Hello and welcome to jasonnewland.com, with background sounds of neighbours yelling for some reason. I hope it's not too loud — or if it's not loud enough, I'll go and ask them to be a bit more yelly. So this is Let Me Bore You To Sleep.

Only listen or watch this — if you're watching on YouTube — when you can safely close your eyes, because it may cause boredom. Recently I've been doing these fairly regularly, and the whole point of them is to just give yourself some space to let go for whatever amount of time you choose to do so. If you have things to do after this, then maybe set your alarm just in case you get really bored and drift off.

And I suppose the other thing — make sure the oven's turned off, and don't listen to this if you're flying a helicopter. You know, the list is endless really. If you're doing brain surgery, don't listen to this maybe. If you need to concentrate, basically, or if you're operating heavy machinery. People say that — if you're operating heavy machinery. I've never actually seen any machine that is light. It's all kind of heavy, isn't it? Made of metal. You rarely see machinery made of polystyrene.

I was thinking before I started this session that because I heard the generous neighbour sharing his yells with everybody else, I was going to say: well, you can allow whatever sounds are in the background to just flow over you, so that you can enjoy the sense of comfort that you're experiencing. But then I thought, that's really aimed at your background sounds — I shouldn't really be adding my own background sounds on top of that. Imagine if someone didn't realise it was my background sounds and they wondered how come every time they listen to Jason there's some bloke yelling in the background. He's not always there. Please tell me that you can hear the yelling, otherwise I need to go and see the psychiatrist — I'm hearing things again.

I do wonder sometimes what processes are going on inside somebody's head that they would be yelling really loudly — to be that unaware of the surroundings, that other people live below and either side, or maybe above them. I've never quite really managed to figure that one out. I learned a long time ago that if you're going to share a house or a building with somebody, consideration is very much needed. I'm often amazed at how much of a lack of that consideration there is. Maybe I'm just too uptight sometimes. I should relax and start yelling myself.

So the point of these sessions is for me to just waffle on and talk about whatever I feel like talking about. I think it'd be nice to maybe talk about how you physically feel. Again I've got the birds singing outside. We say birds singing, but they're not really singing, are they? I guess they're just talking to each other, perhaps. I do love the sounds of birds, apart from pigeons. I'm not prejudiced against pigeons, but they really insist on being heard and they don't give up. They just keep going — cooing, or whatever you call it. Woo woo woo. Constantly, for hours and hours. I sometimes think that if pigeons had hands they'd be carrying placards, demonstrating against something — I don't know what. Lack of berries on the trees, perhaps.

We used to have pigeons in Trafalgar Square in London. It was famous for that — absolutely swarming with pigeons. You could stand there and they'd be everywhere. I used to love it when I was a kid. Now you go to Trafalgar Square, no pigeons. Or if there are, there are minimal. They all got moved on. They got evicted. The pigeons got evicted. I suppose I should say, by the way, this session may contain stories of pigeons — just in case anyone doesn't like hearing about pigeons. Could have had a trigger warning at the beginning.

I'm actually on a bipolar group on Facebook. I'm not particularly active, but I do visit it and watch what's going on and see the conversations. There was this big discussion yesterday about people putting TW for trigger warning in the title of a post if it's possibly going to trigger somebody emotionally. But isn't that everything? Anything has the ability to trigger somebody. Emotionally doesn't necessarily mean in a negative way — it could be I get triggered when I smell certain things, or when I hear a certain tune. It could be a trigger to think about a past memory.

So I think with the bipolar group — although it's supposedly there to be supportive to people with bipolar, such as myself, with mood disorders or whatever — it's still just a bunch of people disagreeing with each other, just like in any other Facebook forum or group. It just seems to be full of people that need to be right. Have a real need for it. And I'm not sure why. I don't really know what's so important about being right. What about feeling? Because the thing is, no one ever wins an argument, do they? Not really. Even if you walk away from an argument feeling that you were right, it doesn't mean you've won, because the other person will not agree with you. So you haven't really won. You only win an argument, in a sense, if you manage to change the other person's mind.

And as human beings, the more somebody tries to change my opinion on something and force me to take on their belief system, the less likely that's going to happen. I imagine it's the same with a lot of people. And if you come away from an argument feeling angry, or hurt, or betrayed, or any of those other emotionally charged words, then you've not won anything. There is no gain. I think the need to be right is one of the most painful needs. It's like trying to build a ship made of cardboard and then filling it full of containers and passengers and expecting it to keep afloat. It's probably nothing like that, but I was quite excited about that analogy — and then I started to get a bit bored of it. I was thinking, what am I talking about, cardboard boats? Who cares about boats and cardboard and the need to be right? What's that got to do with going to sleep? How's that going to help me drift off?

I know that a lot of you probably think: how am I supposed to drift off if you keep talking about such interesting things? That's the problem — I try and be boring, but I know that I'm just an incredibly interesting and stimulating character. I feel so tired. Proper tired.

