The first thing I did this morning was check Facebook. Why? Because, as embarrassed as I am to admit, for better or worse, it’s become a part of my life. That’s sort of like admitting you enjoy watching the parliamentary proceedings for fun, or that you really like sticking your tongue into spinning fans. How did this happen? I’m not really sure. I think some of it is addiction, like a rat getting a food pellet every time he presses a button. So each ‘like’ is a little imaginary food pellet that feeds my sense of… something. Self-worth? I don’t think that’s it. Peer approval? Maybe.

Also, I get to peep into the lives of, and interact with, a lot of different people from my past and future with the click of a mouse. I think the bigger reason I check Facebook multiple times a day is because it’s become a source of entertainment for me—it has replaced the newspaper, reading fiction [except for the obvious fiction of people’s Facebook lives and most political posts] and watching too much TV.

Is it better than all or any of these things? I doubt it. It’s mostly time-wasting trash. Having said that, I’ll admit that I read it before work, during my lunch break, after work, and at night before I go to sleep. I even read it when I’m sitting on the toilet, [don’t judge me, I know you all do it too, and that’s why I will never ask to borrow your cell phone] and whenever else the mood strikes me. In short, I am on Facebook way too much, and it needs to stop. Starting tomorrow. Or the next day. Next week at the latest.

What would happen if you woke up tomorrow morning, and Facebook was down?

So is Facebook your friend or your enemy?

I’m pretty sure Facebook has become that friend you run into in the market and at first you’re glad to see them—then they start following you around the store, incessantly talking about themselves until you’re contemplating faking an epileptic seizure just to get them to stop showing you pictures of every meal they ate on their trip to Italy.

How Facebook helps me… I’m still wondering

All that got me thinking—what would happen if I woke up tomorrow morning, and Facebook was down? I don’t mean down for an hour, or down for a day—I mean down for good. What would I do? For that matter, what would the one billion-plus other users do? Well, for starters, we’d have a lot more free time to work on things like world hunger and global warming. Too grandiose? Fine! We’d have more time to do laundry so we didn’t have to sniff socks in the hamper and pick the freshest pair for work on Monday. And who knows? Maybe with all that extra time, an ordinary person would do something extraordinary. Here’s an example: Yesterday, I spent three minutes of my life watching a video of a pug walking around on his front legs and peeing in the air for a solid minute and a half. Number one, that was a lot of pee, and number two, yes, you’re correct. I watched it twice. Again, don’t judge me.

What would I have done with that extra time? Honestly, probably not much, but when you really think about it, it adds up. If I could have back every minute of my life I’ve wasted on Facebook, I probably would have already written another book. Probably two, if I’m honest with myself. Would I have solved world hunger or brokered peace in the Middle East? No, but on the other hand I would have wasted a few less brain cells.

The top excuse to be on Facebook—finding lost friends

I have friends who aren’t on Facebook, and older relatives who don’t even know what Facebook is. I am slowly coming to the conclusion that they’re better off for it. Yes, I’ve gotten back in touch with some old classmates, but generally, those conversations go like this:

Old classmate you forgot about sends you a friend request. You accept and then…

You:  “Hi, how are you? Wow, hard to believe it’s been 20 years already!  What have you been up to?”

Them: {Insert highly-embellished life story here}

You: “That’s so great! Congratulations! It was really good to touch base after all these years. Keep in touch. We must get together!”

Them: “You too! Talk to you soon!”

Then you never hear from them again.

That’s the best-case scenario. The worst case scenario is one in which they invade your Facebook timeline and do one or more of the following:

1. Post non-stop pictures of their children, beginning at age two and continuing chronologically until they’ve graduated from college, moved out, gotten married, gotten divorced and then moved back home.
2. Invite you to play 1,243 different games that involve things like words, candy, jewels or various farm animals. Or sometimes even all of them together. [What? You’ve never played Words with Jewelled Candy Cows Saga before? You have no idea what you’re missing.]
3. Send you links to conspiracy theory articles or articles containing questionable political content that a first grader could refute without putting down his or her Xbox controller.

It’s generally a waste of time for both of you and it makes you realise why you never kept in touch with that person to begin with.

I have friends who aren’t on Facebook, and older relatives who don’t even know what Facebook is

If Facebook didn’t exist, you’d just have to get used to thinking things like:

“I wonder how that one guy from high school is doing these days? Hmm, I guess I’ll never know.” Or, “I haven’t seen a funny cat video in a long time. I might have to go to YouTube and watch a few.”

Then later in the day you could think, “Guess it’s time to go stalk that girl who broke up with me six years ago. No wait, I don’t have time for that right now. Maybe on the weekend, when I have a couple of extra hours to drive around her building over and over until I see her leave for her hair appointment.” OK, I took it to a dark place there for a minute, but you get what I mean.

My advice to you is this: Take a break from Facebook. Read a newspaper, or a magazine or even a novel. Call someone you haven’t talked to in a while and ask them to lunch. Granted, when you call them they’ll probably be busy watering their imaginary crops, crushing candy or watching a video of a pug peeing while walking on his front paws, but try yelling “OMG! LOL!” That usually gets their attention. Ironically, social media is anything but social. Only you and 1.4 billion other users can change that. The next time you find yourself floating aimlessly on Facebook, ask yourself “If Facebook didn’t exist what would I be doing now?” And then go do that.

The post Why you should take a break from Facebook appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

Over the past 30 years I’ve led thousands of Vipassana meditation retreats all over the world. Travelling so often, I meet a lot of taxi drivers. They’ve always fascinated me, because they work under such stressful conditions. Traffic and aggressive drivers are their daily reality. As a result, they are some of the most stressed-out people I meet. I also find that they are almost always interested in meditation. They know they’re stressed, and know they need help.

