As we all shouted ‘F**K IT’ together at the end of the retreat, I wondered how long all our great F**k It intentions would last. I wondered how long mine would last. In truth, I expected that I’d still be driving my sensible car along sensible roads throughout that winter. But then I got home. I went into my house, put my bags down, and before I knew it I was in my local Porsche dealer…
Then I was driving my car. And that’s what I’ve been doing ever since – not terribly sensible, but massively rewarding in a visceral, primal kind of way. The next summer, I went on another F**k It Retreat in Italy. This time, in Roxy my Porsche. I still have Roxy. I get joy from her every day. I occasionally double-take at the garage bills. But it’s been worth every minute. And I’ve gone from saying ‘F**k It, I’ll buy a Porsche,’ to ‘F**k, I’ve got a Porsche.’
Mark Seabright, UK
Just one of 100 F**k It stories in the new e-book I Said F**k It, available at www.thefuckitlife.com/extras.
1 British colloquialism meaning exhausting; also knackered (derived from ‘knackers yard,’ slang for an abattoir).
= THE F**K IT STATE
On F**k It Retreats, we often ask people to write down what’s going on in their heads. We ask them to write rapidly, and without thinking too much or censoring. We call this a ‘brain-drain.’
And what they write is fascinating, though it’s usually pretty grim and negative.
But it still probably isn’t a true look at what goes on in their heads on a normal day. You see, even when they ‘brain-drain’ without censoring a word, they are, after all, away from home in a beautiful place with very little to do, a thousand or more miles away from the source of their problems.
And, anyway, who does get a clear, unadulterated look at what goes on in their heads? Unless you meditate regularly, and are used to that ‘watching’ quality you get after a while in meditation, you’re unlikely to be fully aware of what’s actually going on in there. It’s hard to be in a thought and outside, looking at it, at exactly the same time.
So, to save you the effort of this mental contortion, let me have a guess at what’s going on in your brain much of the time. I do this from years of being told what’s going on in other people’s brains (from such exercises) and from listening to my own.
‘Everything was so important, even the things that clearly weren’t.’
‘I was lost in my thoughts.’
‘I know I was always looking at what was wrong with my situation and my life.’
‘I was completely in my head and my thoughts; I wasn’t really aware what was going on around me.’
‘I spent most of the time thinking about the past or the future.’
‘My thoughts were racing, thinking about what I had to do and when I had to do it.’
‘I felt uptight – so much so my shoulders and neck were hurting.’
‘I wasn’t really aware of anything going on in my body, I was entirely in my head.’
‘I know I was judging everyone and everything… that the situation wasn’t good, or that what so and so had done was awful.’
‘I could tell there was a moment when a sad thought came up, but I pushed it away and got on with the day.’
‘I was really pissed off, I could have screamed.’
‘I could see all the hate and negativity that there is in the world.’
‘I planned a lot… how to focus and get what I wanted.’
‘I was taking everything so seriously.’
‘I was feeling anxious and afraid.’
‘Most of my thoughts were very dull, planning things and the like.’
‘I felt alone, as if no one understands me.’
Whoa. Heavy stuff.
On F**k It Retreats we then take everyone through a deep relaxation process. Everyone gets very chilled. Some people go to sleep. And next we ask them to write down what they felt like and experienced during the relaxation. You can do this yourself very easily (that way you’ll believe this).
These are the kinds of things that people say (taken from what people have actually said):
‘It felt like things didn’t matter so much.’
‘I was very aware of any thoughts that were popping up in my head, but almost as if I was distant from them.’
‘I felt very “grateful” for being here, and being me.’
‘I felt very present to everything that was going on in my head and my body and everything around me, too, to the point where I could hear all the details of the smallest sounds.’
‘I was entirely present.’
‘My mind just went kind of blank. There was actually NOTHING going on in there. It was just blank.’
‘I felt more relaxed than I’ve ever felt in my life.’
‘I felt a tingling and a warm sense all over my body.’
‘I had this sense of being neutral, that everything is just the same, not good, or bad, just that it kind of “is.”’
‘I felt very sad actually.’
‘I just started crying, for no obvious reason. I just felt the tears coming, so I let them.’
‘I felt this amazing sense of LOVE, for everyone and everything.’
‘I felt this strong sense of trust… that everything I need will come to me.’
‘I felt very light and playful.’
‘I felt completely safe.’
‘I was having some weird thoughts and ideas.’
‘I felt very connected, to other people, but also to everything on the planet, as I’m just part of it all.’
Now, if you’ve been switched on (and that’s probably more the first list than the second, so don’t worry if you weren’t ‘switched on’), you may have noticed that the qualities identified in the second list were pretty much the opposite of those on the first list.
In fact, if you were super switched on, you’d have noticed that they were also in the same order.
If you were super, super switched on, you could probably have related some of those qualities identified with preceding chapters. So, from these observations and responses at least, it seems that we’re in a pretty much opposite state when we’re very relaxed, than we are in our normal, busy, everyday life. Remember, these responses haven’t been made up, they’ve been taken from real responses we’ve noted in exercises we’ve done over the years to explore the qualities of these two ‘states.’
