have a big property here with gardens. I have a container with tools, with shovels, and all kinds of things. When I need a shovel, I take the shovel out, I dig a hole,

I plant a tree, I put the shovel back. But when I'm not digging a tree, I don't walk around with a shovel. So I look at my phone as a tool as well.

When I need to use the phone to post to whatever, I pick it up. When I don't need it, I put it away. Because I know if I don't define the relationship

with the phone, it's going to take up my time. And that's time away from my spiritual practices, time away from my family, from the people that I love. For me, they are a greater priority than the phone,

and it can be so addictive to just perpetually be reaching. And it becomes so subconscious, right? How many times have you sat in a conversation with someone and their hand just goes up, picks up the phone,

just sitting in front of you while you're talking, they're scrolling, right? For two minutes, they put the phone back down and continue listening to what you're saying.

And I go like, you had no idea what you just did, did you? see us humans evolving in some way or do you see us devolving? Like what's going on? It's like a weird thing is that we've got so much access and so much, I mean it's better than it's

ever been and it's worse than it's ever been. Where do you see the western world moving in this sort of major shift and the lack of ability to focus? I think people don't realize the difference between technology and living organisms. We're still used to technology and the internet and the phone, and if you're waiting for something

to download and it takes 10 seconds, you get frustrated. And because you have that experience all day long that anything you want, technology-based, even ordering something and having delivered the same day, getting food or parcels or Amazon same-day delivery, we take that demand for instantaneous gratification and we apply

it to our life and go, you know, I'm going to hack my way through this. I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that, I'm going to eat this, I'm going to hack my mind, I'm going to hack my body. This is what people spend all day doing.

I grow trees here. I planted fruit trees 10 years ago and they're just fruiting now, you know, in the last couple of years. I had to wait all those years.

There was no way I could accelerate the process. I had to nurture it. I had to protect bugs from eating it, you know, getting burnt during the dry season. I had to water it, you know, make sure it doesn't drown in the rain.

to care, nurture it, and now I can get the fruits eight years later. We are no different than the tree. When we try to hack our way through everything and treat ourselves like technology, we build anxiousness because we don't get the results we want.

We can't sustain the results we want. We become impatient with ourselves. We become frustrated. We become depressed.

We go, we're not changing. And then, so for me, the solution is to realize that we are living organisms and we change like trees, like the planet. just takes time and do the work. Simplify your life to a few clear goals that you want to attain

and be willing to take the time, I think in terms of decades, right, 10 years to get something, to manifest something, to create something. So I'm willing to take time and I know I'm like a tree and I have to do the work and I may see the fruit seven years from now, eight years from now. But how many people do that way? Everyone I talk to, people come up to me all the time and say,

hey, do you have a quick way to focus? Is there a hack? Yeah. Like, there's no freaking hack. There's no hack. Do the goddamn work. Yeah, what's the quick trick to slow down?

Yeah. You've got a quick trick to slow down. Exactly. Wait, everything. And look at that. Same with the body too, with the mind. Everyone is on this mission, you know?

No one wants to do the work. No one wants to do the hard work, painful repetition work every day. And the same thing. And people can't do the same thing.