MIND CAFE EDITION 2 - HABITS
ON BEING PRESENT
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Welcome MAGAZINE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: CO-EDITOR: DESIGN: FOUNDER:
CONTRIBUTORS
Adrian Drew Gemma Steele Lee Caple Adrian Drew
Zulie Rane, Danny Forest, Matthew Hearnden, Roy English, Julia Pugachevsky, Stephen Moore, Mathilde Langevin, Anthony Moore, Dottie James, Adrian Drew, Tenzin Ozaki, Jordan Gross, Nir Eyal
PHOTOGRAPHY COVER: MAGAZINE:
Callum Shaw Joseph Marchant, Adrian Drew, Callum Shaw, Ryan Fleming
We are what we repeatedly do. That’s a quote from Aristotle, and it’s absolutely right. Our actions define who we are, and what we do every single day serves to mold us into a different version of ourselves in the future. Habits, defined by the dictionary as ‘a settled or regular tendency or practice’, form the foundation of our existence, and are responsible for either our astounding success or crushing downfall. The interesting thing about habits is that they’re subconscious. Almost without thinking, I wake up in the morning, check my phone, and head downstairs to make coffee. I don’t have to think deeply about every step of the process in order to perform it effectively. Instead, my brain switches to autopilot and does what it knows best. And that’s precisely what a habit is: an almost automatic behavior. The influence of seemingly insignificant habits like these on the trajectory of our entire lives is profound. We are what we repeatedly do, after all. If, habitually, I exercise every day at the gym, I will become more muscular. If I smoke cigarettes every day, my health will decline and my blood pressure will increase. I become what I repeatedly do. This information shouldn’t come as a surprise to you. You already know these things, of course. You’re aware of your existing habits and how they make you feel. Perhaps you’re satisfied with them, or maybe you’re not. I’d wager that, for most of us, the latter is true. We execute actions on a habitual basis that don’t serve to benefit us. We scroll through social media for hours on end, even though that voice in our mind is urging us to stop. We wish to exercise more and meditate often, but our habits pull us away from these healthy desires. It’s an issue that we all face. But here’s an alternative thought for you. What might you become if your habits, all of them, were calibrated to maximize your success and happiness? If everything you did served to benefit you and drove you further to becoming the person you’ve been hoping to become? You already know the answer to these questions, of course. You’d be unstoppable. You’d make great strides in the right direction every day, and a year from now, you’d look back, almost unable to recognize the old you. Isn’t that a wonderful thought? Well, luckily for you, this magazine seeks to arm you with the tools you need to get to that point. It’ll teach you not only how to form new habits, but how to break bad ones. We’ll explore a range of different practices and work towards building them into your new, improved life. That journey begins here.
C OV E R P H OTO G R A P H Y Joseph Marchant is a fashion and street photographer based in England, UK. You can check our more of his work at jmarchphotography.co.uk
WELCOME
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In This Edition BREAKING THE HABIT OF CONSUMERISM - P14
In our modern world, consumerism is a habit that is deeply ingrained into us. Danny Forest talks about how to combat that tendency. MAKING WELLNESS A HABIT - P26
A strong, stable mind is the key to success in all areas of life. Making wellness a habit is the key to achieving that state. N O T H I N G M AT T E R S - P 6 6
World-renowned artist Roy English delves into his life story, covering the key habits that helped him to become who he is today. C O M PA S S I O N : B U I L D I N G A H A B I T O U T O F A F E E L I N G - P 94
Author and poet Dottie James discusses the importance of compassion and how to bring more of it into our day-to-day lives. STOP CONFUSING HABITS WITH ROUTINES - 100
Bestselling author Nir Eyal knows a thing or two about habits. Learn how to distinguish between habits and routines and why the difference is crucial. BREAKING SELF-DESTRUCTIVE HABITS WITH MINDFULNESS - P108
Sometimes, all it takes to break a bad habit is to learn how to be completely in tune with the present moment. Here’s how.
Mind Cafe Media Ltd. 2020
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IN THIS EDITION
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PHOTOGRAPHY
Joseph Marchant
MODELS
Arrahnne Allen
L O C AT I O N
Birmingham, UK
Breaking the Habit of Consumerism AU T H O R : DA N N Y FO R E S T
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lright, let me kick things off a little differently than what you’re used to when reading an article in a magazine. We’re going to start with a couple of little exercises. Don’t worry, they’re simple enough. First, I want you to close your eyes, take a deep breath, and picture what it would be like to be a single mother of four boys. Imagine what your day would look like. Imagine what your financial situation would be. What would you consume? I mean, what would your purchases look like? How would you afford them? This is the reality I grew up in. I was raised by a single mother of four boys. While some may see that as a curse, I think it was a blessing in disguise. I learned to be frugal from a very young age. We couldn’t afford any kind of luxury, including going to a restaurant or going on holiday. My mom, due to her economic situation, ingrained in me a seed of minimalism and frugalism. And I’m proud of being frugal. I’m proud of being careful with how I spend my money and other resources. I think deeper about my decisions. This allowed me to resist building the habit of consumerism. In a way, I was lucky.