And ‘states’ is not a bad word to use here. In Qigong, the state you get into when you relax deeply is called ‘The Qigong State.’ In hypnotherapy, the hypnotherapist aims to ‘induce’ a client into this more relaxed state using a ‘script’ of calming suggestions and visualizations, and calls this state ‘the light trance state.’ On F**k It Retreats we call this state –
‘The F**k It State.’
When you’re in this state, you are naturally very F**k It: things matter less, you’re not so bothered, and you’re completely relaxed.
I have always been very interested in this state. For two reasons:
I could tell this state was very healing for me. And I was sick, so that was important.
I could tell this state was very creative. And I was a professional creative, so that was important.
In fact, probably without realizing this coincidence at first, I explored the areas of Qigong (primarily for the healing side of this state) and hypnotherapy (primarily for the creative side of this state) very deeply over the years.
And…
I knew if I could get into this state at will, and get into it more often and for longer, I would most likely heal.
I knew that if I could get into this state at will, and get into it more often and for longer, I would be able to generate many more ideas.
This fascinated me, too. I was in an industry (advertising) where the people who came up with the ideas actually had coined a noun (‘a creative’) from what was normally only an adjective (‘creative’). And we were paid a good amount of money to be creative(s). Yet very few people investigated the act of cr
eativity or the state that best fostered creativity. In fact, it’s just the opposite. I think many creative people are afraid to investigate their creativity too deeply in case they kill the magic. I took the risk and found that there was a reason many of us creatives would sit around reading the paper, or play pool, or find it difficult to sit in an office and head off to cafés and bars instead. I saw there was a reason that I seemed to get most of my best ideas in the shower, or while I was walking home from the train, or during the night, or when I wasn’t actively thinking about the problem…
The reason was that the best ideas were only popping up once I was in a special relaxed state. And I got into that state when I was doing all those things listed above, but rarely when I was sitting at a desk looking at a brief on a piece of paper and trying to ‘crack it.’ And rarely in meetings. All the ideas came outside that space: the space particularly designed for creative people to sit in (an office).
Once I’d explored hypnotherapy, I understood, scientifically, how this state was working. I knew the simple things I could do to get myself in that state quickly and, crucially, ANYWHERE. Ironically, I found a way to become very creative in exactly the place where people were supposed to be creative in the first place (but were not): in an office.
And I can sense a very big metaphysical point there in that last paragraph, which I’ll try to convey before it disappears, never to be sensed again: when you do get into the F**k It state you realize that there’s actually nowhere to go and nothing to do. You can stay in your office and be fine. You can stay in your job and be fine. You can stay in your relationship and be fine. You can stay in your life and be fine. The Zen saying goes ‘Before enlightenment, chopping wood, carrying water. After enlightenment, chopping wood, carrying water’ – which has lost some of its impact for those of us who spend zilch time either chopping wood or carrying water. So this is the F**k It Zen update: ‘Before enlightenment, browsing Facebook and fiddling with your iThing. After enlightenment, browsing Facebook and fiddling with your iThing.’
Now, this difference in state has been interpreted and explained in many ways over the years, but let me take one explanation that I think you’ll find attractive and helpful – that of the brain. It also allows me to draw on the amazing story of Jill Bolte Taylor, which I can allow to help illustrate the astonishing qualities and power of this F**k It state, and, indeed, to remind you why it’s fundamentally important for you to be able to access this state.
JBT, as I’ll call her (though I admit it makes her sound like a whiskey, or a construction company, or even a disease), is a neuroanatomist. She has always been fascinated by how the brain works. And, of course, she has had more of an idea than most of us of how the brain worked, which turned out to be very fortunate indeed.
One day she woke up with a sharp pain behind her left eye. Over the following few minutes, as she did some exercise then made her way to the bathroom, she experienced a peculiar sensation of dissociation, seeing her own movements as if in a movie; she began to have problems moving fluidly and balancing; and, on running her bath, the water sounded like a deafening roar. She began to realize that she was probably having a stroke. And when her right arm dropped, paralyzed, to her side, she knew it.
She knew that blood was flooding into, and slowly incapacitating, the left side of her brain. She knew that she needed to get help, but her ability to get help was rapidly deteriorating (she was losing memories, including the memory of a neighbor living close by and the ability to recall numbers to make a phone call).
Throughout this rapid deterioration, though, she felt calm. In fact, she felt a remarkable sense of peace and ‘oneness’ with everything, a sense of liberation, tranquility, and safety (although she was objectively in the most dangerous position of her life).
She knew that the flooding of her left brain was allowing her consciousness to shift into her right brain, as she puts it:
‘In the absence of my left hemisphere’s analytical judgment, I was completely entranced by the feelings of tranquility, safety, blessedness, euphoria, and omniscience.’
Her stroke, in other words, was giving her a remarkable ‘spiritual’ experience: an experience of enlightenment or ‘nirvana.’
