 Everybody welcome back. We are on day six of our seven day challenge, learning to go slower, learning to be more mindful, finding things that we can use in our daily lives to practice that. Today, we're going to talk about intentional and mindful listening, the act of listening and paying attention to what you are hearing as an aid to helping us become a little bit more mindful and being able to slow things down and practice being slow on demand when we need to. So that's we're going to talk about today. I'm going to wait for some folks to show up. We're going to get into it. This is day six. Thank you to those of you who reached out yesterday when I did not do day six yesterday, I had no voice. So I went up re recording a big portion of the audio book for 7% slower on Saturday. And by the end of the day, my voice was just done. So missed yesterday. Sorry about that. But we are back today. We're going to talk about mindful and intentional listening, because many, many, many of you and as you pop in, just give a wave in the comments. Let me know that you're here and say hello, tell me where you're from, whatever it happens to be. So I know that you guys are here. Mindful listening is interesting because I think a lot of us and I do this too often. A lot of us really spend our entire day just full of like background noise. Some people really, really, really need to have there's always a podcast playing, there's always videos playing, there's YouTube, the TV is on, there's just music in the background all the time. Now we can debate whether or not that's a good idea. And for many people who are dealing with these anxiety and stress issues that we're talking about, one of the big issues is not being able to sit quietly with one's own thoughts. So yes, I will acknowledge that it is probably a good thing to do to practice that and get into the habit of practicing sitting quietly with your thoughts for a few minutes at a time. However, if in fact you are the type of person who is just constantly has to have some sort of background noise for whatever reason, it's just a habit or you're trying to drown out your anxious thoughts and sensations. Then today we can talk a little bit about trying to actually use that. Let's let instead of just letting it be white noise and you know, just the thing that you're using to drown things out, we can actually try to use this as a tool to help us practice slowing down when we need to and being more mindful and paying attention when we need to, right? You remember the point of all of this and what I wrote about in this book, which is there. Oh, I got the chat when the chat overlay is open. So you guys can see what's going on. So this way we can use these things to practice going slower because part of what we're trying to do is learn to slow things down when we need to as part of building this new relationship with anxiety and stress and fear. This is part of the recovery process. So we can use these things that we have the sound going on anyway, we could schedule a little times where we actually listen mindfully and intent intentionally so we can kind of get into the swing of this. So let's see me feel seen again. So it's good. I can leave the comments up on the side. I don't know if you guys like that or not. It means I can't point. I have to point that way to get to the book. And by the way, today is official paperback launch day for the book. So if you're waiting for it on paper back and you don't already know that you can go to this URL here at the bottom of the screen, 7% slower calm and you will see a link to get the paperback on Amazon. Go ahead and do that. The audio book will probably release in another day or two audible is reviewing it right now. So that's coming up very shortly. Very exciting. The book is actually doing very well. So thank you all so much for your support. So now I have to point to agony. I'm screwed. The best I could do is like that, I guess. So any who all right, let's talk about listening mindfully. Let's see who else is here. First of all, Bethany is here. Me is here. David's back. Laurie's here. What up? New Brunswick. How's it going? Like to see our Canadian friends here. Kelly is here. Who else is here? Let's see. Nikki is here. Anyway, welcome to everybody. And for those of you in the Facebook group, you see you show up as Facebook users. Sorry, I don't know who you are. Anyway, let's talk about mindful listening. Let's assume that you have background noise going on all the time. And even if you don't, you can still use mindful listening. Real type person always has to have something on in the background. There's always a podcast or videos or music playing, just because you need that background noise. One of the things that we can do is to realize that often we use that background noise and we are hearing all day long, but we are actually not listening, right? So hearing is one thing. I hear a lot of things. There's landscapers a couple of yards down and, you know, there's just stuff going on in the environment. I hear that stuff, but I am not listening to it. Like human beings are really good at tuning things out, like selective