The Blissfully Unaware Chicken

Since I’ve been back at my family’s house for the summer, I found an unlikely source of inspiration - the last remaining pet chicken we have on the property.



The two horses have been moved to the paddock, meaning the chicken and geese have had to be allowed free reign outside, so they won't find themselves flattened by the horses. This inherently allows them to go anywhere; a mile from the house (not that they would give up readily available comfort and food here), or even inside the house (they have sneaked in on a few occasions). Now, we don’t mind this development; in actual fact we quite like having the birds hang about outside, they in fact serve partly as aesthetic features added to the outside area, but, they aren’t the only animals roaming around the house outskirts.




There are four cats and a dog. Granted, the dog is relatively civil towards animals of all kind, but the cats... cats are cats! Isn’t it uncontrollably in their nature to hunt after other animals like mice, rats, and birds?! The two geese are respectably a bit too big to take on, but the chicken looks about the same size as the two biggest cats.

What kind of inspired me about this situation is that the chicken is completely unshaken by their presence - unshaken by 4 masterful, stalking, hunting, killing machines (in-effect, lol). In actual fact the chicken is so dismissive of them, it’s almost dominant of them. You'll find them moving out of it's way instead of visa versa. The chicken surprisingly seems to be higher in the pecking-order.



Admitably the cats are just a bit wary of attacking a bird a similar size to them, and since they get cat food guaranteed like twice a day from us, it’s quite understandable why they won't risk getting injured. However, I was taken not by the chicken's ignorance of the potential danger, but by how this is an asset to the animal. Via obliviousness the chicken is effectively getting on with it's life, rather than living in constant fear. There's an obvious lesson to learn from this...

A lot of us fear shark attacks when we're in deep water. I think it's fair to say most of us have heard on TV and the like, that shark attacks are very unlikely, however I believe still a good deal of us are fearful. If you're quite an overly apprehensive person, learning to let go a bit more would enable you to have a more enjoyable life.



I suppose the chicken is just unaware, not brave or philosophical, but the affect is still the same.
What I’m not saying here is that we should all become anarchists to common sense and cautiousness, but perhaps we should take a think about if we are in fact too cautious in our lives, so much that we don’t permit ourselves the freedom to live fulfilling lives.

The idea is to try more frequently to step out of a subjective look at things, and of course think more objectively. Take a look at authoritive statistics on the likelihoods. We often can wind-up thinking something nasty is more likely to happen then it actually is, and that it's nastier than the reality.

Imagine a person is about to make a speech to about thirty people they barely know. They're very worried about the possibility of completely freezing during the speech or something, and they think that'll be bad because everyone will think of them as complete idiot. But the reality is that they aren't likely to go blank during the speech, especially if they're backed up by some queue cards (for instance), the fear that they'll take looks at the cards and still be completely frozen is just silly and pretty irrational. Even if they find themselves frozen, surely it wouldn't be hard to say something like “I’m so sorry, my minds gone blank, I appologise”. People will be a little taken by that, sure, but not half as much as the person thinks.



If there’s an area in your life that you believe you should relax a little more about, try to act like my chicken! Live more for the pleasure of the moment, and not that the chicken does this, but ease-away all unwanted fears. Learn to be mindful of your present moment, and stop thinking so much about possible hazards of the future, be kind to yourself and wind down a little more.

It'll get easier...

If you persevere with this, you'll turn into a more relaxed person naturally. This is about consciously taking steps to alter your habitual thinking - the brain will be changed for the long term if you keep it up.

Meditative techniques I use (part 1: positive visualisation)

A little while back I said I was going to perform an experiment. The experiment was rather unremarkably named “Social confidence gaining practice”. I said in the post I'd do half an hour of medative visualisation everyday day for a week, and in it I would visualise myself doing well in social situations. Here’s an excerpt of that article:

"...It's very simple. For half an hour each day, I am going to lay down on my bed and imagine social situations that are likely, or that have already happened with me, and run through them like I were in the situation. However, of course I'm going to run through them, like I were a cool charming sociable person..."









