I’ve been doing micro-experiments like this a lot recently, committing to total presence for very short stretches of time. Can I, for example, keep my mind on what’s happening the entire time I’m doing the dishes? After each little exercise I can go back to my normal distracted stupor if I want to.

So for the 30 minutes or so between my door and my friend’s, including a stop at the store, I dared myself to keep my attention on the current real-life scene only, and not get drawn into any mental dialogues. Put another way, I decided to put words aside for a little while, and observe everything else.

It worked. The talkative part of my brain mostly shut up, and I discovered for the 600th time that the world is intrinsically beautiful and peaceful whenever I manage to take a break from thinking and talking about it.

Ideally I’d spend my whole life in this state — when you’re just observing things and it really doesn’t matter what happens, because it’s all very curious and beautiful, and if trouble does show up you’re already in the best headspace to deal with it. You get the specific sense that you don’t need to be anywhere else, which makes you realize how rarely you feel like that.

The most prominent quality of this state of presence is the quiet that comes over the outside world. You can still hear the city noise and traffic, but the loudest thing has gone silent, which is your normal mental commentary.

I’ve had this state happen before, but it always seemed to come randomly. After this most recent experience, I realized something that should have been obvious: if you practice doing it, it happens more.

This latest experience happened because I made a conscious agreement to stay with the moment as it actually is. That means I simply agreed not to bother engaging with words, internally or externally, unless there was a clear reason to. And wow did my experience change quickly.

Why not make that agreement all the time?

Well, our words defend us against parts of reality we don’t like. You don’t have to open up emotionally to anything if you’re already occupied with dissecting it or labeling it or otherwise evaluating it. So in order to drop the words from a given moment, you have to agree to invite all the details into your experience without judgment, and that isn’t something most of us have a lot of practice at.

So you fall into a comfortable train of thought, maybe about how things should be...and in seconds the present has become only a faint background to your thoughts. This is a bad habit and we are practicing it all the time.

How to get better at this:
A complete rundown of “Living in the present” skills would be too big for one article, but we have a very clear starting point: the path back to the present moment lies in paying attention to physical, concrete details. Your body, your clothes, the air, the background sounds, the surface you’re standing on.

Physical things only exist in the present. Keep your attention on something physical and that means you’re keeping it on something that is actually happening.

Basically, the mind will run its mouth off whenever it gets a chance, which is virtually all the time, except when:

a) You’re doing something that demands you attend to something physical. This is why people like death sports, because you are forced back into the present (or else you die.)
or

b) You make a habit of returning your mind to something physical whenever you notice it’s wandered off. The only place it can really wander to is your thoughts, because everything else is part of the present moment.

Returning your attention to the present is a fairly simple, learnable skill, which can eventually become a reflex.

If you ever feel like you don’t know how to do it, just put your attention into some part of your body. When you notice it’s wandered back to some words in your head again, put it back.

The basic skill of putting your attention somewhere on purpose has a million applications, like defusing cravings, nipping bad moods in the bud, preventing yourself from being offended, and getting more work done, to name a few.

Hey Saimon what do you think?　私に勝手な一コメントいわせていただければ・・・

The reason I chose this article is because I've been trying it in my own life.

I realized recently that I have a lot of anxiety (much more than I realized) and I've been working on it. My anxiety really came out with Corona, but there are other things too.

In particular, I noticed that if I am angry and I let the voice start talking, I will get a lot angrier and will stay angry for a long time. But one time a year or two ago one of my children did something that made me angry while we were playing in the park, and because we were in the park I ended up moving my body around (throwing a tennis ball against a wall) and doing this physical movement took some power away fom the voice in my head (because I couldn't concentrate on it and on throwing the ball at the same time).

I learned from this that if I don't let the voice in my head talk, i will lose my anger much quicker....and i learned that physical movement is a helpful way to do this.

I've also become much more aware of WHAT it is saying - often it isn't actually all that helpful, it'll be telling me "I'm not very good at this, maybe I should give up"

(I had a lot of that related to starting this podcast, luckily I have friend - Smith from the podcast Smith and Tanaka - who was able to encourage me through the whole process - honestly without him I'm pretty sure I would have given up....thanks man)

So recently I've been trying not to let the voice in my head talk all the time during my daily life, and although it isn't particularly easy (hopefully it'll get easier with practice), I do feel the benefit - I do feel calmer and less stressed, more at peace with the world.

Listeners, what do you think? 皆さん、いかがでしょうか？

Do you have a voice in your head? Does it talk a lot? What does it say?
Have you ever tried to stop it talking? How did it go? Did it feel better? Was it easy or difficult to maintain?

参考Links:

あと一つの同じテーマの記事。Chainsawの例えは面白い。https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/inviting-monkey-tea/201710/how-quiet-the-little-voice-in-your-head

励ましてくれた友達Smithのpodcast,めっちゃ面白い。注意：大人向け

https://smithandtanaka.podbean.com/

このepisodeのブログ投稿：http://www.tensaimon.com/2021/03/11/tensaimon-translates-11-how-to-stop-your-mind-from-talking-all-the-time/

Credits:

Music by Kajiki 　

Sound Effects: https://freesound.org/people/tensaimon/bookmarks/

SNS: tensaimon (instagram: kusaimon)

Site: www.tensaimon.com

Tuesday Mar 02, 2021

10. 亡くなった友人のことを思い出す　remembering my friend

Tuesday Mar 02, 2021

一年前にお亡くなりになりました友人のことを思い出す、その時に書いた賛辞を読み上げて、訳する。

※注意点：

このepisodeの中に"fucking"と"shit"という言葉を使って、「悪い言葉」ではなくて、「強い言葉」や「丁寧な所に使ったら批判される言葉」と説明する。

