 |
credit The Art of Livin' site |
I recently watched almost all of a special live event, The Art of Livin' (not "Living;" that's an Indian self development organization), primarily hosted by Matthew McConaughey, the Hollywood actor who ventured into self help / life advice. It was ok, with some significant limitations. It's still being shown at that link, and probably through a Youtube post, but they say that they'll take it down soon.
It doesn't naturally make much sense to compare it to something like Buddhism, which is usually taken as a conventional major religion, but as I see it Buddhism, at its core, is really practical psychology, or a very early form of "self help / life coaching." It's a lot to get to, so I'll be skimming over essentially every part, but it all links, and Buddhism informs perspective on the rest.
Event / ideas presented overview
Matthew McConaughey was the main speaker and presenter, covering the most material, with four others supporting him. I'll not go into too much detail about specifics; this definitely won't be a complete summary. It was hard to keep track of whether any of the speakers or sessions were making clear or actionable points, even though it all sounded ok if you didn't think it through too much. Then if you did the scope was always a bit general, often more motivational than actionable. My memory of it won't do summary justice but let's sample a little.
I'll also not not really address the folksy tone, use of music, signaling graphics (eg. hearts and stars background), laugh track, and other sound track input to help signal audience reactions, and themed background setting to help set tone. It was set up well. A Zoom meeting audience interaction theme was more of a symbolic attempt, and a way to charge extra to people who wanted to feel more involved.
McConaughey (what they kept calling him; somehow the one-name form seemed catchy): apparently this extended ideas from his "Green Lights" self-help / life coaching book. In theory he was going into greater depth about what red, yellow, and green light type conditions mean, how to evaluate each, and what role those play. Those are circumstances in your life when the going is easy (green lights), or difficult or relating to impasses (red), and I never caught on to what yellow meant.
Since the overall main theme was this event selling a longer, later, differently formatted life coaching package (for $400, I think it was) his input was limited and spread around different topics, more about what he would tell you more about later. He almost did more with building a character / persona than actually communicating anything, playing drums, wearing a wrinkled, buttoned down, and folded sleeves dress shirt, not shaving for days prior to look more natural. All the hosts but Marie had deep tans for the event; it was as if they were all on a beach vacation.
Tony Robbins: the biggest name in motivational speaking / life coaching; it was repeated that he's been at it for over 40 years. His content was ok, well presented, smoothly outlined, just also not so substantial. His main advice was that fear limits your ability to redefine yourself, to take chances, and achieve optimum life results, absorbing too much focus. Ok.
At least his skill in presenting such messages in charismatic, storytelling fashion came across well, even if the content itself didn't say much. He recommended buying Matthew McConaughey's further help package, including some content (a module?) of his own, and no doubt making a cut from sales.
Dean Graziosi: apparently a main organizer, a partner of Tony Robbins, and another life coach. He did a couple of intro segments, and presented a "Find Your Why" themed segment (which may be someone else's framing of similar ideas; the coaching ideas tend to repeat). He seemed fine, if less charismatic and genuine than Tony Robbins.
McConaughey was pulling it off slightly better too, but leaned into the manically happy / folksy character a bit too much, adopting presumably organic looking mannerisms like chewing on his fingertip to seem natural, beyond all of them waving their hands a lot. They're all salesmen, literally admittedly so, so seeming like salesmen may be something that should be forgiven.
Marie Forleo: I've never heard of her, but her talk was ok. The core idea was that if you say that you don't eat sugar (cake, soda, whatever) instead of that you can't that it's a psychological trick that makes it stick better (applied to whatever topics). Sure, maybe. But then it seems like the kind of person who can drop sugar out of their diet won't be affected by such simple tricks, and for others who would struggle to it also might not help much.
Trent Shelton: he covered the most typical motivational speaker range, "you can do it!," examine your strengths and weaknesses, don't listen to the doubters, I believe in you, and so should you. I couldn't finish watching that part, even though it seemed short. I watched some later after it was over, enabling skipping around; I couldn't sit through 6 or 7 hours of all of it live.
At the end it cut off abruptly, without any closing or notice it was going to end, presumably so those people who bought in for the full experience could hear more, that ending part. It seemed like they wanted to communicate that the buy-in had extra value, but couldn't spell that out clearly without it seeming offensive to the free viewers, so it just cut out as a result. Live viewership had dropped from 300+k to around 50 later on anyway, so only a small proportion caught that.
