Ruby Wax's Blog, page 4

An Announcement...

I thought I'd tell you a little about my next book, which I've called Wake The F ** K Up - A Mindfulness Guide for the Frazzled.

It was only in the final chapters of my last book Sane New World did I begin to describe mindfulness and why it works. After it was published, mindfulness became the 'it' girl; the zeitgeist so I knew I was onto something. Maybe it was kismet or coincidence that I had just graduated but I thought, and clearly Penguin also thought, that my next book should be the quintessential manual on how to train your brain. In my book, I'll give you (and yet still approved by Mark Williams so you don't think I made it all up over the weekend) my six-week course on how to do mindfulness. I will always stick to my coda of keeping it funny because that's the greatest foreplay on earth. I've found scientific information is more easily swallowed when laughing. I mentioned neuroplasticity in the last book and no one even flinched. The brain is plastic, not set for life, it can change until just before you drop dead. MBCT trains you to intentionally re-wire your brain, by breaking those debilitating habits of thinking, "I'm a victim, I never do anything right, I'm too shy, etc."

In the book, I'll explain how to be mindful and yet still part this madness we call life; how to stay mindful at work when your boss throws a hissy fit. How to be mindful when your husband's driving and loses his direction for the 70th time, mindful when your kids tell you how boring you are and mindful when in the headlights of the on-coming school bully. I'll also give you my 'seven ages of man - mindfulness guide'. Exercises specifically for babies and their mothers, kids, teens, middle-aged, older aged and beyond. The brain is malleable right to the end of your life so you might as well learn to keep it serviced. Why not treat your brain as well as you do your car?

The point of mindfulness isn't to just sit in a tissue-lined box wrapped in self-obsession it's about learning to cool your engine before it burns you out. If you learn (it's mental training there is no magic pill) to be reflective rather than reactive it will have a hit on effect on everyone around you. We work like neural wifi; our state of mind is infectious it passes from you to the people around you, your family, your business, your community, your country and eventually the world.

You can tweet, blog, bitch and bore people senseless at dinner parties on how to improve the world but really in my opinion, what has to change first, is our thinking. The conflict is in our minds and we project onto the world as if something out there is making us feel demented. And without hammering the point, whatever's out there, we created, unless a meteorite hits then it's not our fault.

The only antidote for us to last into the future is to learn when to calm our minds down, even for a moment; to be able to put our fingers to sleep after an orgy of emailing. Consciously becoming aware that our brains need refuelling just as we know exactly when our car is on empty. If we try to drive with no petrol, in both cases the engine dies. Rather than using our brains to build yet another skyscraper, a flashier piece of software, a rocket to Neptune, we should take charge of our own mental technology. And that is exactly what my next book is about.

Wake The **** Up - A Mindfulness Guide For the Frazzled will be published in January 2016 by Penguin Random House

I'm talking about mindfulness at the St James' Theatre in London 2-14 March 2015. Hope to see you there.

On Compassion

I just returned from a silent retreat called Kimpala in the Berkshires in Massachusetts. You may ask why go so far to be silent? Answer: I couldn't stand the sound of my own voice anymore and my brain was starting to fry from ruminating on things that had no answers like a cat chasing its tail.

Mostly I went because one of the great meditation teachers called Jack Kornfield, was leading the course. Usually, when I get somewhere and I'm alone, the first thing I do is collect people to form my own gang. They're usually the spikier members; the bitchy, funny and cynical. If there is anyone gay I scoop him up. But when there's a no talking policy, there's no point mingling. Actually there are great benefits to shutting up, it gives you time to watch people; my favorite past-time, being a natural born voyeur. On arrival, I noticed something odd about everyone and couldn't put my finger on it.