だけど、00:20:57で"~ is a bitch"、「〜は最悪だよ」と言う表現を使う。この表現は"fucking"と"shit"と違って、女性に軽蔑する性差別的な意味も含まれているから、普段私は言わないようにしているけど、その瞬間に私の気持ちを表せて、出てきてしまった言葉です。私の本音の気持ちをそのまま表現したいから編集でカットとかはしなかった（聞くと理解してくれると思います）けど、この珍しい文脈の例外を除いて、私は使わないんで、使わないことを進めます。

今日を特別にして、ご理解、ご了承を、よろしくお願いします。

元の記事：http://www.tensaimon.com/2020/02/28/last-night-the-world-lost-a-fucking-fireball/

このepisodeのtensaimon.com記事：http://www.tensaimon.com/2021/03/02/tensaimon-translates-ep-10-remembering-my-friend/

Music by Kajiki 　

Sound Effects: https://freesound.org/people/tensaimon/bookmarks/

SNS: tensaimon (instagram: kusaimon)
Site: www.tensaimon.com

Thursday Feb 25, 2021

9. The Lost Art of Phone Calls　失われた技術：電話で会話

Thursday Feb 25, 2021

今日の記事は the saturday evening post からです、

The Lost Art of the Phone Call　失われた技術「電話で会話」- typing is killing conversation

June 29 2018 (pre-corona!)

https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2018/06/lost-art-phone-call/

記事のまとめ・Summary:

There is a song by a British artist called Cliff Richards, that goes "it's so funny how we don't talk anymore!"

and today's article is about how we never talk on the phone anymore!

Most of our communication nowadays is by text and photos on SNS.
The article says "Hey maybe we should start talking on the phone again!"

For more than 100 years — a phone call was an event. The jarring ring would set a household in motion to discover what the mysterious caller had to say.

If you missed the call, you were missing out.

Today, we might be missing out more than ever.

The flat devices we now carry around like life support can hardly be called phones anymore

Smartphone users are communicating more overall, but we are typing not talking.

In fact we have become very anxious about calling, and instead text pretty much every conversation we have!

However, especially now with corona (this article was written before corona!) video calling (such as zoom) is maybe helping to get people talking in real time again. Tho we still do feel we need to set it up in advance....

Text, voice and video are all useful: The value of meaningful personal connection should be the focus of any communication technology

Hey Saimon what do you think?　私に勝手な一コメントいわせていただければ・・・

I've gotten really tired of text-talking:

- it takes a long time to edit to make sure my meaning is clear
- if the content is serious then it is very stressful typing then waiting for an answer
- and it really isn't rewarding emotionally in the way that actually talking to a real person is

I realized I miss having long chats on the phone...I had several good friends I used to have long conversations with. I used to call my friend Sarah when I was having dating problems - but I would have to let her talk about herself for half an hour before I would (finally!) get to talk about my problem!

So recently I've been calling people, unexpectedly, just like we used to do back in the 20th century!

I started with my English-speaking friends in Okinawa (I haven't tried this with my Japanese/Okinawan friends yet - do you think I should?), but this weekend I unexpectedly out-of-the-blue called friends in England
- they were very surprised to hear from me (because NO ONE phones unannounced nowadays!) - one friend thought she'd better answer in case someone had died...
- and one friend was on her way out so we had to keep it short, but it was good to hear each other's voices
- and I talked to another friend for over an hour.

Listeners, what do you think? 皆さん、いかがでしょうか？

- Do you ever call people unannounced?
- Do you remember having more phone talking back in the 20th century?
- Or do you just text? Or even, text to ask if it's ok to call?
- Do you think we can do this in Japan?
- Do you think we need to start doing this again?

Thanks for reading everybody - see ya!

参考Links:

Cliff Richards song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzjX18psf9A
政治家にメールするより電話するほうが効果的：https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/22/us/politics/heres-why-you-should-call-not-email-your-legislators.html
取り残されることへの恐れ Fear Of Missing Out: https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOMO

Credits:

Music by Kajiki 　

Sound Effects: https://freesound.org/people/tensaimon/bookmarks/

SNS: tensaimon (instagram: kusaimon)
Site: www.tensaimon.com

Episodes

ラナプラザ縫製工場の崩壊から８年経っても、縫製労働者を（利益優先している会社から）守ることは出来ていない。

Episodeのブログ投稿（リンク、英語のセリフなど）：

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ブログ記事（英語のセリフ、まとめる記事のリンク）

元の記事：

ブログ投稿（英語のセリフ、参考のリンク）：

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今日の記事：

Blog投稿（英語のセリフ、参考リンクなど）：

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今日の記事：

英語のブログ投稿（セリフと関連リンク）

Credits:

Blog post: 英語のセリフ、参考リンクなど：

Credits:

今日の記事：

記事のまとめ・Summary:

Hey Saimon what do you think? 私に勝手な一コメントいわせていただければ・・・

Listeners, what do you think? 皆さん、いかがでしょうか？

参考Links:

Credits:

The Lost Art of the Phone Call 失われた技術「電話で会話」- typing is killing conversation

記事のまとめ・Summary:

Hey Saimon what do you think? 私に勝手な一コメントいわせていただければ・・・

Listeners, what do you think? 皆さん、いかがでしょうか？

参考Links:

Credits:

Hey Saimon what do you think?　私に勝手な一コメントいわせていただければ・・・

The Lost Art of the Phone Call　失われた技術「電話で会話」- typing is killing conversation

Hey Saimon what do you think?　私に勝手な一コメントいわせていただければ・・・