I always think about — well, sometimes when I think about the idea of trying to stay awake when feeling tired, there are two main occasions that I recall. One was when I was about 17 or 18 and I was up until probably the early hours of the morning with somebody talking, and I found that by pushing my tongue up to the roof of my mouth I could hold back the yawns. I don't bother to do that anymore — I just yawn. Someone says, "Oh, am I boring you?" I just say yeah, or I say I'm just yawning. I don't really want to study the reasons which caused me to yawn in that instant. I'm not that interested in the yawning process, if I'm honest with you. It might be because I'm tired. I'm sure it has nothing to do with you talking about a conversation you had five years ago with your accountant. No, sure it wasn't that. It was just a natural bodily function, just like farting.

No one, you know — people say if you yawn, "Am I boring you? Are you tired?" But when you fart, no one ever says, "Do you need to go to the toilet?" Do they? Fart at the dinner table and someone says, "Oh, the toilet's just up there, on the left." Church farts are probably the best — they're good because you've got all the incense in there so it covers the smell, but you've got the vibrations and the echo. It also livens up the funeral so you can focus on how you're feeling.

Getting back to the seriousness of this boring Let Me Bore You To Sleep session. I could just talk to you about my life — that would be boring. I do sometimes start sentences, I'll be talking to someone, and then I just stop halfway through because I've lost interest. Wouldn't it be lovely if we could do that just wherever we were, without it being taken as offensive? Just to walk out. Maybe in a job interview you're in there and just say, "Okay, that's enough, I've had enough of that job interview," and then just walk out — but not in a rude way. There are ways to avoid being rude. Instead of just saying, "I've lost interest in this conversation, see you later," you could do a little tap dance, or you could pull out a little porcelain statue of a penguin. And for me, I could talk about my experiences with a shamanic journey that I did years ago where I was a penguin. That is the whole story.

That's the thing — some people can really enlarge on their stories with exaggeration, and let's face it, lies. I just can't be bothered. I don't see the point in lying. Any reason to lie is to get something from somebody — to manipulate somebody, or in a way to make yourself seem different to who you are. I can kind of relate to that in a way. There's something about having a degree of comfort in your own skin — that sounds a bit serial-killer-y, doesn't it. When I say in your own skin, I mean within yourself, not compared to wearing someone else's skin. I mean, that's just strange, and possibly doesn't fit in with the relaxing sleep that this session is about.

I think there's something quite relaxing about being able to just be who you are, but at the same time realise that who you are is constantly changing. Nothing stays the same — even fart smells eventually disperse. Broken bones heal. An empty bladder fills up again. A full tummy after eating lots and lots, where you're so full you can hardly move — that doesn't stay like that for long. In a few hours you're hungry again. Just like the weather, feelings, emotions, physical feelings — always changing. Thoughts, ideas. And I like that idea.

It just seems like when we try to stick to a belief system, it's like trying to sleep in a tiny little tent and expecting to be able to sleep in it all year round without any kind of effect. You put it up in the summer on a beautiful day — no wind, everything's fine, the ground's all dry. But then in October maybe it's cold and rainy, maybe even snow. And if you sit in that tent complaining about the weather and how it should be warm and you should be dry and the tent should be fine all year round — well, that's a belief system that doesn't really work. And we all seem to be walking around with our own versions of that. Our belief systems that are maybe slightly too static.

Of course there are some things that require a static belief system, but these are things that I don't think need to be learned — natural stuff, knowing certain things that we perhaps should not do, or other things that perhaps we should do, which doesn't really need to come within a belief system. I do find it both amusing and problematic at the same time, talking to somebody whose beliefs are so stuck and limited. I don't think anybody's like that with everything, but the amount of people I've spoken to that have a belief and it's as if nothing will change it — apart from something extreme, maybe. Some people are against homosexuality, for example. Some people have a belief system so strong that they're against it, really, without any kind of brain activity. I think I would say there's no brain activity there with that. It's just a closed-off, imprisoned belief — not allowed to drink or eat or sleep or do anything, therefore it can't grow. It can't learn new things.

Perhaps in the same way with a plant — I'm no botanist, but apparently if you put a plant without any sunlight, it just dies. But as soon as you give it sunlight, it will reach for the sun, it will travel, try to get to the sun. In some ways, plants are way more adventurous and motivated and optimistic than I am. They reach for the sun — not just for the stars, but for the sun — with every intention of getting there. I'm making that bit up, because I don't know what the thought process is or how that works with plants. But they're alive, they're living, of course.

So I'm just looking at the dial. I think it must be nice to just let go of beliefs, and that's partly why I'm here. It's not that I'm trying to get you to do anything. I don't need you to do anything — it makes no difference to me, because I'm only responsible for myself. I hope that I can help in some way, and I hope that I'm able to offer some space where you can have a rest from the bullshit, basically. Have a rest from your own bullshit. Your own limiting thinking. We all have that stuff. I'm very good at sabotaging myself, very good at reminding myself of negative things about myself. Not always so good at reminding myself that I'm actually okay, really — a fairly decent person in some ways. And this gives you an opportunity to kind of just do that, you know. Take some time out of the day and take off those clothes of beliefs.