Of course also I said I’d get back and post about if I gained any positive results or not. Well, welly well well well, I did :D. Even though I believe I skipped the practice on a couple of days, after the week I seemed to be more at ease whilst socialising. It’s important to note that the placebo effect may have played a part in this, but I honestly think not that much.

Quite recently I realised that what I'd been doing was a well-known form of meditation called Positive visualisation. I later decided to pinpoint the usual forms of meditative thinking I engage in, that I've sort of accumulated over the last year. 6 types came up, and ever since I made this kind of 'breakthrough', I’ve been able to make ever increasingly good use of those, now chartered, forms of meditation. This is mostly because now I know which precise one is best to use in whatever disposition I may find myself, where meditation would be helpful.

What is meditation...

To meditate is to focus your thoughts in a certain way. When meditating it is best to cut out distractions around you if you can - so by laying down or sitting on a comfortable spot, and closing your eyes in a quiet place, this will help your practice. There are ways of simply ignoring noises around you, but this is harder than simply being in a place of little distraction.

It has been scientifically discovered that some monks have slightly changed physical brain shapes due to the meditation they undertake (that's quite a big testament right there). Meditation, the way I see it, is simply a way of using the mind very effectively by being especially focused. You can change your current emotional state with meditation, you can figure out things you wouldn’t normally, and you can change yourself and your mind with meditation for the long-term.

In this post, I’m starting with the one I attempted to gain social confidence...

Positive visualisation

As I exclaimed earlier, this is a greatly well-known form of meditation, and you'll find that a lot of top athletes use it to help them at their sport. To sum it up, it is imagining yourself doing well at something (like I had been with socialising). I believe the more vivid you imagine yourself doing well at that something, the more the process will make positive changes in your mind. Positive visualisation helps supply your mind with a strong and clear picture of what you want to acomplish. It creates and strengthens pathways in your brain that will be used when it’s time to execute the task.

My preferred method...

I have my own preference when it comes to the exact method used, but use whichever way you find suits you best (because we're all different). I like to imagine myself in third person perspective, ergo I’m kind of looking at myself from outside of my body. I then imagine that the me I’m seeing has the ability to do well at the chosen task. Following that, I simulate the version of myself I’m watching, accomplishing the task proficiently. Afterwards I step into that version of me, and imagine myself inheriting the new ability, and subsequently acting out the task successfully in first person perspective. I may decide to run through several times, the whole of this meditative process or simply just the first person perspective part.

Maybe physically act out some of it...

I sometimes to an extent, physically act out the task. Whilst visualising about badminton (for instance), I might sometimes move my arm as if I were swinging the racquet; I might even be grinning because that’s part of what I would imagine myself doing whilst playing well.

Feel good...

When visualising, perhaps try to feel a sample of the good feelings you'd get if you were actually acomplishing the chosen task in reality. This may help reinforce the positive changes in your mind, but also, exercising this will help to make the visualisation task more enjoyable - meaning most likely, you’ll probably want to keep it up, because it won’t be like a chore.

Try to be in a tranquil place...

As I’ve said near the beginning of the blog-post, it’s a good idea whilst meditating to be sat or laid down with little noise in the background. White noise is also fine, such as a refrigerator humming. In actual fact, if there’re random noises going on in the background (like people talking, the television downstairs, etc) you can use white noise to drown some of that distracting sound out.

When to use this meditative technique...

If you have an event coming up, for instance, a presentation in front of your class at university, set aside some time in the days running up, to positively visualise making a successful presentation. You may spend 20 minutes after lunch each day for a few days, before you go to bed, or whenever you feel is best. Another time undergo some positive visualisation is when you want to improve your performance at something that regularly occurs in your life, for example, talking to customers at the place you work - so then you may want to think about doing this form of meditation a few times a week (for at least 5 minutes apiece). Think about something in your life that you’d really want to be better at, then use this practice to help you.

The third vlog...

For this vlog, I tried to really step-up the quality from the second one.

I had a problem submitting the video to youtube because it was too long, so then I segmented it to 2 parts.

Movie maker was really being irritating, continually freezing and the like. I will try to make my next video soon and with much much better software.

Lets 'av a watch eh...

Part 1


Part 2