I love living in a big city. I spent the majority of my adult life in Manhattan, Los Angeles, Paris and I thrive on all the stimulation of the cafes and museums, the symphonies, restaurants Everything. Living in a big city can also be really challenging. millions of tons of concrete and metal, all that electricity, incessant noise of cars, people, mobile phones, elevator music, it can be really overwhelming. The history of modern cities and how they've developed is really fascinating. congregating millions of people together so that I can spend less time traveling more time working.

Did you know that for the vast majority of evolution, human beings lived together and tribes of about 150 people. It's only relatively recently that we've built vertical housing structures so that we can fit all those productive human beings into one small landmass. In relation to modern cities, I want to take a look at the history of melancholy and depression. melancholy was defined by the Greeks as one of the four humans or innate disposition. And then during the Industrial Revolution, we went from being a disposition To a medical disorder. Let's take a look at the most recent definition of depression from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

The definition of depression is having five or more of the following symptoms every day during a two week period. depressed mood for most of the day, markedly diminished interest or pleasure in almost all activities, significant weight loss or weight gain or decrease or increase in appetite. not sleeping enough or sleeping too much psychomotor agitation or retardation, fatigue or loss of energy, feelings of worthlessness or inappropriate guilt which may be delusional, diminished ability to think concentrate, and recurrent thoughts of death or what is known as suicidal ideation. Let's take a look at a chart of mood disorders to see what I mean. So there are good moods In bad moods, if you're really up for four days or more, very elated, that's considered to be hypomania. If you're really down for two years or more, that's considered to be dysthymia.

And then if you're so up for one week or more, it's so up that you're jumping out of your skin, you can't make it to work that's considered to be mania. And then if you're really down for two weeks or more and have five of those nine symptoms we just discussed, that's considered to be a major depressive episode. And then if you have a major depressive episode with hypomania, that's considered to be bipolar two disorder. And if you have mania or mixed episode, with a major depressive episode, that's considered to be bipolar one disorder. It's pretty clear to see that what we consider the mental wellness relates to functionality, which for most people relates to business and productivity. Let me ask you, is your life consumed by fizziness?

Does it seem to you that there's some sort of underlying competition to be the most productive member of society? How often do your friends let your phone calls ring five times and then go to voicemail and then text you back two days later saying dude swamped crazy busy. The goal of this video is for us to deconstruct and reframe our beliefs and lifestyles and learn how to live mindfully. We need to dis identify with the dizziness in our heads and have tools to combat the root causes of what we consider to be depression. The first tool is mindfulness. Mindfulness quite simply is becoming aware of our thoughts, feelings and actions.

This may sound incredibly simple, but it's actually one of the most difficult things you'll ever attempt because we get our sense of self, our personal identity through our thoughts. The main tool of mindfulness is meditation. Meditation is an ancient practice device to take you to the other side of your thoughts. The main point is that we want you to dis identify with the chatter in your head. Let's try a simple seated meditation to see what happens. I'd like you to sit up straight.

There, shoulders directly over your hips, your spine, elongated your chin level the jaw, unclench, let gravity pull flesh down from the cheekbones. If it'll help you to remember to breathe through the nose. You can place the tip of your tongue on the roof of your mouth, behind your front teeth. Close the eyes and take inhalations and exhalations for the next few minutes.