Surfing the Waves of Time and Finding Balance in a Busy World with Paul Loomans

Episode Transcript:

Eric Zimmer  02:40

Hi, Paul, welcome to the show. Thank you. I’m excited to have you on. We are sitting in a studio in Amsterdam, yes, and I was talking to an old friend of the show, Oliver Berkman, last week, and as we were talking, he mentioned you and said that you were in Amsterdam and you were both a Zen monk and wrote a book about time management, yes, as a long time Zen student myself, I thought, well, I’ve got to meet this guy, and I emailed you and like, the next day, here we are sitting in the studio. So thank you for being so easy to show up.

Paul Loomans  03:15

Yeah, it’s marvelous. It’s marvelous that you see an occasion and you jump in it. That’s also time serving.

Eric Zimmer  03:20

Yeah, it’s also Zen. Yeah, we’re gonna get into your book, which is called time surfing. But before we do, we’ll start like we always do with the parable, yes, in the parable, there’s a grandparent who’s talking with her grandchild, and they say, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. The grandchild stops and they think about it for a second. They look up at their grandparent. They say, Well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I’d like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do.

Paul Loomans  04:02

Well, it’s a nice question, what do you do with things in yourself you don’t like or you you think it should change it and and most of the people are starting a battle with them. And when you battle with with your weaknesses, with the things you don’t want, you make them stronger. So I would say, accept them, accept them, and try to know them very well and to become friend with them, to not see it anymore as a wolf, but to see it as a friend, a friend who might be afraid of something, might not know something, might want to go another direction. And you look at him, and you try to understand him, and then you say, welcome, we go. Nevertheless we can do this. Yeah, and the same you do with the other one, because the other one, I think it’s much more right to become in a relationship with your intuition. And your intuition sees your fear. Sees also your courage and taking part of everything that’s in you, your intuition says to you, go there, and that’s the leading one in your system.

Eric Zimmer  05:11

We’ll get to intuition later on. Yeah, but first you’re a long time Zen monk, an intensive practitioner for 30 years now, 4040. Years. 40 years now. Tell me about a Zen monk writing a book about time management. How did those two things connect?

Paul Loomans  05:31

Well, when you practice Zen meditation, you deal a lot with time, all the time, all the time you deal with time you’re sitting without moving, facing a wall with your eyes half closed, you let things pass by. In fact, the only thing there is is time. Time passes by and you see what yourself are you struggling with time? Are you embracing the time? What is your relationship with it? Can you forget the time? And time is like the beats of your life. You have a lot of beats in your life. It are small items. Your all the time. We are in an item now, and afterwards, you will be in another item. And how are they colored? Which is the color of your item? And can you accept this color and live it? Live it completely. Yep,

Eric Zimmer  06:20

the analogy you just made there. I just want to share it with listeners, and you make it in the book at a variety of different places, is that, if you think of a necklace, yeah, right, each bead on there is a little thing of time, exactly,

Paul Loomans  06:33

yeah, exactly. And, well, I brought this. It’s a case. This is what we wear during sales. And when you’re a monk, you make one by yourself. It takes maybe to make it. I’m very slow. It took me one and a half year. My first case, I had to saw it. And it’s made with very small points. So every make point after point after point after point. And every point is concentrated, because you you see the line you make on it. You could say it’s concentration, it’s concentration, or better, you could say it’s attention. And you wear this like for a monk, it’s the most important thing you possess. You could even say it’s the only thing you possess. You take care of it. You take care of it above everything else. It’s a rule, of course, that you take care of it, but it’s also you feel it like that. The more you are sitting, practicing Zen meditation, the more it becomes important, disclosed to you. And it seems material, but it’s not material. It’s your entrance into practice. It’s the way you practice. It’s your it’s your soul, or it’s the cosmos, if you want to, yeah, more important than everything else that you can could possess, and it’s nothing. It’s just attention, tension and tension. Yeah,

Eric Zimmer  07:50

so practicing meditation got you thinking about time. I’ve sat a lot of zazens and meditation and long sessions, you know, longer retreats and, yeah, all you have is time. Sometimes time is flying by. Sometimes you don’t notice it. Sometimes it is going so painfully slow that you’re just like, when, when is this over? So you get a real opportunity to work with that. So how did that translate into you thinking about how people manage their time outside of a sitting practice?