inattention is a thing. So if you are hearing things all day long that you put in your environment, podcasts, videos, TV shows, movies, music, whatever it is, we can take some time to actually stop just hearing those things and for a few minutes at a time actually listen to them. Listening is the act of actually paying attention in an auditory sense, right? So paying attention on a visual sense, you're watching something and taking it in. Listening does not involve necessarily watching or touching or feeling or even behaving. It involves just paying attention to what is coming into your ears and allowing your brain to actually process it. So what I would urge you to do is practice taking a few minutes at a time here and there, whatever it is you happen to have on and if you have nothing on or if you're just putting random things on, pick something you really want to listen to and then listen to it for two or three minutes at a time and practice that a few times during the day as you go, especially if you're just a background noise kind of person. If you always, if you just have the news on 24 seven and some people do that, then, well, maybe you don't want to stop and watch the news because the news is always so depressing. But whatever it is you have playing in the background, take some time, especially when you're starting to feel your anxiety levels rise, you're starting to stress, you're starting to rush around, you're going to speed demon mode. Take a second and say, well, let me actually listen to the music that's playing right now. Let me just take two minutes to listen to the music, listen to the lyrics, listen to the music itself. I'm not really a lyrics guy. I'm a music guy, so I like to listen to the actual music, but you can do a bunch of that stuff, right? You can listen to the lyrics of the songs. You can listen to the music in the songs. You could try to pick out individual instruments. If you're listening to spoken word podcasts or there's a YouTube videos playing, you can actually take a second to pay attention to what the podcast host is actually saying. See if you could comprehend it, see if you could process it a little bit. Just a minute or two at a time gives yourself a little bit of a break. We have to slow down and say for the next 60 seconds, for the next two minutes, for the next three minutes, I'm just going to listen to this song. I'm just going to listen to this podcast and see what they're actually saying. I'm actually going to watch this scene in this show that I really like so much. I'm going to pay attention to it because it's impactful emotionally or it makes me laugh or it's an interesting video. I'm a huge like nerdy fan of like science videos and music theory videos on YouTube. So I'm guilty of it, too. Sometimes I start a video, get caught up and it's just playing in the background. But if I should actually stop and listen, I might actually learn something from PBS Space Time or from Rick Beato talking about music theory and analyzing popular music. So these are some things that we can actually do. Right? We can we can stop and we can listen mindfully and intentionally and use that. This is all I'm going to do for the next minute or two is actively listen and see if I can actually comprehend or even enjoy what it is is entering my ears. Right? So it's not super complicated. And if especially if you are a background noise person, that is available to you all day long. You can schedule little breaks where you could stop and say, I'm going to take my background noise and I'm going to put it in the foreground of my attention. I'm going to practice training my attention with what I am listening to. So there you go. Let's see. Let's scroll up here and see what kind of things we have pointing to annually. Does anybody have any questions about mindful or intentional listening? This is something that a lot of people don't think of like there's so many different ways to bring yourself into a more mindful state where your attention is focused, where you're paying attention, where you're not doing 60 things at one time and where you're really attentive to what is actually going on because you want to be attentive to that thing as opposed to being dragged around by the troubles of the day, the problems you're trying to solve, your anxiety, your your anxious thoughts, your intrusive thoughts, your anxiety symptoms. You don't have to always be dragged around by those. And I will say this, especially if you're dealing with the anxiety problem that most of you are, if you're watching me, one of the things that you can really think about is, well, what's a more productive way for me to use this background noise? I can just have it on in the background to keep me company, to like keep me from being quiet with my own thoughts and just let it serve no purpose other than that, which is essentially I need to have that to protect me against my anxiety. If it's there anyway, use it productively, pay attention to it. Because contrary to popular belief, your symptoms, your anxiety, your stress and your thoughts does not always automatically have to be the most interesting thing in the room. So