I finally realized, most of the people had grey hair; they sat there looking unashamedly old. None of them seemed to care how they looked and in some cases it was terrifying; no bra so they swung like pendulums and earth shoes like Platypus feet. I felt sorry for them being so old but probably they were younger than me. There was a lot of hugging, which always creeps me out and makes me want to head for the hills. As long as I didn't have to hug I was fine. I actually grew to love the silence, the relief of not having to make small talk and die of boredom with the answers. If you don't talk there's no reason to make eye contact so you can sit surrounded by people with your own thoughts watching the snowfall on the evergreen trees in that American fantasy kind of way. The food was delicious and in silence you can really focus on the taste without interruption. I fell in love with a blueberry muffin. I ate it slowly, savouring every crumb, my head rolled back in ecstasy.

The mindfulness classes were amazing because of Kornfield's charisma and he is the 'real thing.' He's completely present, at peace with himself and yet razor sharp, funny and incredibly smart. He taught us an aspect of mindfulness I don't practice. I practice it to help me notice early warnings of an on-coming depression or starting to tip into burn out. I'm so used to pushing myself over the limit I need to keep my ear to the ground. Jack explained that we were going to learn how to do mindful compassion which is a form of meditation. My cynical hackles were up, ready to pounce. We could ask him questions so I raised my hand and said I found the concept of compassion too fluffy and I found it hard to locate the feeling most of the time. He looked at me with great patience and had us do some exercises- one of which wiped the smirk right off my face.

We had to pick a random partner and were told to stare into each other's eyes. He asked us to look deeply and imagine the other person as a child when he/she was laughing, in pain, experiencing something new and feeling safe. Then he had us imagine the other person now as an adult, experiencing their successes, their failures, difficulties and joy. I never met the woman who was my partner but I felt I knew her more than I know some of my friends. It was so intimate and yet felt safe. I stopped thinking about how she saw me, I just focused into her eyes which showed me every emotion under the sun. It felt like we were connected by an emotional bridge, rather than being two entities, our hearts and minds were joined. When we finished Jack said what we just experienced was compassion. He hit it on the head and I sat amazed.

At the end of the six days, though we never spoke, a kind of peace settled over everyone like the snow outside. There was a feeling of waking up from a bad dream because suddenly you can clearly hear sound, taste food, smell, see, feel everything as if for the first time. I felt I was who I really am under all the fear, competition and anxiety. Why have I been giving myself such a hard time in my life? What have I done so wrong? I didn't even know anyone's name but it was as if we were all in it together, all vulnerable, dealing with an unpredictable world where nothing is certain, everything ends and in spite of that we're all doing the best we can. We're all in flight, running from pain, grasping at security. Before I left I realized I loved all those grey headed, Earth Mothers in the Uggs and found myself hugging several of them. Thank God there are no photos allowed.

I'm on tour talking about mindfulness this Spring, starting at the St James' Theatre 2-14 March. Hope you see you there.

Hindsight is 20:20

The black dog has left the building. I'm back to myself; returned to the living. I swear next time when this happens (if it happens again), I'll be more on the lookout for signs. I looked back in my diary and read what I was doing just before I had a major depression. It seems amusing but these events happened just before I slid into Hell. This is an entry from 2010:

I'm in the Ritz Hotel in London, my mind is in a kind of haze; a thick grey fog; I'm not sure what brings me to this event or even how I got there. I ask what the charity is in aid of? A large moustached woman in a cat hair cardigan tells me "Save the Puffin". She happens to be the spokesperson for the charity and later gets up to give a moving speech in that 'wee' Scottish brogue about how difficult it is for Puffins to land on the rocks in the Orkneys because of the strong winds so they have big problems laying their eggs without them blowing away. No mention of the global warming problem, just the fact the birds can't land anymore. The world is melting down and I'm listening to the problems puffins have. I had to restrain myself from shouting, "Why don't you just fucking shoot them? End of problem." Shortly after the Puffin event that November, I decided to take up scuba diving to get my diver's license. I found myself under the Brighton pier, frozen blue, teeth clanging having weights added to my belt until I dropped in a straight line 30 feet below looking at a shopping cart and a flip flop. Where were the reefs? The parrotfish?