Paul Loomans  08:28

Well, which is beautiful in the way we practicing. So I’m a Zen monk, but we are as investigated in the social life as in spiritual life. So at that moment that I started thinking closer about time. I was an actor and a director of physical theater. I had a family with three young children. I was responsible for a Zen Center, European Zen Center in Amsterdam. So I had a lot of things to do, yeah, and to not forget anything. I made lists, and my lists, they were very detailed, and that shows something for me, that shows my approach to not forget anything, to be very responsible. I had three lists, one for the acting pole, one for meditation and one for the family. So I saw myself each evening navigating between my lists. And there I Oh, this I have done that’s good. And oh, I wouldn’t forget this. And I was trying to finish, to have everything done. That was my motive. I did a step back, and I thought, is this what I want? I’m teaching people in the in the Zen Center to be more close to themselves, and I am just trying to finish all the things that I’m doing that one day I can say, I finished. I’ve done everything. And then I thought, No, this is not what I want anymore. What I want is I want to live out of calmness. That’s a starting point. I want to live out of calmness. And I knew it was possible, because in the Zen you you know people. Live out of calmness, the Zen does give this a little bit to you. So some people more as others, I know several people who lives out of calmness. They are always, always ready. You ask them a question, and they are ready for you, and they have nothing in their head. And I thought, what is their secret? How do they do? And that was the starting point from my research with time surfing, you

Eric Zimmer  10:23

say that time surfing is intended to transition us from control to trust? Yes, trust is a very interesting thing because it’s something I think about a lot in what can we trust? Yes, so in the time surfing model. What is it when we make this transition that we are trusting? Yeah,

Paul Loomans  10:46

well, that’s very important question, because I would say that’s the beginning and the end of time surfing, right? Trust and time surfing shows you how you can approach life that you can trust, because trust needs some conditions to trust. Yes, if you don’t know what is going to happen, it’s difficult to trust. You can trust and you can go in, but it’s better to know a little bit what, what everything concerns, and what everything is dealing with. Time surfing, when you take all these actions you can do in life, what time serving does do? Is this item I want to work on it. This is important for me. Okay, look closer. Look closer what it is. Look closer to the continents of this what you want to do and ask yourself questions so that you very well know it, and then the moment you know it, you can let it go, and you do this with every action in life, with everything you want to realize in life, you’re looking close until the moment it becomes a friend of you. You know it very well. And then you let it go, and the trust comes at the moment that you are going to decide, what am I going to do now? And then I can trust my intuition, because my intuition will choose, out of all this actions, all these, these things I want to realize in my life, and because my subconsciousness knows them very well. And so my intuition can choose, out of all of them, what he thinks that is the best to do now, at this moment, at

Eric Zimmer  12:19

first listen or first read of that, my mind has 50 objections. Yes, however, that’s the last step in time surfing is this ability to let your mind surface what you want to work on. Let’s not start at the end. I know it is the beginning and the end, but let’s walk through the seven instructions, yes, so that we can get to a place where that is going to make a little bit more sense. Yes. So the first instruction is a straightforward one, a very zen one, which is to do one thing at a time and finish it. Yeah, say a little bit more about that. Yeah,

Paul Loomans  12:59

I would say it’s an instruction, but it’s also a condition. If you want to experiment calmness, it’s a condition just do one thing when you’re doing two things, when now I’m talking to you, and there is coming some person in, and each time I have to say him something, you’re not calm, you’re not calm, and you won’t be effective. It’s a condition. And it’s very simple condition. And the last part of this instruction is very important, finish it. So I’m going to do something and it’s ready, and the last part is, finish it. Finishing can be, what do I want to do with this in the future? Finishing can be, I clean the table and make an empty space, but finish it. But because when you finish it, there is comes new room for new space for the next bead.

Eric Zimmer  13:48

If the big bead that we’re trying to create say something like writing a book, yeah, you’re not going to sit down and finish the book. You’re going to finish some part of the book, or some chunk of time that you work on the book. Exactly say how we think about that with these tasks that are bigger than like, clean out the closet, right? Okay, do that finish? Right? A lot of things that we do in life are projects more than they are tasks. Yeah. Well, I will

Paul Loomans  14:20

give you an example. In this example that shows really, how time serving is working. For example, I write every Tuesday morning, I write a small article about something that I met, something about stress, some experience I had in this week, every Tuesday morning, at 11 o’clock. That’s the deadline. It’s finished. I start working on this during the week. I see if there are some occasions, some possibilities. So I think, oh, this could be possible. Oh, that could be possible. I could I could write about this experience. I could write about that, but I don’t decide. And then comes Saturday, Sunday, and then at the moment. And everybody is gone, and the house is completely silent, I’m going to sit at my desk and I write it, and it comes immediately I’m sitting and I decide what I’m going to do. I write it down, and in three quarters of an hour, I’ve written the text, I finish it, and I close it. And then comes Monday, and Monday, I look at it again, and when I look at it again, then I clean it up, and I write some other sentences, and it’s better, and it’s finished. And then the last part is I have to put it in the program, and the program will send it to everybody. This is really time serving each part of it. For each part is do one thing at a time and finish it for each part of it. But all these parts together, they make a project. And you see also, in the beginning part that I let simmer things in my subconsciousness and I let my intuition decide what I’m going to do. And that’s why on Saturday or Sunday, it’s very easy for me to choose something, because it has already simmered in my subconsciousness before. So