The common misconception

A few years ago, I flew to Vancouver for a week-long retreat. I hailed a taxi to my hotel. The driver was frustrated with the traffic. He was from India, and when I told him I was a meditation teacher, he became more agitated. “I can’t possibly be in the present moment while I’m driving!” he said, as though I’d challenged him. “I need to be thinking all the time! And planning!” He was upset by the very suggestion of mindfulness in the midst of thick traffic and honking, as he weaved through the downtown streets.

He was expressing a difficulty that even the most dedicated meditation practitioners encounter: how can we be mindful when life is so busy? On retreats we’re protected, and it’s easier to cultivate mindfulness. In our normal, busy lives, we’ve got things to do. That’s why being mindful in this relative, conceptual world is difficult. The driver was also expressing a common misunderstanding about meditation—that the point in meditation is to stop thoughts. So, you can’t do anything while you meditate.

Truth is you can’t stop thoughts! Even sitting in a cave, human life is mostly composed of our bodies, thoughts, and emotions. Mindfulness meditation is simply an intentional effort to ‘notice’ the thoughts and emotions, and once they become conscious, to stop identifying so deeply with them. This is how we gain freedom, no matter what we’re doing.

Back in the taxi, I told the driver that if he’d like to try some mindfulness meditation, I’d guide him while he drove me to the hotel. He accepted. Traffic light by traffic light, I guided him to become aware of the sensations in his hands, in his body, of the sounds around us, and finally, of his thoughts and feelings, all the while planning his route and driving normally. By the time we pulled up at my hotel, he was quite excited, and didn’t even want me to pay for the ride. As I left the taxi, he turned to me appreciatively and said simply, “I get it!” He understood that he could actually be in the present moment while driving.

I’m around so many people who are interested in mindfulness, and yet mindfulness while driving is almost never stressed. Driving is such a perfect place to learn to maintain an open awareness and respond to your moment-to-moment experience, which is an essential skill set for mindfulness. In the years that followed that taxi ride I began to develop mindfulness techniques for driving. At least in the US, where I live, it couldn’t have come at a more needed time.

Distraction in the connected era

We’ve been hearing a lot about distracted driving in the news since the advent of smartphones, which make texting and emailing so handy that it seems almost everyone on the highway is half-driving and half-communicating with someone else. This cultural norm has had huge implications, and it’s only getting worse.

Recent studies by the Department of Transportation show that drivers who use hand-held devices are four times as likely to get into crashes that are serious enough to injure themselves. Talking on a cell phone while driving, even if it’s hands-free, delays a driver’s reactions as much as having a blood alcohol level at the legal limit of 0.08 per cent. The average texter takes his eyes off the road for nearly a full three seconds at a time. The obvious risks here are borne out by statistics: texters and cell phone talkers get into crashes more often than anyone except the very drunk.

Why do we have such impaired driving habits while simply texting or talking on the phone? It seems like something we should be able to handle by now. The answer lies in the basic facts of attention and neurobiology, which, as it turns out, do not keep pace with technology.

Studies have shown that when we start any task, driving for example, our brain’s anterior prefrontal cortex lights up. This is part of the Executive Network of the brain, and it sends a signal to locate and activate the neurons that are capable of performing that task. This process takes several tenths of a second. When we switch attention from the initial task, driving, to talking on the phone, the brain must go through these exact steps again, in sequence. The anterior prefrontal cortex needs to find and activate the neurons capable of talking on the phone. To shift the attention back to driving requires the same steps as the first time, once again. These switches in attention all take tenths of a second, and the time adds up. Considering that a car going 70mph travels 51f in half a second, we can see that the time it takes for our brain to switch tasks can be very dangerous indeed.

Mindfulness makes your driving safer

Mindful driving is meant to help us become highly responsive to constant change. And that’s what driving is—constant change. If we’re not able to develop these skills, we’re not good drivers. And, frankly, when we drive mindfully, it becomes actually enjoyable to drive again. So much time in our car is lost in trying to distract ourselves from the experience itself. Turning on the radio, calling someone, getting lost in a fantasy—all this because we are afraid to engage with our real experience. We’re always looking for a way to check out. But mindfulness teaches us that engaging with our moment-to-moment experience actually makes us feel alive for the first time—it’s a wonderful feeling, so much richer, more peaceful and simply better than distraction.

We should recognise that ‘distraction’ is omnipresent in our lives these days, facilitated by media, technology, and the orientation of culture itself. Distraction is not only a problem while driving. It’s simply more evidently a problem when we’re piloting a ton of steel at high speeds and less evident when we’re sitting at a computer, or talking to our children. Similarly, road rage is just rage. It’s not like cars have some special property that causes rage. People have rage to begin with, and it becomes quite visible when they have a giant, speeding podium for it.

Years ago, I was in a major car accident. I was stopped at a red light and just as the light turned green and I was about to step on the gas, a pickup truck rear-ended my car at 60mph. The driver was talking to his girlfriend and didn’t even see me stopped there. It’s amazing no one was killed, but the amount of harm that was caused in that brief moment of distraction was massive.

So we need to take more care while driving. Mindful driving will help you be less distracted. Once you learn how to be mindful with one thing, you can learn to apply that to everything in your life—your body, your thoughts, and your emotions. Step by step. We actually can be better drivers. We can actually be better in all aspects of our lives, by training ourselves to be mindful. All it takes is learning and practice.

Last updated on 11^th September 2019

The post Awake at the wheel: How mindfulness makes you a better driver appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.