She managed, by the way, to summon help (by laboriously piecing together the phone number of a colleague at work). And she made a remarkable recovery (through her own efforts). In fact, the story of her recovery is doubly interesting… because she had to make the decision as to whether to remain in the blissful state that her incapacitated left brain had left her, but have trouble operating in the world, or to rehabilitate that side of her brain, and be able to operate successfully in the world, but lose that state of bliss.
She now teaches people how to create more of a balance between the two sides of the brain, and to effectively temper the bully-like dominance of the left brain. Her greatest insight has been that, based on losing her left brain, she knows that a deep sense of peace is located in the neurological circuitry of the right brain. The sense of peace is always there, it’s something that we simply have to tap into (by quieting the left brain).
Wow. Please read her book My Stroke of Insight. It’s awesome. And it saves you having to suffer a stroke yourself to gain this level of insight.
And here’s the point… (I’m going to prematurely go off-page now, because I don’t want this massive point, and revealing information, to be so easy to find again that you have a page number to find it with)…
This is how we got to the idea of F**k It in the first place. After years (and years) of exploring this ‘state,’ in all its aspects (creative, healing, spiritual, etc.,); of trying to find easy ways to access that state and stay in it for longer, we found a very simple ‘password’ that could unlock this state very quickly – F**K IT.
Of all the ways in all the world to access this magical, healing, blissful, peaceful, enlightened state, we’d found a way that contained a swear word and that seemed to work more quickly and more powerfully than any other way. Wow!
We’ve spent the years since saying a very long ‘WWOOOWWWWWW,’ in fact. We’ve spent a long time (and many words) trying to understand and articulate why it does work so well. And along the way, hundreds of thousands of people have joined with us in saying ‘WOW.’ In just about every language, people have said, ‘Wow, that profane expression actually works in making me feel more free, wow.’
So, yes, there are many ways to help you make the jump from the left brain to the right brain (including flooding the left brain with blood), but there is none quicker or more powerful than saying F**k It.
That’s because F**k It is unique in our language in summing up the essence you feel (and think) in the right-brain state; that things don’t matter so much.
If you were to imagine a F**k It person, you’d end up with a person who was operating from the right brain much of the time (though clearly, not all of the time, read your Jill Bolte Taylor).
And it’s possible to live like that. Live It. No, not running around with your eyes closed, finding horses in steep fields. But it’s possible to apply what you experience in something like Free Qigong and spread it out into your real life. It wouldn’t be called ‘practice’ otherwise, would it?
THE MAGIC SIX
We set out in this book partly to reveal the therapeutic process we take people through on a F**k It Week. We’ve elaborated and deeply investigated that process here. And on our weeks we tend to work around a Six-part Magic F**k It process. In fact, we elaborated it so much that we realized it would be nice to sum it up and distill it again for you as a new F**kiteer. And we’ve done so in the ‘secret section’ – i.e., it’s not visible on the Contents pages. We’ve even taken off the page numbers; which will make it a bugger1 to refer back to. It also makes it a bugger for us when we sign books, because we normally turn randomly to a page, like taking a Tarot card, and offer that as our gift to the person. It’s often spot on.
(Digressing for a moment about the bo
oks we write. If you mention a particular section or story to me and I look confused, it’s because I don’t remember writing it, sometimes because I wrote it a while back, other times because I’m just plain forgetful. I had two people in the last week say to me, ‘I loved F**k It, the only bit I struggled with was when you suggest that it’s fine to smoke.’ Fine to smoke? What? I said that. Why would I say that? I don’t smoke. It’s clearly dangerous to smoke – for me and for others around me. Why would I say it’s fine to smoke? Is there someone on the editorial team who’s secretly funded by a tobacco giant, who slips in positive references to smoking on the sly? Did she think ‘Aha, F**k It is the perfect medium for my pro-smoking message. It’s been so tough with all these spiritual and healing books getting in a mention, but Parkin will love it, yeah, say F**k It and smoke yourself to death, they’ll love it.’
Well, I just looked it up. I wrote, under the chapter Say F**k It to Illness and Disease:
‘Some people get so tired and bored of trying everything and spending lots of money and investing so much energy that they simply give up. They say one big F**k It and finally give up wanting to be whole and well and perfect. They’re still feeling pain and discomfort like they always did and they just say F**k It and give in to it. Nothing makes any difference anyway, so why should they go through the added pain of hoping it’s going to go away?
They give in fully to their condition. They surrender completely to their pain. They give up wanting to be any different to how they are, just as they are, now. They probably start eating things they haven’t eaten for a while, they may start drinking and smoking again. What they certainly do is RELAX. The one thing you’ll always do when you really say F**k It is relax.’
Blast. And what I meant, of course, was that the relaxing and giving up has surprising effects, because you don’t care so much, even in ways that look so unhealthy.
I didn’t mean smoking is good. It’s probably better if you don’t smoke, don’t do drugs, don’t consciously harm other people, don’t fart in lifts, don’t say you don’t like food that’s been cooked for you by other people, and don’t do a garlic burp in someone’s face.
F**k It Therapy Page 18