you can pay attention to something else. And if there are things to pay attention to that you've already put into the environment, sound of some kind and pay attention to it once in a while, be productive in the way you use that sound as opposed to just trying to use it as a shield to back everything off away from you, use it as a tool so that you learn you don't have to have it backed off. It'll help it goes a long way. So let's see, what do we got here? I guess I did get it with my diagonal pointing. Can you buy it? Nikki says, can we buy the book on Amazon in England? You can if you go to 7% slower common and follow the Amazon link, it will take you to Amazon. It should be smart enough to know that you go to Amazon.co.uk. Or you can just go to Amazon in the UK and search for 7% slower. It's going to come right up. There's nothing else 7% slower on Amazon, except for my book at the moment. So there you go. Waiting on Audible. Yep, that'll be in a couple of days. Let's see. Maureen is here from St. Louis. Welcome. It's me, Victoria. Welcome, Victoria. Let's see. I'm at a river walk says Donna and this popped up live. Not very mindful. That's OK. I do this mindfully. Mostly Donna is a champion mindful walker. So I can listen to us while you walk. No crime. I'm glad you're here. I can play a true crime true crime podcast episode seven times and still don't know who died. OK, that's pretty good. And you know what I'm blown away by? I am blown away by the number of people. And I know you're here. Angval is here because I see you right under that. I know me is here. So many people are really like low grade obsessed with true crime stuff. Love to listen to unsolved mysteries and unsolved crimes. If that's your jam, then that's cool. Like use it. If you like that stuff, I know some people like to listen to serialized podcast storytelling and drama. Some people like to listen to more sciencey stuff. But if your jam is like gruesome murder, unsolved podcasts, then listen to that and then you'll actually maybe know who died. It's possible, right? So let's see. And if someone's any podcast you'd recommend, smartest comments, I don't know. I could think of one podcast that would be good. But along those lines, by the way, my podcast is certainly not the only podcast in the world. Please do not listen to me 24 seven on loop. That's that's a safety behavior. And that's just not required. So fill your days with other things and things that are not anxiety related. You don't always have to be listening to recovery stuff. Like listen to music, listen to current events, listen to politics, listen to drama and literature or philosophy, like try other stuff. You might find out that you like it. Imagine if you could actually pay attention to like a philosophy podcast on stoicism or Buddhism. Imagine that like if you could pay attention to that for three minutes and not a recovery related thing. Oh, huge win, right? So Gemma has an identity crisis because it won't show her name. Very difficult, very difficult. Correct. You guys see each other's names. I can only see Facebook user because of the way restream work. Sorry. If you watch on the podcast, you can see your name. Yes, correct. Let's see. It's hard. Mindfulness is tricky. It takes a lot of practice. It totally takes a lot of practice. Oh, if I do it over here, I think I can see the names. Look at that. I could watch as the chat scroll scrolls by very good. Bonnie says my grandma always had me listen and try to pick out the different instruments. That's an actual thing. Like there's a guy on YouTube that I love called his name is Rick Beato and Rick Beato. He's a guitarist. He's a music producer. He's been in the music industry for many, many years and he makes these really great like real music geek videos breaking down popular songs and hits. And he has a series called What Makes This Song Great? That will keep if you're a music person, you might check out Rick Beato because when he breaks down these popular huge hits that we all know that is that will really hold your attention because he has the studio master tapes and it's really really cool. But Bonnie, that's a real thing. Pick out the different instruments. That's your training if you're a music person. So let's see here. Okay, so the core and only fear of my anxiety is developing schizophrenia. So mindfully listening is a bit scary for me. I was always my doubting myself for what I heard. Okay, and that situation you're focusing so much on did I hear it? Did I understand it or did I not understand it? If nothing else just allow it to be words then at least hear the words or don't listen to words and listen to music. You can if and if mindfully listening presents a challenge for you, you don't have to mindfully listen. We said right at the very beginning of this series, if people who have a hard time getting in the shower right now because it's it's part of what they're really afraid of, they don't have to do mindful showering right now. Right? If you're tomorrow we're going to talk about mindful breathing. If you have problems with being breath focused, then you don't have to do mindful breathing. These are