I’ve been lucky enough recently to be training with a world class fitness trainer and lately we’ve been training in some of the gyms in central London. As a result I’ve made the commitment to the process and sometimes I even travel up to central London during morning rush hour.
This morning was such a morning, and let me just say that I am astounded by people and the lives they lead. Waiting on the platform at Raynes Park station, I could see even at 7:35am that it was an extremely busy day. I seemed to remember 10 years ago when I was commuting daily like this, that it didn’t come close to this busy at this early hour.
Now it seems it was packed, and it certainly was, the first train was so packed I had to wait a second train. I guess 10 years is a long time for more people to live in an area.
What I proceeded observe in the commuters around me well…. it truly made me laugh inside, but really I felt a lot of sadness for the masses of people who are literally walking a societal coma that’s been imposed on them, and they don’t even realise it!
Why do I say this? Just take a look around you the next time you are commuting. As I stood there squashed into the side glass panel, I started to observe the happenings around me.
If you think there is nothing to learn from this, read on, there is so much to learn by observing other people’s behaviour patterns on crowded trains. In fact, people switch off so much that their unconscious takes over the control.
What do I mean? Well in a place like this where people are invading each other’s personal space, there is something very interesting happening. At the same time as being very cautious and aware of your surroundings at an unconscious level, people are also consciously turning off their conscious control of the situation because they believe they have no choice in being there, and rather than live in the now, they choose to distract themselves and leave the control of the (pretty dire) commuting experience to their unconscious mind to deal with.
It’s a total paradox.
To avoid the pain of the moment, they do everything they can to distract themselves and boy did I see some high level negative distractions going into people’s minds at the unconscious level.
So as I stood there, I started to observe this one guy sitting down, playing with his iphone, except he wasn’t really doing anything with it. He was skimming between pages of apps, clearly looking for an app that might peak his interest just there in the moment. After flipping between several pages of apps, he eventually gave up and put his phone away only to proceed to take out his Blackberry!!
The next bit is priceless, he first checked his calendar to see if he had any appointments for the day…..nah, there was none. Oh but wait, there was one, in fact there was one the same time every day I saw. Yes that’s right, at 12:30pm every day, the sandwich man comes to the office, and this dude had it in his diary!!!
OK, now that he’s happy the sandwich man is coming, he goes to check his email to see if there is anything he should read. Fair enough, however upon opening the email app, he first skims the list of mails and I can already see that there are several “red” items on there, which I presume are important to deal with. Does he open them? Of course not, in fact, at one point there were 4 emails in a row, 3 of which were red and he opens the one which is not red.
It was an email about a new filing system that was put in place in this guy office. Coming out of this email, he proceeds to delete a few emails which are just spam emails, and throughout his whole reading time, he did not once open a red email!
That is the saddest thing I’ve witnessed for some time, I hope this isn’t you!
Looking around I realised that in 10 years, not much has changed.
You’ve got the bloke who insists on reading his huge Financial Times newspaper, even though there is no room. You know those papers, the ones which create a gust of wind in Africa they are so large.
You got the passenger who shouts out please move further inside, even though there is no more room to move!
You’ve also got the obligatory situation of a poor customer caught in the middle of the train and needing to get out at an earlier station and having to squeeze through a gazillion people, all of whom give that person the humph and grumbles.
By far the worst thing I’m seeing is that the single biggest distraction is still around, and that is the dreaded newspaper!
Think about this for a second.
I watched another passenger, a lady, reading a paper. Virtually every single piece of news was something negative.
What goes in, must come out. If you are reading negative things all the time, it’s gotta come out in your behaviour some time. You put whiskey into a petrol tank and it’s going to fail. You put all the wrong ingredients into a recipe and you’ll end up with a mess of a dish. You read hundreds of negative news and you will end up with negative beliefs and thoughts.
Out of the whole paper, she probably fully read about 5 of the negative articles. 5 a day, 25 a week, 100 a month, 1200 a year (give or take) so let’s round it down to 1000. Do you think there is any balance here?
She had a chance to read something positive, there were a couple of pages about travel and lifestyle, eating healthy and good stuff. She spent a total of 3 seconds on that page, and skipped it.
I mean, oh my god! 1000 negative articles a year, and that’s just the morning newspaper. How does that set you up for the day? How do you think your unconscious is being programmed by the media, by all this “news”. Do you realise this is something you are doing and doing it in a state where you are even more susceptible to it because in that train situation, you’ve more or less turned your conscious mind off, meaning, you let these 1000 article into your unconscious!
When do you ever balance it out by inputting some fantastic positive stuff and good quality content that could help you to achieve your dreams!
It’s astounding to know that this is just a few people I’ve described, and now consider how many thousands of commuters out there who are behaving in this exact manner. I bet you’ve been there yourself, I know I have.
BUT be aware, don’t let yourself fall into this social coma.
In a flash I also suddenly understood why crossword puzzles and Sudoku is always on the back of newspapers! It’s because if it isn’t then people will literally get brain atrophied from inactivity being on the soul sucking train of social coma.
GET YOURSELF OUT OF THIS SITUATION!
Next time you are on the train, stop reading the newspaper, start observing the people around you, and ask yourself, do I really have no choice right now but to be here, working on someone else’s dream?
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Great observations! During my 7 plus years of commuting on the tube I saw it constantly get busier as well. I was always fascinated by the behaviour, habits and sometimes downright desparation of some commuters engaged in their daily battle.
I could never understand the people who used to join the Northern Line around Clapham Common, never get a seat, fight to squeeze through door to find a place for their fallen face in someone’s sweaty armpit. I couldn’t imagine how they could do that every single working day for 20 or 30 years but they seemed committed and resigned to that fate.
One of the reasons I stayed in sunny Tootin’ was that it was just far enough out to get a seat each day! Everyone needs a survival tactic in the rat race.
Positive commuter tip for the day: Get some Language lessons on your MP3 player and use that time. I learned intermediate Spanish solely on my commute!!
Genius mate, what language lesson system did you use? I've seen and heard that the Rosetta Stone system is good.