Most of us aren’t. For many, the habit of consumerism is so deeply ingrained within us that it’s incredibly difficult to break. We have impulses and urges to buy things we don’t really need but advertisements convince us we do. With so many external forces entrenching it further into us, how on earth should we go about shaking off this habit? Well, technically, to break your habit of consumerism, all you have to do is to think twice about every dollar you spend. But what does “thinking twice” even mean? It means you don’t only think about your own short-term benefits. It means you think about the impact your decision has on others and the world around you. For the next exercise, if you’re at home, good. If not, do your best to visualize where you would typically read this magazine. Ready? Put the magazine down, look at every object in your room, and then pick the magazine back up. What do you see? Lots of things, right? If you live in the western world, I can almost guarantee you own more things than you really need. How did that happen? Well, I don’t know you, but here’s a universal truth: the more space you have, the more things you’ll buy to fill up that space.
BREAKING THE HABIT OF CONSUMERISM
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Does someone living in a small apartment in New York City or London own fewer things than someone living in a house in the suburbs? Of course! But that doesn’t make them any better. They consume other things. They go out more. They spend more on food and activities that last for just a mere moment. My point isn’t to judge what type of consumerism is better or worse, but rather to prove that consumerism is all over the place. Unless you break the habit, you’ll be stuck in it. When I left the comfort of my home in Canada to become a nomad, I gave all my furniture and belongings away. All I possessed had to fit in my backpack. Now that’s what I call a small space! If you only had a backpack to store your belongings in, what would you pack? Now the question is, what’s wrong with consumerism? Oh, many things, my friend! Firstly, it puts immense pressure on natural resources, further exploiting already limited resources and also polluting the environment. Secondly, it contributes to moral degradation - that is, an increased focus on materialism and (pointless) competition. Thirdly, the shortterm loans people take out to accommodate their consumerism increases the debt levels in societies. And finally, the more you consume, the higher your stress and chances of depression. Spending when you have limited resources can be very exhausting. It forces you to work harder, borrow more and spend less time with loved ones. Essentially, you have a moral obligation to reduce what you consume. It helps yourself, others, and the planet you live in. This all sounds easy when I say it like that, but rest assured, I know it’s not. And there’s an easy answer as to why it’s not: it has become a habit. This whole edition of the magazine is on habits, so you’ll likely have read your fair share of what’s a habit, how it works, and why it’s both good and bad for you. So all I’ll say is this: unless you manage your habits, they will manage you. And if you’re like most people, consumerism is a habit that has been managing you for years. Can you break the habit? Not to sound grim, but the short answer is “no”. The vast majority of humans lack the motivation to break any habit, let alone this one when the stakes are high. Like, freaking high! Breaking a habit doesn’t come from reading an article. Or three. Or ten. Heck, not even by reading one million articles will you ever break a bad habit! And don’t get me started on watching videos! The only thing I can do in this article is plant a seed. A thought, if you will, that I hope will eventually become a belief for you. Overconsumption is the root of the ever-increasing number of natural disasters we’ve been seeing. If everybody thinks it’s not their responsibility to act, then no one acts. Things get worse. When you act, you’re more than the sum of your actions. Actions ripple, just like a rock you toss in a lake. You inspire others around you to act too. It might not be visible or immediate, but it happens. We are inspired to action by others who take action. You are motivated by things you’ve seen other people do before you. If you stop to think about your motivations right now, do you see that they come from someone (or maybe something) that inspired you in the past? Perhaps it was a celebrity, a friend, relative or historical figure. You’ve come to believe that it’s achievable, and so you act too.