I got a flip flop. Just before another depression I found myself signed up to a night course to learn short hand in Los Angeles, for no particular reason other than I was crazy. I never missed a night for six weeks. There I was, taking notes, studying the books and then at the last class of the course we had our test. The teacher rang the bell and we had to take shorthand from a letter she was read out loud. At the end of the 20 minutes we handed in our papers. A week later she called me in to ask me what I thought I was doing. She pointed to my paper and all it had on it was loops - big ones, small ones - just loops and loops. Shortly after that I was institutionalized and, even worse, never learned shorthand.

I'm at the St James' Theatre in London with my Sane New World show 2-14 March 2015

On Depression

Ever since my departure from America where I was launching/pimping my book, I've slowly descended into what some call 'the black dog'. I call it depression. Unlike past bouts, I could feel this one growing; creeping up on me like a thief stealing my personality.

There were many contributing factors while I was on my 'press tour' in the US. Someone arranging my tour, who shall remain nameless - probably with serious anger issues (I never met her) - kept sending me to the wrong airlines so I missed various planes and found I wasn't booked in hotels I should have been booked in. The last few days in the States were spent giving myself pep talks, too afraid of going out but forcing myself to go out but not always knowing where I was going. All sense of direction and memory are sucked from your brain as those who share this disease with me know. Other horrors happened out there (sometimes you hit a toxic vein where everything gets poisoned): my computer got wiped. I ran from one Apple genius bar to the next in three different cities and not one of the geniuses could get it to work. Finally, I sent it to a data expert who informed me casually that everything was wiped; always a bowel-moving moment to hear that. Also, my phone broke so I have to make all new friends and my suitcases are still trying to figure out which country they're supposed to be in.

Anyway, I finally got out via Copenhagen where I was booked to do a show for people who, it turns out, didn't really speak English (always a good audience). When I got home I had to take to my bed for a few days due to shock. I knew I had to get up on day four because I'd been contracted months earlier to do a talk in Norway and the policy, I think, is if you don't show up you'll be sued. It gets a bit hazy at this point but I flew to Oslo and took then another smaller plane to some town whose name had a lot of crossed o's dots over the u's (Nordic talk). Whatever the name of the place, it was above the Arctic Circle. I was picked up in complete darkness during a hurricane and put in a hotel designed in that Scandinavian minimal style; white wood floor with nothing on it. My suite, a long white wooden floor with a plant, was cold. They had never heard of room service so I went into the restaurant and stole food like a squirrel. The sun never rose, not at 10 in the morning or 1 in the afternoon; never. The wind howled all night and the rain pelted on my windows. It was like standing under Niagara Falls with a piece of aluminum foil over your head. At that point, even with the depression looming, I started to laugh. It felt like a tiny space or chink in my brain opened up and let in some light as a joke formed. I could see what was funny about all this. There I was in this depressing atmosphere, talking to about 600 people about depression, who were probably depressed. When I was going out to give my speech just across the street, they told me not to bother with an umbrella because the wind wouldn't just turn it inside out, it would turn me inside out. As soon as I stepped out my new luggage blew out of my hands. My eyes froze. When I got back to London they lost my new bags, telling me they had been sent to Copenhagen for no apparent reason.

So I'm sitting here now in my bedroom feeling the darkness descend blocking out all thought. At least practicing mindfulness I'm able to separate myself a little from the abusive thoughts, which are trying to bomb me to total destruction. An example of how pathetic and poisonous the thoughts are is that some of my friends went to someone's funeral. I was devastated that I wasn't invited, feeling abandoned. (P.S. I didn't even know the dead person.) I'm not proud of this but these are these kind of thoughts are the sickness. They are the tumor that comes with cancer. But with the mindfulness practice (it isn't a cure but a way of relating differently to the illness) I can say, "There is depression" rather than "I'm depressed." It's the little things that count. I'm trying to ride the wave rather than go under.

Wish me luck.

Staying Sane In The New World

I am trying to launch my book Sane New World but in America you're nobody unless you're somebody famous and being unknown here means I don't exist.

