Conscious Living

[Applause]

today i want you to travel 100 years

into the past with me

we are a population of only 2 billion

people

not even a third of what we are today

the world had just suffered a war to

which we lost

40 million lives

and then we had the spanish flu pandemic

to which we lost another 50 million

lives

what did we lose those lives to

power land

money on

average people back then only lived for

about 47 years

less than 10 percent of the population

enrolled into schools

survival was the epitome of human life

but even then we craved for something

more

something that would surpass our human

mind’s imagination

and so we developed technology gadgets

devices airplanes

and since then the population has

quadrupled

life expectancy today sits at 77 years

we enjoy a sense of pride in our

evolution

from chalkboards to smart boards to

whiteboards on zoom

we could have never imagined that

telephones would be wireless pocket

devices

with instant global communication

that we would have electric cars smart

televisions

virtual desktops

now have you ever imagined a world a

hundred years

into the future

we could be living with robots who do

all the work for us earning for us

serving you cookies

while you play golf

or you could be choosing between the

moon and mars as your next holiday

destination

people driving cars in the 22nd century

would be the equivalent to those with an

iphone 5s today

please tell me no one has one

but the only thing that’s remained

constant in

all of those years is that we lived

for happiness we lived to be happy back

then

we live to be happy today and we will

always live

to be happy

but what is happiness

it’s a reaction to various biochemical

substances in the brain

if you like it’s the absence of negative

emotions in your body

but today i want you to focus on how

you’re feeling

are you agitated are you stressed

are you happy are you upset about

something

because even though on your external

front you appear to me as completely

conscious

your eyes are open you’re breathing

you’re alive

i hope

your internal front may not be as

conscious

and with all the limitless change that

has gone on around us in the world

keeping our internal body at peace

has become challenging who we are and

what we look like at face value

has distanced so much from who we are

internally

that living consciously has become

challenging

at the start of 2020 i moved to adelaide

to study health and medical sciences

born into a family of doctors the

preferred career choice for me was to

study medicine

and the common selling points to me were

financial security it’s a familiar

pathway my family knows the profession

inside out you’ll be fine

i wanted to be an actor

study international business

apply for a beauty pageant

anyhow i came to adelaide thinking i’ll

transfer into medicine after a year of

doing health and med

but three weeks in when the lockdown

happened and i got to go home

i had some time to think and reflect

and in those moments i realized that if

i didn’t do what i had set out for

myself

i would be creating regrets for myself

to mull over

for the rest of my life

you know i’ve always been told that i do

the exact

opposite of what i’ve been told to do

but in reality all i did what i believed

i did was take charge of my life

take a step back and take a distant

neutral perspective

on who you are and where you want to go

i followed what i felt in that moment

and not some superficial idea of earning

thousands of dollars

15 years after pursuing medicine

but i had to prove myself

so i came back to adelaide started

volunteering

socializing networking

i applied for that beauty pageant

and all of a sudden i had a job to go to

i had a cause that i support

friends that i call family

they’re sitting in the audience

and i won the pageant

point is that you and i

we have the power to change what the

next

100 years look like we can do so much

more than just survive

it’s because we have the freedom the

luxury and the time to plan

and act consciously

consciousness is our ability

to be in this present moment

giving it our complete 100 attention

it can be defined as a heightened level

of awareness

which is the ability to keep our mind

under control

even in adverse situations

for several years it’s been in the

nature of our human race

to crave for more we’re momentarily

satisfied by materialistic comforts

it’s an external stimulus that fires up

the chemistry in our brains

and makes us happy momentarily but as

soon as that spark disappears

we feel deprived again

and if only we can balance our internal

body chemistry

even in the absence of external stimuli

then that to me is true joy because the

secret of that balance

is conscious living the evolution

of our inner dimension

when times get tough we often choose to

live

in a bubble of mum dad family

friends possibly latch onto alcohol or

partying to escape

for years and years we’ve been

preconditioned to think of life

as a cycle you go to school

university get a job marriage kids

retirement death and the repetition

and reinforcement of this idea on us for

centuries

has curbed consciousness

you tell me if you’ve been deprived of

food for two days

and then been asked to come in here and

listen to me talk about conscious living

would i have your full attention

probably not you’d want food

because hunger overrides your conscious

line of thought

similarly with our human lives when

we’re compulsively chasing

money intelligence power

we forget to stop and realize that