I don't mean physically take your clothes off — of course you can do that if you want, as long as it's warm enough. Turn the heating on if you're going to do that if it's cold. The thing is, you can take off those metaphorical clothes of limiting beliefs. I don't know why I use the word limiting beliefs, because all beliefs are limiting to a degree. But then some of those limitations are worth perhaps having. And then you try and figure out how many of those opinions that you have are actually your opinions. How many of them originate from you? How many of my opinions originate from me, and not from friends, or parents, or school teachers, or bosses at work, former jobs I've had, colleagues, television, radio, newspapers, the internet, The Walking Dead — the TV show, not the actual walking dead, because there aren't any at the moment, but there have been times when I felt like I was the walking dead.

But having that opportunity to just take a break from all that stuff — drop the opinions, drop the beliefs, and be the person you are, not the person you used to be. I think it's trying to hold on to the past, trying to hold on to your past personality, to who you think you should be, to how you used to be. This is probably a bit like — you know, you're in the sea, you've fallen overboard, and you've got someone in a lifeboat trying to help you out, but you're holding on to a weight as heavy as yourself, if not heavier — like a big massive poo-shaped suitcase full of baggage and full of opinions of who you used to be and how you perhaps feel you should still be now.

The person in the lifeboat is saying, "Let go of the poo-shaped suitcase," and you say, "No, I want to hold on to the poo-shaped suitcase." And the person in the boat would be saying, "Well, why are you holding on to the poo-shaped suitcase? It's really heavy. I can't get you both in — I can only get one of you in. You can get in, but you can't bring the poo-shaped suitcase as well. There's no room — we've got too many things in this boat already." And you may look in the boat and say, "Well, why have you got so many bags of rice?" And the person says, "Well, I'm a volunteer lifesaver, and I was actually at the cash and carry buying lots of rice for my shop. I have a rice shop, and that's why there are so many bags of rice. So there's not enough room for your poo-shaped suitcase."

Anyway, what's inside that poo-shaped suitcase? What's so important that you're holding on to it? And the person would say, "Well, it's me — it's the past, it's how I'm trying to be, it's mannerisms that I've learned from other people, it's behaviours that I've learned, and I think other people expect me to behave that way, so that's why I keep it going, even though it's not me anymore and it doesn't feel comfortable and maybe it's causing problems in my life." The man in the lifeboat might say, "Well, why don't you just let it go if it's not you anymore? You've moved on, you're a different person to the way you were then." And the person in the sea, holding on, getting colder and colder, still trying to hold on to that poo-shaped suitcase, might say, "Well, I don't know. I don't even know why I'm trying to hold on to it. I'm just doing it because that's what I've always done, and I've never questioned it. I've never questioned my behaviour, or why I do or say the things I do. And anyway, that's what people expect from me — they expect me to behave and act like this and say the things I say."

And the person in the lifeboat might say something, but it muffles. And the person in the water says, "What did you say? I didn't hear you because you were muffling." And the man in the lifeboat says, "Oh, sorry mate, I was just eating some rice." The man in the water says, "What, raw rice?" The man in the boat says, "No, no, it's not raw — it's cooked. I cooked it before I came out." So the man in the water, getting colder and colder, says, "Well, how did you have time to cook it before coming out here?" And the man in the boat says, "No, I already had it as a packed lunch. It's cold rice, but it's cooked. There were some vegetables in it — prepared it this morning."

The man in the water can't feel his legs now because it's so icy, still holding on to that suitcase shaped like poo. The man in the boat says, "You just have to make a choice. We can't have both — that poo-shaped suitcase is just so large. And I'm not even sure if it is a suitcase, or if it's just a giant poo. It looks like a whale has swum by and done a big dump, and for some reason you've decided to hold on to it." The man in the water says, "No, it's not a whale dump — it is actually a suitcase." And then the man in the boat says, "Well, so it's a suitcase — you're actually telling me you went into a shop and asked for a poo-shaped suitcase? Not just shaped, but it looks like a big poo with a handle?" He said, "Yeah." And then the man in the boat says, "Look at the handle." And he just showed him a bit — the handle, of course, he didn't let go of it, but he opened his hands a little bit just to show him. And sure enough, there was a handle made of sweetcorn. But it slipped out of his hand, and the poo started to float away.

And the man in the water didn't know what to do next. Does he get saved — be taken back to safety in the boat, dried off, to live a happy life in freedom, to explore who he is now? Or does he let go of the boat and start swimming towards the big floating turd-suitcase? And those are kind of the choices, in a way — freedom, safety, or repetition, limitation, opinions, beliefs.

And this brings me to the end of my incredibly boring session — at least I hope it was boring enough for you. This session lasted about 47 minutes, so I'm going to go. Wish you well. See you next time. Bye.