I started my journey to publicise the book in New York. Everyone tells me they love New York, to me it's a gang rape on the senses. I want to confess war crimes after being kept up all night listening to trash trucks clanging. I took the subway late one night after a show, waited two hours for the right train and witnessed bedlam; feral people were howling like wolves and some guy was completely naked playing air banjo. When the right train finally came at 1:30 in the morning I was crammed in like they cram battery chickens into boxes when they're being shipped off to be executed. To get a phone card for a pay-by-phone, phone was one of the most challenging things I've ever had to do. I had to go to Broadway where tourists from hell elbow you off the sidewalk to get in front. (In front of what I don't know?) Imagine every race in the world elbowing? It's like the Olympics where every nation of the world is elbowing. It's not pretty. Some countries end up lying in the gutter others are crushed by the stronger ones. I kept hearing the English saying, "Sorry, sorry". They were almost going backwards they were so bad at pushing.

Anyway, I got to a drug store and tried to find someone who spoke English; no one did and these are Americans. I was asking about buying more time for my phone but no one seemed to know what I was talking about. It was like I was asking them to give me the square root of 7,587,498,283. To calm myself down I went to a nail bar. All of America has been hit by a plague of nail bars where people of the Orient hate you so much they try to tear your cuticles off and sandpaper the bottom of your feet. (This is a common method of torture used in Guantanamo Bay.) I asked for a back massage and was skinned by a man in two minutes.

From New York I flew to Los Angeles and stayed with a friend who I didn't realise was a hoarder; cats, letters, food, clothes akimbo, as if a typhoon had just passed through the house. There was an airlock so I slept in it. The next day Carrie Fisher interviewed me about my book and because I've known her for 35 years and love her it was like having sex in public.

The following morning I was picked up for my first interview in LA. The drive took one hour to get to a mall filled with nail bars. There amongst them was a shoddy vitamin shop. I walked through it and in the back behind a beaded curtain was my interviewer; a withered man with three hairs and dandruff holding a microphone. He opened with his theory that you can cure prostrate cancer with green tea. He then shouted, "Make-up" as if it was a standing joke because of course there weren't even any chairs let alone make-up. The man who held the home camera to film us was near death, his hands shaking so badly I'm sure we looked like a blur. The first question was which supplements or tinctures did I think cured mental illness? I mentioned something about the brain and he has no idea what I was referring to. There was a lunatic waiting to go on after me called Mr. Chuckles, wearing a hat with a propeller on top who told me he's a comedy writer like me. He had a loony tune smile and a voice like he was sucking on helium. When I asked where could see his comedy shows he told me China. On the way out I got some free cancer-cure vitamins and a book called I Eat Green Food. The person who was supposed to drive me back ran out of electricity for her electric car and needed to find a plug somewhere. I never saw her again. I had to beg Mr. Chuckles to give me a ride back to the hoarder house.

My next interview was with a corpse; a woman who died 10 years ago was glued upright in her chair. Her first words were something about lamb chops. I have no idea what else was said. Afterwards I was driven to the wrong airline so missed a plane and had to get a later one that landed in Philadelphia at 1am in the morning. When I got to the airport hotel they told me they were overbooked so they got someone to drive me to another hotel on another galaxy in the middle of nowhere. It was worth it to hear one of the great lines of my life, the driver said, "Well, the good news is it's near a Denny's." My room had footprints on the walls and ceiling and deep, dark stains on everything. That night I did my show to 30 people who had no idea what I was talking about.

Did I mention my computer died back in New York? I had gone to the Apple Store there where I had to wait until midnight to get served. Even an Apple Store is like a mental institution at that time of night. The genius bar people told me they couldn't help me and to try another Apple Store in another city. So when I got to Boston last night I went straight to Apple and they said my computer was broken. Strangely I knew that. After going to several hundred data rescuing services, I was told I had to send it to Austin Texas with a deposit of $700.00. Someone finally said I needed to have my hard drive analysed - just like I will have to be when I finally get out of this nightmare. I bought a new computer in a mall and then decided to buy food from those stores that have bowling alleys full of produce. I ended up walking through the streets of Boston with my two bags; one was holding the computer and all the accessories, the other 500 pounds of frozen yogurt and Oreos. I forgot where I was staying so had become an official bag person after three hours. I wandered the ice cold streets until someone took pity and found where I lived.