Strengths of the material and event: it was free. For people on the right page the fact that it could be edited to one fourth the length without cutting out a single idea probably wouldn't matter, because they could probably enjoy the experience. There is a shorter edited version of the event out there somewhere (identified in an email response, since I got on a mailing list to sign up to see it), but I'm not sure if Google search can find it, or how long it would be around. It will surely go in later related content packages.
Surely parts of the content must be more useful and seem more creative to others than I'm framing it. Aspects were very well done, and the advice was fine, it was just much longer than it needed to be.
The speakers kept saying "write that down!," and in some comment feed notes people said that it seemed worth unpacking more later. They kept using audience input (as comment streams) to create a feeling of engagement, just stopping short of saying that "we are a community," or maybe drifting over that dividing line just a little here and there. No doubt the paid package version will add to that.
Weaknesses: it was as much a long ad for the next packaged advice as actual packaged advice. One fourth of the content was explaining what was coming, in general terms, and lots only summarized what had been said, and included small talk between hosts, with no significant content. The folksy tone was stretched a bit thin. Bongo drums were employed to make it feel informal and organic, points were repeated over and over for emphasis, and the Zoom call audience engagement background context employed was strange. Periodically a speaker would say something like "I can relate to you, Ann, Bob, and Dave," and with thousands of people in a Zoom call it hardly mattered if those names were on a script or were actually read off small video call labels. I like the novelty, but the effect was just odd.
It all seemed to add up to targeting people who are easily manipulated, who would "fall for" one cheap and easy emphasis trick after another, like warm smiles, a sunset background effect, overlapping messages that gave it a continuous feel, and really obvious examples to highlight every point. Maybe all that shared input was from genuine comment streams, or maybe not, and again it kind of doesn't matter. It's an old speaking engagement trick, like asking an audience to greet the people sitting beside them, which of course they couldn't use in this context.
If the life coaching / motivational range was more substantial I think these packaging issues wouldn't matter; it would still be great advice. I'll go out and read Green Lights, just to get a deeper take, but I don't think it's going to matter. There is really solid advice in conventional wisdom, but many of us have experienced more than half of lifetime of exposure to that kind of thing already, so we kind of get it.
All of us could do more with our lives, or appreciate things more, or re-balance life components, but little enough of all that was presented seemed like real "tools" to do so. It was fine, the kind of decent advice a well-meaning friend might pass on: look at things from a different perspective, ease up on doubts from time to time, try to get some space from your own pre-conceptions to see other alternatives or new directions. It probably sounds like I'm criticizing the examples here for being overly packaged and trite but they were really fine, very well crafted and communicated.
How Buddhism differs, why it's better:
I'll need to cut short what Buddhism really is, and 99% of the teachings and concepts, to make it one more section in a set of several, but let's go there. This won't include my own background with Buddhism, but I wrote about that sharing some ideas here awhile back. Buddhism passes on life coaching advice (really!). The core message is that the main source of our own unhappiness and dissatisfaction isn't external, not that we lack something, or resulting from unique personal weaknesses, or problems, but instead that problems are added to life experience as unhelpful assumptions, and faulty perspective, built into how we interpret reality.
 |
with one of our cats, who I met as a kitten at that temple |
Let's step back just a little, to set the ground for how it works: reality is actually a construct of ideas (mostly), not something external that objectively happens to us. Matter is real, for sure, and our model for what a human organism is works well (an animal that can think, and so on), but a lot of what we experience is from layers of assumptions and ideas, from framing conventions and societal inputs.
A good example is self-image; what is it that makes someone beautiful, and someone else ugly, and why is it that clothing and image conventions distill down to a lot of clearly defined sets of norms? Facial symmetry, healthy skin, preferred skin color, height, in-fashion body shape, fitness: all of these come into play. But layers of other conventions add to that, about hair style, accessories, and clothing choices. Just from the last, styles, brands, quality level, cues related to what was spent on the clothes, color choices, and so on build up to an image of "who" someone is. Expectations come from fashion trends, as much as anything else; the right people can easily identify who is out of touch or perfectly up to date.
