3 Minute Monday
Hi friend,
I missed my flight on Wednesday, I’m still in Dubai.
There’s worse places to spend an extra 10 days.
I’ve spent my time catching up with some great humans & recording some of the best episodes I’ve ever created.
I went on a private yacht around the Dubai coast.
Got to see MK DJ to a 300-person pool party.
Went to the beautiful Hakkasan Dubai for dinner.
But by far my favourite moment was watching the phenomenal Ben Bohmer play sunset on Five Beach.
The sun is going down over the Dubai sea, out to the left is the stark and beautifully aggressive skyline of the Marina where the city lights are just starting to shine.
I’m laid on a cabana bed with George Mack listening to the most beautiful melodic deep house music on earth.
Surrounded by girls in bikinis, guys two-stepping and bottle service left right & centre.
Cue the bizarre thoughts entering my head…
I start thinking about Sam Harris.
Obviously.
Specifically about a talk he gave called Death And The Present Moment.
There’s a concept called “Nexting” which I was recently introduced to by Naval and it was perfectly summed up by Sam 10 years before it was given a name:
“As a matter of conscious experience, the reality of your life is always now.
And I think that this is a liberating truth about the nature of the human mind.
In fact, I think, there’s probably nothing more important to understand about your mind, than that, if you want to be happy in this world.
The past is a memory; it’s a thought arising in the present.
The future is merely anticipated; it is another thought arising now.
What we truly have is this moment.
And this.
And we spend most of our lives forgetting this truth, refuting it, fleeing it, overlooking it.
And the horror is that we succeed.
We manage to never really connect with the present moment and find fulfilment there, because we are continually hoping to become happy in the future.
And the future never arrives.
Even when we think we’re in the present moment, we’re, in very subtle ways, always looking over its shoulder, anticipating what’s coming next.
We’re always solving a problem.
And it’s possible to simply drop your problem, if only for a moment.
And enjoy whatever is true of your life in the present.”
**Bikini girl walks past as I’m still daydreaming about Sam Harris**
The primary insight I realised here is that many, maybe all, of the things we do, are an attempt to give ourselves a good enough reason to just be here, existing in the present moment.
Being choked during sex stops of our mind, as does drugs, as does alcohol, and fighting, and dancing on a beach to a DJ as the sun sets.
If you could bottle presence, you would have the most addicting, popular substance on the planet.
Our goal as awakened creatures should be lower the required bar of stimulus to a level where you can be present without having any of these extreme inputs.
“If you can’t be present with a coffee, you won’t be present on a yacht.”
Think about how many times your presence has been hijacked by fears or worries or hopes for problems of the future, or regrets & victories around problems of the past.
We are addicted to solving problems, even ones which we have purely created for the purposes of solving.
So circular.
So destructive.
Take a deep breath.
Existence is a miracle.
It’s a brief fragment of awareness, book ended by two brackets of infinite nothingness.
Drop your problem, if just for a moment.
It’ll be over soon.
MODERN WISDOM
I do a podcast which is dowsed in Big Dick Energy. This week has some very special episodes on YouTube as I’m recording out here in Dubai – go watch them there.
This week’s upcoming episodes:
Monday.
Mike Thurston – my good buddy and one of the biggest fitness YouTubers in the UK talks training, travelling, steroids and how to build an online platform.
Thursday.
Marcus Smith – how to build an unbreakable mindset, Marcus ran 30 marathons in 30 days after smashing his body into a wall at 54km/h only 1 year earlier. One of my favourite episodes of 2020, do not miss this.
Saturday.
Not sure yet. Maybe Evolutionary Biologist Colin Wright on why gender, sex and society has got so much confused over the last few years.
THINGS I’VE LEARNED
1.
“We are all trying to find a path back to the present moment, and good enough reason to just be happy here.”
– Sam Harris
2.
Defining whether gender and sex differences are real has taken longer to work out than Jordan Peterson’s rehab.
3.
Screen time in Dubai is insane.
We met a girl who averages 9 hours a day and spent 15.5 hours on her phone in a single day this week.
LIFE HACK
Send To Kindle Google Chrome Extension
Turn your Kindle into an article reader.
Install this Chrome extension, press one button and whatever article you’re reading will appear in your Kindle library.
Fully optimised, highlightable and with changeable font sizes.
By far my favourite Chrome extension and a total game changer.
Read later apps are dead and Kindle killed them.
Big love,
Chris x
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PS
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