I am now writing on the new computer but am quaking inside waiting to find out what atrocity will besiege me next? This is all done in the name of selling a book and the question remains was it worth it?

Addicted to Our Own Drugs

I've said mindfulness is about paying attention, which is a whole different bucket of fish from the idea of 'focus'. To most of us they are more or less the same.

Focus is when we're cocooned in that single minded pin-point concentration lasting a limited time before you start to think about the urgency of picking up your dry cleaning or watering that plant. But while you're focused, all those usual niggling nags of the to do list fade into the ether and self-consciousness ceases. I live for that sensation when I'm not just an old sack humped over a computer banging out random words; it's when I feel the computer and I are one, working together for a common goal. When I hit that state where I lose all sense of self, I'm in some pretentious people call 'the zone.' That means we're functioning at our optimum when the chore is just challenging enough to keep our interest but not so easy to be bored. People say it feels effortless, liberating, superhuman; You stay focused because each time you achieve a little more success in your chore, your brain releases a hit of dopamine. It's that little leap of joy in your heart when you splash into the pool after doing a double back, jack-knife, triple somersault off the high dive with both toes perfectly pointed. If it didn't feel good you wouldn't keep doing it. You'd think, "What the hell am I doing up here going off the deep end?" 

So it's not the perfect swan dive but the hits of dopamine you're after. If after your efforts you happen to win a gold medal, trophy, bonus, hit a bulls-eye you'll get such a main line smack of dopamine you'll probably be addicted forever and spend your life hunting down the next hit at any cost.

As humans we're natural born addicts when it comes to some of our neurotransmitters, such as dopamine, adrenaline, noradrenalin. The more we get the more we want. The problem with focus is we can't tell where our tipping point is; when we're really accomplishing a goal or learning a skill and when it's just about getting another fix of dopamine. I'm guilty of this syndrome where I can't stop writing, it's midnight I'm dripping in sweat and I can't pull away from the computer. If I could, I might notice that I'm not making sense anymore, I'm writing in circles and a child of eight would tear up the work, it's so bad. But as long as that dopamine keeps flowing I keep going. I'm not even aware that my petrol has run out, that I'm running on empty.

We need to learn the lesson that if we keep pushing past our peak we'll eventually flunk the test, lose the job, miss the deadline. That's our punishment for beating ourselves like slaves until we collapse in the mud, dead.

Infomania - The Newest Obsession on the Block

A female honeybee larva can grow up to be either a queen or a worker depending on what food it's fed. I didn't make that up. Hives are complex social structures with different kinds of workers, such as harvesters, nurses and cleaners. There are no hedge fund bees or celebrity bees. Everyone gets fed, there is no competition, everyone is equal, they know their place, the cleaner wouldn't dream of being a nurse bee.

Unlike us. We feel we need to do it all: (Attention women!) be the queen; lay the eggs; clean; work; cook; breed ;make cupcakes. This is why we end up on xanax and bees don't.

It's that old chestnut. Comparison is what drives us mad. When will I learn I am not you? I don't even have the same shaped nose, why would I need to have what you have? Some people are satisfied with their lot. I haven't met anyone like this but I know they're out there in the country somewhere among the trees growing their own chickens, pulling udders for a living.

For the rest of us there's an infection in the air, there are memes like mental viruses that travel through the atmosphere spreading ideas from mind to mind influencing our thoughts and behaviours. You don't even have to watch the news or listen to gossip. It will permeate into your brain, whether you like it or not. Part of the infection is not just keeping up with your neighbor but leaving that neighbour in the dust seething with resentment. We strive, we strive and we strive some more.