Someone's physical demeanor really sets the context for others, their body language, "indexing" what they should expect for level of attractiveness based on the person's self-image, but that starts in on more complicated scope. Posture tells a story, and speech forms and patterns convey a broad range of different information.
So where am I going with all this? The rest of our reality is equally complicated, and equally adopted as assumptions, versus being a series of necessary conscious choices. Could we "quit doing" most of it? Sort of, but not exactly. There is no default neutral clothing style choice, or hair style, fitness level, and so on. So what does all this mean?
It adds up, in such a way that we end up chasing these details relentlessly, whether we intend to or not. McConaughey actually said roughly that at one point, but he was talking about finding value in what we pursue, not examining and re-structuring how normal reality is framed. It's different. You can stop doing fads, to some extent, like wearing or owning the next trendy thing (eg. using a two year old Andriod phone versus the latest Iphone version), but that would never typically drill down to a conscious awareness of the almost exclusively unconscious levels of worldview, self-image, and perspective building.
 |
this is my son as a novice monk, one related role in the Buddhist religion. |
Buddhism explains to us how to access and understand this level of reality. It's actually quite close to impossible to do so, because listening to six hours worth of four speakers' life advice is a good example of the noise that we would need to filter out to ever even begin. Cutting deeper than ordinary, surface level perception alone is relatively unthinkable, without taking steps that few people would ever become aware of, never mind put into practice, which would take unreasonable time and effort.
We literally can't notice it all to think about making more sense of it, based on using typical inputs and approaches. So what kind of additional tools am I talking about?
Teachings (part of the eight-fold path, one teaching form): I'm describing an error-theory general sort of range of structure of reality; that's part of what Buddhism is. I'm not going to make the mapping more complete here, because again I'm only trying to sample 1% of all Buddhism to show what it is, and trying to get to 10% would make the effort less manageable and successful. The teachings include a model of reality, but it's not about how things really are, but more about limited basic structure and then the assumptions that go wrong, all relating to practical advice about adjusting perspective.
Meditation: a tough one! How is it possible to reduce mental noise, the instinctive mental following of all the ideas decades of life have conditioned us to naturally experience? Meditation helps. It sort of calms the waves of a noisy mind, building up a bit more resilience and neutral balance. That only goes so far, and working up to more effective practice takes a lot of doing. Encountering good advice about forms of practice is all but impossible; I spent time ordained as a Thai Buddhist monk (a bit over two months) and the input I ran across there was quite mixed, some good, some quite unhelpful, but none of it an easy to apply short cut.
Mindfulness: meditation and teachings alone wouldn't be enough; even adding mindfulness still isn't close to enough. This is a developed deeper awareness of momentary reality. What is that all about? Normally we grasp the ideas we are conditioned to follow, just the next things we are supposed to want, or feel attraction or aversion to, or extreme boredom if none of either is present. Training to experience momentary reality more clearly helps us see this experience for what it is, to notice the assumptions in play.
One part is seeing the odd relationship of the present moment to the distant past, recent past, immediate future, and distant future. Usually at least one of these other contexts is soaking up more attention than the actual present moment, in lots of different ways.
Maybe it's the motivational-speaker input that we can always strive to do better, we can be more, we can unlock our unique potential, stop limiting ourselves, etc. All that is advice to put more attention on the immediate and distant future, next steps and then where it all leads, which indirectly de-emphasizes the present moment. Or for many regrets and anxiety tie perspective more to the past, to expecting negative patterns that either have happened before or may happen, even if they never yet have. There's plenty of risk to watch out for, in many contexts, or baggage to carry, but the present moment absolutely also requires quite a bit of attention, in order to go well. Appreciating the positive could fall off the list of things to do entirely.
It's not just about staying in the present moment, or being aware of where urges are coming from, where attention gets stuck, or self-image concerns; it just keeps going. When we lie to others we set up a mis-match between what we think and experience and what we communicate, juggling one more factor. When others lie to us there are plenty of telltale signs of this happening in them, and it can be off-putting when you train to experience it more directly, and see it for what it is.
Then from there all the layers of current culture's assumptions add a lot of weight to momentary experience. These include the boundaries of social contexts, settings, and roles, and all the positive and negative inputs of all sorts of social ties.
