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We live in an incredibly busy world.

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The pace of life is often frantic, our minds are always busy,

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and we're always doing something.

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So with that in mind, I'd like you just to take a moment

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to think, when did you last take any time to do nothing?

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Just 10 minutes, undisturbed?

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And when I say nothing, I do mean nothing.

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So that's no emailing, texting, no Internet,

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no TV, no chatting, no eating, no reading,

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not even sitting there reminiscing about the past

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or planning for the future.

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Simply doing nothing.

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I see a lot of very blank faces. (Laughter)

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My thinking is, you probably have to go a long way back.

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And this is an extraordinary thing, right?

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We're talking about our mind.

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The mind, our most valuable and precious resource,

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through which we experience every single moment of our life,

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the mind that we rely upon

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to be happy, content, emotionally stable as individuals,

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and at the same time to be kind and thoughtful

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and considerate in our relationships with others.

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This is the same mind that we depend upon

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to be focused, creative, spontaneous,

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and to perform at our very best in everything that we do.

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And yet, we don't take any time out to look after it.

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In fact, we spend more time looking after our cars,

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our clothes and our hair than we

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— okay, maybe not our hair, but you see where I'm going.

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The result, of course, is that we get stressed.

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You know, the mind whizzes away like a washing machine

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going round and round, lots of difficult, confusing emotions,

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and we don't really know how to deal with that,

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and the sad fact is that we are so distracted

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that we're no longer present in the world in which we live.

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We miss out on the things that are most important to us,

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and the crazy thing is that everybody just assumes,

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well, that's the way life is, so we've just kind of got to get on with it.

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That's really not how it has to be.

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So I was about 11 when I went along

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to my first meditation class.

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And trust me, it had all the stereotypes that you can imagine,

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the sitting cross-legged on the floor,

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the incense, the herbal tea, the vegetarians, the whole deal,

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but my mom was going and I was intrigued, so I went along with her.

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I'd also seen a few kung fu movies, and secretly

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I kind of thought I might be able to learn how to fly,

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but I was very young at the time.

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Now as I was there, I guess, like a lot of people,

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I assumed that it was just an aspirin for the mind.

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You get stressed, you do some meditation.

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I hadn't really thought that it could be sort of preventative in nature,

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until I was about 20, when a number of things happened

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in my life in quite quick succession,

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really serious things which just flipped my life upside down

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and all of a sudden I was inundated with thoughts,

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inundated with difficult emotions that I didn't know how to cope with.

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Every time I sort of pushed one down,

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another one would just sort of pop back up again.

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It was a really very stressful time.

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I guess we all deal with stress in different ways.

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Some people will bury themselves in work,

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grateful for the distraction.

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Others will turn to their friends, their family, looking for support.

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Some people hit the bottle, start taking medication.

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My own way of dealing with it was to become a monk.

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So I quit my degree, I headed off to the Himalayas,

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I became a monk, and I started studying meditation.

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People often ask me what I learned from that time.

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Well, obviously it changed things.

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Let's face it, becoming a celibate monk

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is going to change a number of things.

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But it was more than that.

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It taught me -- it gave me a greater appreciation,

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an understanding for the present moment.

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By that I mean not being lost in thought,

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not being distracted,

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not being overwhelmed by difficult emotions,

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but instead learning how to be in the here and now,

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how to be mindful, how to be present.

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I think the present moment is so underrated.

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It sounds so ordinary, and yet we spend so little time

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in the present moment that it's anything but ordinary.

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There was a research paper that came out of Harvard,

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just recently, that said on average our minds

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are lost in thought almost 47 percent of the time.

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Forty-seven percent.

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At the same time, this sort of constant mind-wandering

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is also a direct cause of unhappiness.

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Now we're not here for that long anyway,

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but to spend almost half of our life lost in thought

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and potentially quite unhappy,

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dunno, it just kind of seems tragic, actually,

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especially when there's something we can do about it,

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when there's a positive, practical, achievable,

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scientifically proven technique

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which allows our mind to be more healthy,

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to be more mindful and less distracted.

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And the beauty of it is that even though

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it need only take about 10 minutes a day,

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it impacts our entire life.

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But we need to know how to do it.

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We need an exercise. We need a framework

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to learn how to be more mindful.

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That's essentially what meditation is.

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It's familiarizing ourselves with the present moment.

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But we also need to know how to approach it

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in the right way to get the best from it.

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And that's what these are for, in case you've been wondering,

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because most people assume

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that meditation is all about stopping thoughts,

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getting rid of emotions, somehow controlling the mind,

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but actually it's quite different from that.

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It's more about stepping back,

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seeing the thought clearly,

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witnessing it coming and going, emotions coming and going

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without judgment, but with a relaxed, focused mind.

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So for example, right now,

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if I focus too much on the balls, then there's no way

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that I can relax and talk to you at the same time.

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Equally, if I relax too much talking to you,

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then there's no way I can focus on the balls. I'm going to drop them.

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Now in life, and in meditation, there'll be times

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when the focus becomes a little bit too intense,

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and life starts to feel a bit like this.

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It's a very uncomfortable way to live life,

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when you get this tight and stressed.

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At other times, we might take our foot off the gas a little bit too much,

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and things just become a sort of little bit like this.

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Of course in meditation — (Snores) —

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we're going to end up falling asleep.

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So we're looking for a balance, a focused relaxation

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where we can allow thoughts to come and go

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without all the usual involvement.

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Now, what usually happens when we're learning to be mindful

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is that we get distracted by a thought.

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Let's say this is an anxious thought.

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So everything's going fine, and then we see the anxious thought,

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and it's like, "Oh, didn't realize I was worried about that."

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You go back to it, repeat it. "Oh, I am worried.

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Oh, I really am worried. Wow, there's so much anxiety."

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And before we know it, right,

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we're anxious about feeling anxious.

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You know, this is crazy. We do this all the time,

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even on an everyday level.

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If you think about the last time, I dunno,

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you had a wobbly tooth.

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You know it's wobbly, and you know that it hurts.

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But what do you do every 20, 30 seconds?

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(Mumbling) It does hurt. And we reinforce the storyline, right?

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And we just keep telling ourselves,

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and we do it all the time. And it's only in learning

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to watch the mind in this way that we can start to let go

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of those storylines and patterns of mind.

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But when you sit down and you watch the mind in this way,

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you might see many different patterns.

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You might find a mind that's really restless and --

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the whole time.

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Don't be surprised if you feel a bit agitated in your body

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when you sit down to do nothing and your mind feels like that.

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You might find a mind that's very dull

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and boring, and it's just, almost mechanical,

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it just seems it's as if you're

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getting up, going to work, eat, sleep, get up, work.

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Or it might just be that one little nagging thought

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that just goes round and round and round your mind.

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Well, whatever it is, meditation offers

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the opportunity, the potential to step back

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and to get a different perspective,

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to see that things aren't always as they appear.

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We can't change

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every little thing that happens to us in life,

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but we can change the way that we experience it.

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That's the potential of meditation, of mindfulness.

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You don't have to burn any incense,

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and you definitely don't have to sit on the floor.

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All you need to do is to take 10 minutes out a day

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to step back, to familiarize yourself with the present moment

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so that you get to experience a greater sense

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of focus, calm and clarity in your life.

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Thank you very much. (Applause)