Maybe, we think if we stuff ourselves with enough information it will raise us above the hordes, that the more RAMs we've rammed in our heads the more significant our presence is on earth. We take in all that information at a cost; it exhausts us trying to figure out what we need and what is trivia. We're so clogged up upstairs it's difficult to make sensible decisions; should I worry about cancer or getting the right toothpaste?

Our brains are not computers, they don't need charging, they need to rest and there is no rest. Who has time to rest? It's a dirty word. The only time you can legitimately rest is when you're in the rest room and then you're forgiven, otherwise if you say you're resting, you're fired or seen as old and senile. Every bit of information coming in and out is sucking out your energy, that's why you always forget where you parked your car.

And let me just bring in mental illness. One of the first symptoms of depression is when you can't make any decisions. Choosing which direction to walk is overwhelming, looking at a menu is like going on Mastermind. Eventually your brain gives up, it has no more room, you've scored 'game over' hit your full capacity like an over stuffed hoover bag before it explodes. Then, the agony of people demanding an answer becomes too much to bear and finally you can only decide which window you want to jump out of.

Something has to change - can it change? Can we change?

I'm No Evangelist

I'm in the early foothills of Mount Everest as far as writing my next book. Hard? Don't make me laugh. This next book (still with humour) is about mindfulness since that happens to be the 'it' girl these days. Who knew when I studied mindfulness at Oxford it would become so popular? But it's still hard. I could have written a cookbook and stayed on the bestseller list for years. I could have just plagiarised from any popular cookbook, copied a few recipes, jumbled up the order of ingredients and use the instruction 'pummel' instead of whip and I'd have a hit with a photo of me on the front cover licking a spoon. Or I could have written another 87 Shades of Greywhere I'd simply use 'whip' instead of 'pummel'. I'd probably have to do some personal research on the topic since I've never used a noose during sex.

So back to the question. Why mindfulness? I've mentioned a lot that I had a mental car crash seven years ago. I said, to quote Scarlett O'Hara (sort of), "I will never go crazy again". And so I've kept my promise to myself and haven't had an episode of depression for seven years. This doesn't mean I still don't have a daily frenzy of answering all inbox emails in one jaw clenching sitting - even answering spam asking if I want to purchase a special stool for the shower in case I can't stand up anymore. I also have my regular obsessive shopping mania for things I will never need but they're on sale; a gazebo with 30% off - you just can't pass that up. Even if I don't have a garden.

But aside from that, no depression. I don't mean a 'down-in-the dumps-boo-hoo-bad-hair-day' slump. It could be coincidence but what's changed is that I've been practising mindfulness for the last seven years. After the last trip to Hell, I researched to find anything that could alleviate my madness take the pain away. Please don't think I'm pushing some miracle cure like crawling to Lourdes to smooch Our Lady's feet. All I can say is I haven't had depression for seven years. Mindfulness works for me.

Me at TEDTalks, or a Journey Into Brain Candy

I just got back from TEDTalks, which were held in Rio this year. It's like going to Glastonbury but the acts are geniuses who've invented things I've never dreamt possible. It's extraordinary - and the sense of "I'm not worthy" bubbles below my surface as I'm surrounded by all this brain candy.

The biggest thrill of all thrills is hanging out with some of them during the breaks. I lost weight from all the mingling with women who are standing up to the Taliban even though their lives may be substantially shortened, high techies who make apps that teach kids to read, saviours of the environment and preventers of death and illnesses; not in that order. Here, instead of treating you like some pathetic prehistoric fish, they give you their cards, yes, like you're going to be friends from now on. I am now back in the UK touring Sane New World with no voice from all the talking. I now bark at the audiences and do a lot of mime.