Not that it's all mostly negative; I don't mean that. It's noisy, whether you experience it relatively directly and openly or not. Someone could try to stay within a very narrow perspective lane, to not venture out of their own sub-culture group very much, and that really might help turn down the noise level, and eliminate some contradictions. Or taking time off other people to spend time in nature would be even better, or at least turning away from a smart-phone screen or television a lot of the time, which fragment our attention span into seconds-long experiences of content all competing for our attention.
How Buddhism teaches us which parts are problematic for us: any guesses? It's back to meditation. The parts of reality that are problematic for each of us are going to keep running through our thoughts, like a computer program that gets a bit hung in spots, wasting RAM. The emotional reaction sticks with us, even though it would be really easy to miss where that negative input is entering in, among all the other noise.
It might be like a knee problem that is caused by an initial issue starting in the hip or ankle; the apparent "pain point" might naturally seem to be somewhere else than where the real cause is located. Just sitting and letting your mind re-run what it can't drop could help. Or I guess dreams can contain messages, and conventional self-awareness still works, but I'm focusing here on extra tools Buddhism adds for us. When you sit and still your mind some noise won't drop out, and often that's a clue there is a problem within that scope. Later the calm comes easier, and stays with you better.
The problems are different for everyone; this is an issue that is so self-evident that any motivational speaker is going to mention that, even in shorter segments. Self-image is all-consuming for some, or baggage from past traumas or negative associations, or the pressure of external goals, which motivational speakers would generally advocate accepting. Then those speakers could easily say that they've moved beyond over-doing it (as one did in The Art of Livin' content), after relentlessly chasing a dozen different directions and seeing 3 or 4 really work out had bore fruit in their own cases.
None of this is ever laid out in clear steps, or clearly defined, partitioned, functional descriptions. Why not? Because Buddhism has picked up an awful lot of noise over the last 2500 years. Just consider how degraded Christianity has become: Jesus' core message is clear enough, to treat others well, to be humble and generous, selfless, and so on, but that's often lost for other "core" teachings input. Literal belief in superstitions, rituals, abstract social roles, archaic church practices, even "prosperity" teachings were all added to that core message later.
Why would Buddhism be different in this regard? There are a dozen different ways to make wishes defined in Thai Buddhist practices, and original Buddhism has little to nothing to do with making wishes. The chanting in religious ceremonies isn't magical in function; that was a way to preserve oral teachings. "Karma" is surely nothing like modern religious teachings portray it.
A second problem applies equally to life coaching advice and Buddhism: if the problems and resolutions are different in different cases the presentation can only be so targeted and clear, for a broad audience.
So how do we access valid, functional, clear Buddhist teachings? To make a long story short, we don't. It's close enough to impossible. Someone like Thich Nhat Hanh was a genuine teacher, but there are so few of those kinds of references out there. I guess we just have to sort, filter, and make due with what's available. Real life experiences are the main teacher, with the other input just starting points to work with.
Ordinarily a ready answer would be "sangha!," that the fellowship of other Buddhists helps teach us, the community. Today I'm not so sure that's helpful. Discussion in Buddhist groups almost always reduces down to each person one-upping the last in relation to having memorized their own school's set of definitions, while rejecting all others. It's a shame. It would be nice if the core of the sets of teachings was so uniform and common that it wouldn't matter, but the schools aren't that consistent. And personal practice only gets so far in every given case, as is true again for Christianity. Learning the ideas is one thing, then digging down to deeper levels of understanding and adopting them in practice are two other things.
What about the overlap of all this with the "Art of Livin'" input? There must be some. Those speakers weren't passing on bad advice. Folk wisdom is useful; it sticks around and is constantly reinterpreted for a reason. It's just not the same kind of thing.
My grandmother taught me to not hold onto unhelpful ideas, or to adopt the stress and conflict others are inclined to feel; her expression was that it's all like water off a duck's back to her. To me that's a closer parallel to Buddhism; engage the sets of ideas and opinions that matter to you, that are worth working with, and just leave the rest alone. It's the opposite of reaching out to that higher potential within you, becoming more prosperous and whatever else, much more deconstructive in nature.