happiness probably lies

in being in this moment that you have

right here

our human minds they have innate powers

of imagination

and memory and that’s why our mind has

the tendency

to wander off more often than not how

you’re feeling

in this waking moment is a

representation of something that

happened in the past

or an imaginative figment of the future

and over time this loss of presence

starts to create a void in our life

we feel stressed anxious

maybe depressed

extreme emotions like hunger anger

jealousy even extreme happiness cloud

our ability to see

life in its purest form

for instance have you ever been

so hungry that you decided to skip your

diet and eat the fattiest foods you

could find

or have you ever been so angry that you

said things that you would never say in

your right mind

and let me ask you in one word how did

you feel

when you ate those fried chicken wings

or yelled at the top of your lungs

regret

we’ve concocted behaviors and patterns

that we can’t even explain but we would

do them anyway

just to get through that one split

second

we underestimate the ability of our

human mind

and body

life was once about survival but it

doesn’t have to be that way anymore

our set ideas of people culture

religions

they constantly influence the way we

talk react and behave on a daily basis

but my question to you is if we’ve

created these boundaries

why can’t we take them away if

only we could open up our mind and our

hearts to the larger impact of life on

this planet

your larger purpose of living

we could together change what the next

50 to 80 years look like for our future

generations

now you might be thinking i feel

conscious

i feel like i’m self-aware am i not

but the question is how do we maximize

this on a daily basis

so now i want you to think about these

questions

if you had only 80 minutes left to live

what would you do 80 minutes

shopping eat the food you really love

meet your family

but now if i gave you 80 years left to

live

what would you do what would you do

differently

is your mind now saying that 80 years

that’s too long

that’s a whole lifetime i would live the

way i’m supposed to live

and all of a sudden 80 years takes away

the urgency to live

now to be better now and to be happier

now it relaxes

all of those emotions

but are 80 years really that long

some of us are 20 30 40.

if life was limitless and if death

didn’t abruptly stop your journey

we would keep living the way we’re

always living

and losing that value of the existence

because the value of our existence lies

in the fact

that you and i we’re mortal

sitting here today how many of you

are aware of what’s around you

the empty chair next to you your feet in

your shoes

your stomach rumbling mind’s rumbling

but how many of you are aware of what’s

inside of you

how many of you aware of how many times

your mind wandered off

i said something that probably triggered

a memory or an emotion

or put you somewhere else i lost you for

a few minutes in the middle

awareness of what’s outside and around

will help you survive but awareness of

what’s inside of you

will help you thrive through life

if you wake up 10 minutes earlier than

you do or sleep 10 minutes later than

you do take 10 minutes in the shower

doesn’t matter where you take 10 minutes

to yourself just to ponder upon how

you’re feeling

what you want to get out of your day

what are you grateful for

it’ll send to you

talk to your loved ones create

conversations

about whether to keep that job or not

what do i do after this degree

am i really enjoying what i’m doing at

this point in time

these conversations are energy that over

time

translate into action that creates so

much space for positivity in our lives

ladies and gentlemen we have lived for a

hundred years

we’re living today we’ve survived a

pandemic we’re still surviving it

and we will live for the next hundred

years

and limitless change that will continue

into the future

so far we occupied our minds with the

worries of survival

how do we survive but now it’s time to

take a leap of faith

and explore the full human potential who

you really are

to be aware of your mind body and soul

and to be the driver

of your life

the speed at which life is changing is

getting faster and faster

each year 2020 looked so different to

2019

and two months into 2021 it already

looks so different to what it was last

year

and that’s why we need some sort of

balance

the power of balance is that it paves

the way for creativity and innovation

beyond our imagination

but the power to be able to do that puts

an enormous responsibility on

us you and i to leave this planet

better than we found it

our education systems they’ve taught us

english

math science economics

but ways of living they’re only

seen repeated and duplicated

conscious living is just as important

as english maths or science

it’s the language of a happy and

balanced mind

change starts with every thought every

action

and every individual

so 100 years later if someone comes here

and talks about conscious living at tedx

let them have a century of joy and

togetherness to reflect back on

a world full of equality and equity

where no

color gender or money can separate two

people

where war and violence is replaced by

conversation

where global warming only becomes a

chapter in our history textbooks

where every woman of any size

color or culture has an equal

representation at the table

and is heard and then

we can truly say that we lived life

and we lived it consciously

thank you

you