I can't even list all the jaw-droppers I met at TED. Over breakfast, a woman told me she makes satellites and floats them over Egypt to look for archeological sites; she's found over 17 pyramids. I met two young, gorgeous girls researching at Princeton; one is an astrophysicist, her job is to find life on other planets. Her friend, with a ring in her nose and wearing a black sparkly dress, is a cosmologist (I thought that meant she did make-up) who's an expert on what happened 1,000 nanoseconds after the big bang. They said they had a hard time getting dates when they tell men what they do. The men just walk away in mid-sentence they're so intimidated. It goes on and on.

There was a kid from Singularity University who invented some app where after you get a genetic blood to test your proto DNA, you hold the iPhone up to some cloud and find out if you have the beginnings of cancer in a specific area in your body. There was another guy who put helmets on monkeys so they can read each other's minds. One of the monkeys sends the message through the helmet to move the arm of the other monkey. He's starting to try it on humans - meaning one day you could pass your thoughts on through sheer force of will. Are you getting the idea? They put a suit with sensors on a kid who had spinal damage and couldn't walk. The activated suit got him up out of the wheelchair at the Brazilian World Cup and he kicked a football which he could feel on his foot from other sensors. Everyone at the game wept.

When they asked me what I did I just coughed over the part about being in comedy, though the Dalai Lama's right hand man asked if I could help him do stand up for the next TED conference. We're going to Skype and I hope to have him getting laughs by the end of the month. At one point I couldn't even get my iPhone to work so stopped some passing guy and said, "You look like a techie, can you help me get my phone working?". When I say he looked at me like I was a rotting corpse, it doesn't even begin to describe it. I read his badge. It said 'Director of Amazon'. I winced for an hour trying to unclench my behind. Some people might cower in a corner, but for some obsessive reason I had to know what everyone did for a living. My curiosity is almost an illness, and I now have so many business cards I don't even know who they belong to.

Listening to these people I'm not frightened about the future. We are in good hands, they care, they're doing something about the problems - from stopping the ice melting to bringing back the Amazonian trees, and they're doing it in spite of governments. There are brave souls everywhere in the world fighting for their rights even though their lives are in danger. I was lucky enough to see up close these heroes of tomorrow.

Too Much Before We Explode

Here's another fly in the ointment; choice. When I came to the UK I would have killed for ice cream that wasn't chocolate or vanilla. Then my country started to make 31 flavours. Then 1,310 flavours. It started slowly, strawberry, mint bubble gum, bacon with egg, alfalfa, no calories, no fat, no sugar, no ice cream. It can make you crazy now. Choice is ruining our lives, taking up precious moments. 99% of our lives are taken up by deciding. Supermarkets had 1000 products for the last generation to choose from, and now there are 40,000 of them. We need to ignore 39,850 items. We suffer from decision overload, we have a limit and then we hit neural fatigue.

Zillions of bits of information downloading through computers with more processing power than Apollo mission control are coursing up to your brain through your fingertips. In 2011 Americans took in five times as much information everyday compared to 1986. This is the equivalent of 175 newspapers.

Just to communicate with friends, not counting work, each of us produce on average 100,000 words every day. In there world there are 21, 274 TV stations that produce 85,000 hours of original programming every day - people watch on average of five hours of TV each day. This doesn't even include youtube, to which 6,000 hours of video uploaded every hour. Each of us has over half a million books stored on our computers, not to mention information in our cell phones and the stripe on back of credit cards. We have a world with information with data figures that run in the region of three with 20 zeros behind it. We take in all that information at a cost; it exhausts us trying to figure out what we need and what is trivial.

We're so clogged up upstairs it's difficult to make sensible decisions; should I worry about cancer or getting the right toothpaste? Our brains are not computers, they don't need charging, they need to rest and there is no rest. Who has time to rest? It's a dirty word. You say you're resting, but the only time it's acceptable is when you go to the rest room and then you're forgiven. Otherwise you're fired or seen as someone old and senile. Every tweet, Facebook entry,and text is sucking out your energy that's why you forget where you parked your car. How can we manage in a world that is bombarding us with information? I'm really asking - do you know?

I'm on the road this autumn talking about mindfulness in a busy world - hope to see you there.