I forget the codes they kept using in those talks for making more money. What you might achieve was always framed in positive, friendly, tone-neutral terms, about self-empowerment and expression and such, but parts were clear references to being more wealthy. Which is fine, but it's mixing messages to slip in other general framing of being more self-actualized with the quite natural appeal of greed. You can be rich! Your wealth can finally outrun your desires to buy things, and give you power, status, and security! It's what people wanted to hear, so the demand was fulfilled, just in indirect terms. Maybe not the "road map" part, but what better way to serve the purposes of the content creators than to offer a part two, for more money, that promises to really fulfill that, just next time.
Buddhism teaches us that it's a bad goal to try to fulfill all your desires; narrowing or eliminating most is much more promising, or just shifting perspective a little. It's practical; it could actually work. Surely Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk aren't falling short for fulfilling every one of their financially oriented desires; they can literally afford to pour money into the pursuit of going to the moon, billions of dollars worth, thousands of millions. But the rest of the problems wouldn't be lessened for them.
Didn't those motivational speakers seem truly happy though? Maybe. It's also possible that they're good actors, or that they love fulfilling that role, being a performer and life guide. It's not as if they've all not performed as those characters in hundreds of public speaking engagements. Check out Matthew McConaughey in any related public speech, like a university graduation ceremony. He seems personable, comfortable, folksy, wise; essentially exactly the same persona, one that overlaps with his movie characters. And that is probably one side of his real personality; why wouldn't it be? Plenty of people are like that, some of the time. Some are happier than average, as people go, and others might just be better at maintaining that context.
Which range of life coaching or practical psychology is more practical?
I don't think it's a practical alternative to put a few dozen hours into studying and practicing Buddhism, instead of seeking out life coaching input. Even ramped up to the few hundred hours level of study and practice finding good references is just too problematic. New Age interpretations of Buddhism are plagued by superficial levels of evaluation, emphasis on Asian imagery and ceremonial forms instead of applying the core themes. Most guru types are best avoided. Ordinary psychology might be a much more reliable reference, if that wasn't also problematic for lots of other reasons, too deep in theory, and also contaminated by varying pop interpretations.
For people who just need some kind of positive input and reinforcement this Art of Livin' approach is fine. 3 or 400 dollars is workable for many people who need that affirmation and range of good advice. They would see it all as 100% positive, in spite of the limitations, because that's how our ordinary binary processing and filtering ends up framing things, as good or bad. Maybe "good" is the right judgment, for many. Or they could just read related books, and watch TED talks, and whatever else is out there that's relatively free instead.
Any of that wouldn't be packaged and sold in the same way, lacking the heavy layering of reassurances, the repetition of ideas, folksy communication styles, bright and easy smiles, simulated group consensus and shared experience, and so on. It's all nice, I guess. Unless the parts that are supposed to be "behind the curtain" seem completely obvious, then it's one part good advice and also partly a carefully packaged grift. I liked how well they supported that part, so to an extent it was entertaining seeing how well it was done. If this was changed around to the form of a seminar on how to sell people on material with relatively limited substantial content it might be very worthwhile.
Best case, long term, how do practice outcomes differ?
This is a more interesting way to look at it; assuming both work well (which is a big "if"), how do results differ?
These life coach speakers are offering a range of different advice, from small tips to adjust a very limited practice (stand up straight), to perspective variations (how do your choices and goals seem looking back from the end of your life, hypothetically?), to trying to empower courage to make a lot of brand new starts. In theory maybe it could lead to radical success, to someone being able to completely redefine themselves, to start a new career, to pursue a successful relationship, etc.
If there isn't a practical toolset to really do that, beyond a motivational push to take chances, and be positive, then perhaps it's not fair to say that almost anything can be achieved based on following this advice. But again at the core it seems geared towards selling people on them being able to make more money. You have to listen closely to the list of goals they promote, and notice how coded phrases are what really seem to resonate with the audience (be prosperous, experience security, etc.).
Buddhism isn't geared towards people gaining wealth, or really even as centered on acceptance of having limited financial success, to dropping all material focus, to the extent one might imagine. It's just about something else. The end goal is to reshape perspective and worldview framing so that the experience of owning things, being defined by external imagery, and not really trying to gain power, wealth, or status, so becoming rich doesn't match up.