just suggestions. So you could take that attention training and apply it somewhere else Dave. So if that is really a challenge for you, you don't have to mindfully listen. But one way you could do it is to just let the words be just words with no expectation of your comprehension or maybe listen to music. You have a couple of different options there or use other do other activities. You don't have to mindfully listen. This is just an idea. True crime, true crime that Lizzie is here. Good to see you Lizzie. Let's see here. Any tips on doing mindfulness with dpdr and existential fears about reality? Well, there's no special mindfulness for depersonalization or for existential fear. Mindfulness is kind of mindfulness. So the issue when you get depersonalized and that was a huge, huge problem for me, both of those things, right? So dpdr was a giant, giant anxiety symptom for me. I still get it now and then and that existential fear, fear of death and just being focused all the time on existence, non-existence is there in afterlife. What's this all about? It really became the most important thing that my attention was on all the time. So mindfulness to dpdr really just means you don't have to pay attention to it. Even though your brain has told you, you must pay attention to this existential dilemma that you're in right now. You must pay attention to proving whether or not you truly are real when you feel depersonalized. You have to make sure that reality is actually real. You don't. You can try to put your attention on other things and just let that feeling be there like every other anxiety symptom. That is not easy because dpdr is very uncomfortable. I know that's from experience, but when I stopped allowing it to be the most interesting thing at the moment and I said, okay, well, I'm just going to keep driving and focus on the road while I feel this way, it did get a whole lot better. It stopped dragging me around. Okay. So there is no special dpdr when it comes to, you know, there's no special mindfulness for dpdr. And I know a lot of people think dpdr is its own special symptom. It needs its own thing. It's really not, nor are existential thoughts, special thoughts. In the end, a thought about your existence is really no different than a thought about a peanut butter sandwich. I know you guys have heard me say that many times and you can argue that from a philosophical standpoint, but we're not talking about philosophy right now. We're not talking about spirituality. We're talking about cognition and in the realm of cognition, a thought is a thought is a thought is a thought and that will help set you free in this situation. When you have gone past all that, and I'm getting a little off topic, but it's a little bit on topic, when you get past all that, then you can move existentialism and those thoughts back into the realm of philosophy and spirituality and faith and those sort of things. But right now, you got to jam them right back into the realm of really dry mechanical cognition and understand that it's just a thought. It doesn't matter the content of the thought. Ooh, somebody says puzzles. Puzzles work for me. That's cool. Puzzles is a super mindful thing to do. Like, I am not a puzzle guy. Like, I'll do a puzzle for 15 minutes and then I literally want to just swipe it off the table. Like, don't play monopoly with me either because at some point I'm going to turn the table over and tell everybody to go after themselves. I just, I'm only kidding. I've only done that eight, nine times in my life and my grandma never minded. So, I'm kidding. I never did that to my grandma. But puzzles are a really cool thing. If you're a puzzle person, you can use doing puzzles to be mindful. It's really, really cool. So, what does Eric say? What up, dude? I've had DPDR for years on and off. I just tell myself, I'm lucky to have it because many people pay money to feel this way. There's some measure of truth to that. That's absolutely true. As weird as it sounds, right? There's truth in that. Like, some people pay to get into these altered states of consciousness that we are so afraid of. So, there you go. What Eric means, I'll answer that for him. What he means, people pay money to feel it. People pay money to buy drugs, to put them into altered states of consciousness. They want to feel unreal. They want to feel detached from themselves. Like, they actually pay money for that. So, they want to go down that road and they will actually pay for that and carve out time specifically to feel that way or like that. So, I think that's what Eric is saying. It just illustrates how we could take a thing and our anxiety can twist it into something awful when some segment of the population actually really likes that. As crazy as that sounds. I don't know how they like it, to be honest with you, but it's true. Somebody asked, what's up top here? I just want to take a few more. We'll go to the about 20-minute mark. Excuse me, mush brain over here, post-difficult exposure, but could you explain how and why to use mindfulness during exposures? Yes, I can explain that. That's a really good question. One of the reasons why I'm