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BREAKING THE HABIT OF CONSUMERISM
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MAKING WELLNESS A HABIT
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PHOTOGRAPHY
Joseph Marchant
MODELS
Gemma Steele
L O C AT I O N
Birmingham, UK
A Five-Step Morning Ritual for Finding Peace of Mind
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AU T H O R : J O R DA N G RO S S
was slightly overweight growing up. Okay fine, I was fat. Quite fat. When I was about 10, I remember going to lunch with my friend, his two sisters, and his dad. We had this waiter, Bruce, who really made our table feel special. He cracked jokes with us, gave us free samples, and seemed to take extra good care of us five specifically. Toward the end of the meal, as the conversation got more personal, he mentioned that my friend and his sisters must be related, and I wasn’t part of the family. A curious child, I asked why and how he knew that. First, he looked at my friend. Then he looked at his sisters. Then at me. Then my friend’s dad. Back at my friend. Then his two sisters. And finally, he looked me right in the eyes, shrugged his shoulders, and said, “Well, those three are skinny.” I knew I was bigger than my friends. I wasn’t blind. I knew I sometimes had to wear a bathing suit at a friend’s house that belonged
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to their dad. I knew people whispered in one another’s ears and giggled while looking at me, then looked away when I tried to stare back. But I never heard the words aloud. Nobody ever had the courage to ever look me in my face and tell me I was heavy. But Bruce did, and although to you it may seem like he was a jerk, to me, he was a slap right across my face. Bruce was a wake-up call. He was that alarm that rings and rings and rings next to your bed until it becomes so unbearably annoying that you just have to take care of it. Bruce’s words transformed my mind and my body. So, I began with some minor changes. They were tiny habits I could control that I knew would be good for me. Sure, I was only ten, but I had this intuitive feeling to use this experience as a turning point, not a moment of sorrow. So, I jogged in the shower. I ran up and down the stairs. I stood to watch TV instead of sitting. I worked harder on my sports teams.
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You find peace not by rearranging the circumstances of your life, but by realizing who you are at the deepest level.” A Q U OT E BY E C K H A RT TO L L E
Little by little, my body changed and so did my mentality. But this story is not about weight loss. It’s not about feeling ugly, disliked, or unusual. This is not a sob story, and it’s not the journey from zero to hero either. This story is about a certain mindset. It’s about the routines and habits I implemented into my life, that I practiced every single morning to revolutionize my day, my body, my mind, and my life. It’s a true representation of how I was able to get comfortable in my own skin, with who I was bit by bit as I put in the work necessary to do so. It’s the mindset to make a change, to do something different, to assess exactly what’s holding you back, and to turn these seemingly uncomfortable experiences into ones where you can thrive. It’s a morning routine I created called Getting COMFY. According to Dan Arley, Duke University professor, “people have the most productive potential two hours after they wake up.” However, unless we ignite
our productivity engines by being cognizant of this time, we waste the opportunity for maximum efficiency. I’m not here to tell you to wake up at four in the morning, and I’m not here to tell you to spend five hours at sunrise concocting a complex set of tasks that absolutely must be adhered to in order to achieve an ideal output. But, I am here to tell you that what I have created is fun, it’s effective, it’s simple, and it gives me the thirty minutes I need to charge my batteries and approach my first task of the day with deep focus, intensity, and passion. Hal Elrod mentions in his morning routine masterpiece, The Miracle Morning, that all we have to do to maximize our day is just wake up a little bit earlier and focus on ourselves. I urge the same. If you give yourselves 30 minutes to focus on you and the things you want to do rather than have to do, your happiness, productivity, and overall fulfillment will soar.
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The months of summer passed quickly and the first day of school came in September. I woke up that morning and drove my family’s old Dodge Grand Caravan with chipping white paint up the street, still in a haze. As the Grand Caravan and I made our grand entrance to the grand college parking lot I was overcome with anxiety. This dance with anxiety happened a lot during my high school years and for years following. I took a deep breath, got out of the van, and headed to my first class. It felt like I was walking in reverse. When I got to the classroom I sat down at my alphabetically assigned seat and stared up at the sterile fluorescent lights as the teacher introduced himself. There was one of those motivational posters on the wall that said “Excellence” with a picture of a majestic lion at sunrise, but as I sat through orientation, I became more disoriented and an overwhelming feeling came over me that I was in the wrong place. I can’t describe the feeling much more than that, but it felt like a message from the future or like something that I knew in the past had been forgotten. I wanted to change the world. I didn’t know what I wanted to change, or why, or how, or even if the world wanted to be changed at all, but when the bell rang and my first college class ended I walked back through the halls, down the steep
concrete steps that led to the parking lot below the grounds, hopped in the Grand Caravan and drove away. I never went back. When I think about it now, it was so out of character for me to do something like that. Doing reckless spontaneous things wasn’t a normal thing for me. In fact, my behavior had been historically quite the opposite and I usually played by all the rules. It was almost as if some force possessed me, or maybe I possessed myself, but that decision at that moment put me on an entirely different life path that I am still on to this day. Almost everyone I know and love is a result of that redirection. It has led me to experiences I wouldn’t trade for anything in the world of things. I mean nothing. I don’t necessarily recommend dropping out of school, this is just my story. Everyone has their own path and their own inner voice to help guide them to their great story, and it is true that each and every person does have a great story to tell. However, to tell that great story, one must be true to one’s heart and follow that small voice inside. It often requires sacrifice, but sacrifice is like a bargain with the future and it is remarkable that human beings are capable of comprehending this kind of thought. This is not an easy path. It is filled with both joy and sorrow, but it is the path worth taking.
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ON BEING PRESENT
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