A limited personal account of perspective transition
I can't describe what the shift has been like, since I started trying to embrace the ideas and practice a long time ago, 30 years back. Gradually it took, to some extent. I don't worry too much about money, even though I kind of have to now because we just moved from Bangkok to Honolulu, and I don't have a job in place that covers this cost of living appropriately. Even then it's easy to place the stress; I take it for what it's worth.
Stopping personal spending was unnecessary because I left that habit behind long ago; I own enough, unless a special need comes up, and I'm not always considering what snack or drink to have next, or which dinner foods to consume. I keep it basic, which is healthier anyway. Really it's all the rest that factors in more, subtle ways in which viewing the world and acting within it play out.
To be clear I'm no Buddhism exemplar; the point here is to pass on what limited perspective shift and practice look like. That's what just generally failed to be summarized clearly, how my worldview and self-definition have changed, not describing some variation of enlightenment. Let's keep trying.
I feel comfortable in my own skin, I think. It's not so difficult to notice which themes and moments I should be focusing on and enjoying, and which parts are noise, which is why I'm focused mostly on sharing this time with my kids, for the last 14 years, and supporting their life experience. That works a lot better than chasing my own hobbies and aspirations, or really it is that, where I place my own meaning. I keep tea interest as a way to write and connect beyond that, in part because it stays limited well. For people who collect pu'er maybe not, as I also do (tea that ages to improve), but I buy a limited amount every year, of limited quantity, and don't worry about it too much beyond that.
My kids feel that support as a main life input, and react by feeling peace and connection in their own lives, and we all thrive more as a result. To be clear I'm not proposing that supporting offspring is a highest possible value. Not having kids is fine, and if someone had children but focuses on career instead, or two parents do, and a nanny raises the kids, then that could be fine, a very effective solution.
Before having kids experience of nature was more of a connection for me, a way to truly be in the moment, and experience external beauty and novelty, and physical demands. Related to the last point I run now, a good way to compress a lot of that input into limited time. I'm still failing in bringing it across as a distinct perspective and worldview, right? The broad themes would vary by person, and the noise that drops out is hard to describe. I don't worry about who I'm supposed to be, or how others see me, or getting to some specific status or wealth level, which drops out about half of the issues they raised in the initial Art of Livin' selling points.
Again I'm not necessarily recommending that people look into and take up Buddhism. I feel it is appropriate to shift theme here and say a little about what I would recommend though, to close on that.
Doing your best within your own life scope using current perspective and tools is fine; ordinary introspection is really effective. Taking a walk is a great meditation practice, probably a much better starting point than seated meditation. Just turn the music off, and keep your phone in your pocket. Notice what stresses you, and emphasize things that really mean more in your life, the connections to others, not so much what you might buy from Amazon, or which phone to get next.
I think if anyone wants to dig deeper looking externally instead works well now, versus this inside-out approach. Placing social media use and its impact on your life is important. One might really consider what this liberal and conservative divide is all about, and what is separating people into those two groups (in the US, at least). I don't mean which parts of "your side" is clearly superior, and the other's completely foolish; consider why it either evolved naturally or was externally reinforced for people to be separated into two broad groups. Who does it benefit? Then from there unpacking internal biases can help, sorting through what inputs seem to add stress, then trying to moderate that influence.
One last point is perfect to close on; it can get lost that life experience doesn't always have to be about what we want at any given time, what we experience, and own, our image status, and what upsets us. It's possible to put emphasis on helping other people, or at least also valuing their experience of reality. This happens naturally when parenting, which is nice, but then it's easy to slip into trying to condition your children to be however you think they should be, or else take an opposing hands-off approach, and then deal with where that leads. In every interaction with other people there is opportunity to appreciate and enjoy how they experience the current circumstances, or in negative contexts to genuinely empathize.
Just being open to how others see and experience reality is more liberating than it would seem; we can end up trapped in the noise we create, endlessly caught up in cravings and aversions. Life can be nice when things are more still too, sometimes, but it helps a lot if your mind is quieter. Good luck appreciating that quietude with young kids around, but at least then a range of different inputs can still shift you off ego-based obsessions.
 |
appreciating shave-ice, and good company |
No comments:
Post a Comment