talking so much about learning to slow down and be mindful is that when you are in the grips of a high anxiety or panic situation, like during an exposure because that's supposed to happen during an exposure. Oh, copper wants to chime in. You can use mindfulness and the skill of training your attention somewhere to put your attention where you want it to be and keep bringing it back to that. Because when you are in the middle of an exposure and that anxiety and fear is way up because you're intentionally doing a scary thing, the anxiety and fear will demand your attention. Listen to me, listen to me, pay attention to the symptoms, pay attention to the thoughts. Please answer my what if, what if, what if, it will want you to answer and talk about it and dialogue about it and debate it and focus on your symptoms. Practicing these skills of mindfulness and paying attention and slowing down is all about being able to say, listen, lizard brain, I know you really want me to focus on these things and engage with you over them because you think they're serious but I'm going to show you that they're not serious. I'm going to put my attention somewhere else. So that's why we use mindfulness training and that's how it would fit into an exposure. Short answer in a video but hopefully it works. Mush brain, good question for somebody that claims they have a mush brain. Dealing with facts. Yeah, okay. So somebody sort of answered very good. Let's see. Yikes, yikes, yikes. Okay. I think we're almost at the end of the concept, DMT. I have an awful time listening in conversations with people. Chit chat is not my thing. I'm not sure if I'm just an astronaut. Hey, look, not everybody is wired to be super social and hang out in like conversations. It's okay if that is not your thing. You have to ask yourself two things. Look, have I always been the type of person that like, I'm not anti-social but I don't really enjoy being engaged in long conversations? That's okay. You don't have to enjoy it. There's no law that says you have to be talkative and chatty. So if by nature you're just not a chatty person, that's okay. Like recovery isn't about forcing yourself into that. Recovery is about like just, you know, doing whatever you think you have to do that you're afraid to do. So if you have decided I'm not going to be chatty because being chatty like triggers me and I can't do it, well then you have to start to go be chatty. There's nothing else you can do to get around that. But if you're just naturally not a chit chatty kind of person, then you're not required as part of recovery to do that. You know, you don't have to become a chatty person. That's silly. So let's see. I've been having a rough day with being on my own. We'll be on my own all week so I need to use this time as my exposure work. Great. I'm fine while I'm busy and doing stuff. It's just, yes. Okay. Being on your own it does get really hard to sit in the quiet stillness especially if you're monophobic. I was. So if the house was empty and it was just me being quiet and alone with my thoughts is no bueno. Right. So I didn't want that but I really had to work on that. So this is good. It's an opportunity. You can sit quietly sometimes but you could also use this as an opportunity to actually engage in things. Right. These all these little things that we're talking about learning to slow down to be more mindful is just the act of actually engaging in life activities. So engage in doing the dishes. Engage in making your lunch. Engage in listening to an audiobook or a podcast or listening to music or engage in watching your favorite TV series or something like that as opposed to just sitting you can sit quietly with your thoughts from time to time and then you can also engage with life. You can do both of those things. It's important. So let's see. I'm going to run it to the end now I guess but that's okay. Guys, excellent. We're over 20 minutes. These were supposed to be short 10 and 20 10 and 15 minute things but you guys are always so full of great great comments and stuff that I enjoy listening to them and reading them and answering the best you can. So I'm going to end this one here. Tomorrow we will end the challenge. It will be day seven. We are going to talk about mindful breathing. We're talking about diaphragmatic breathing because you can't talk about mindfulness and escape the breathing thing. I will preload it by saying if you have a problem with being excessively breath focused then you cannot do mindful breathing right now or you prefer not to that's okay. Like everything else we've talked about for the past six of these videos you can apply those things in other areas. You can apply these skills in other areas but tomorrow we will talk about mindful breathing and using breath as a focus point and slowing down and being mindful. Thanks for coming by. If you have not gotten the book yet or you want to check it out just go to sevenpercent slower.com There are quotes from the book. You'll have the links over to Amazon all that stuff. And yeah, that's it. If you read it and you're digging it write a review on Amazon and I will see you guys tomorrow later.