Eric Zimmer  15:59

it sounds like part of this is, again, if what we’re trying to be is more calm, which is what part of time surfing is intended to do is to make us more calm. Some of that calmness descends upon us by trying to do one thing at a time, so that our attention is a little bit more focused and it has a chance to be a little more settled

Paul Loomans  16:22

Exactly, exactly what is so beautiful is when you act out of calmness. I never put productivity in front of what I wanted to do to be more productive, more effective. I wanted to do everything out of calmness. And what is so beautiful is when you act out of calmness, you become more productive. You are much more productive. When I was time sharing, I was much more productive than I was before with my lists, because I did do things at the right moment. My choices were better. I was more open. I was more creative. I could also think this is not so important. I let it go. My decisions were more clear. So instruction

Eric Zimmer  16:59

two is to be aware of what we are doing and accept it. Yeah. Tell us about this one. That’s

Paul Loomans  17:06

the Zen instruction. Okay, you recognize it. Now. The Zen instruction is in the Zen temple, you have the afternoon, and we have Samu, and Samu, that’s the work we do for the temple. Work Practice, yeah. Work Practice, yeah. And there’s one person who says, Who wants to clean the toilets, and then put your hand on and say, I want to clean the toilet. Okay? And we need three persons to work in the garden. Yeah, see, I’m

Eric Zimmer  17:29

waiting till the garden comes up. I’m letting the toilet go by. And when they say garden, my hand goes up, very

Paul Loomans  17:35

good. But for a Zen monk, it’s all the same. It’s all the same. Or you’re working in the garden or working in the kitchen or cleaning the toilets, what you’re going to do is you don’t do it in practice, but it is as if you close your eyes and you say, this is the most important thing I’m going to do in my life. And then you open your eyes and you start doing it calmly with an open mind and and then you enjoy it. You don’t think, ah, do I still have to clean another toilet or so? No, you just make it clean and see, okay, yes, well done, and you’re satisfied about the work you have done.

Eric Zimmer  18:14

Yes, yeah. You say in this instruction number two, it’s useful in the beginning to intentionally name the activity. So to be very clear about what we’re doing, I am cleaning the toilet, yeah, I am writing my article, yeah, yeah. Why is this naming important? It

Paul Loomans  18:33

helps. It helps because we as human beings, we are so in the future, yeah, oh, I’m doing this, but I still have to do that, and afterwards, I have to do that all the time, thinking about the future, yeah, and naming the action I’m now on my bike going home. That means that you’re biking, yes, and not trying to come home, right? Biking, Yep, yeah.

Eric Zimmer  18:57

You also talk about elevating monotonous tasks to an art form. Yes,

Paul Loomans  19:02

that’s what’s happening when you repeat tasks a lot of times. They become art when you, for example, well, I think everybody knows that with the way he puts all the stuff into the washing machine, you know, in the beginning, you put them like this, but at a certain moment you want to have? You want to have them like this? Because that’s the way it works the best, and it becomes art.

Eric Zimmer  19:26

This becomes a source of dispute in many partnerships, the proper way to load the dishwasher. I think here’s art. I I’m modern art, and she might be more impression, impressionistic, or, you know, more classical Dutch art, Rembrandt, right? Yeah.

Paul Loomans  19:46

Or ironing, when you are ironing, like it to do ironing, I’m not so good at it, but yes, time I’m ironing, I have my way of doing it. I’m just I try to become better in it, and I have my way. Yeah.

Eric Zimmer  19:59

It’s strange with things like that or cleaning, because I noticed there’s sort of a natural aversion to doing them. But if I pay attention while I’m doing them, I notice that it’s actually very pleasant. Yeah, yes, I would think my my brain would update and be like, Oh, this is enjoyable. And it sort of does, but there’s still a little resistance. Yeah,

Paul Loomans  20:23

yeah, jump over this resistance. It’s good to name the action. Okay, at a certain moment, you don’t need to name anymore, because it becomes a habit that whatever you do, you jump into it. But in the beginning you can feel resistance with some actions, and then it’s good to name them.

Eric Zimmer  20:38

So onto instruction three, which would be to create breathers between activities, alternate times of focused attention with moments where we let go of focus.

Paul Loomans  20:51

I always say to people, when somebody asks me, What is the most important instruction of the seven? I would answer I can’t say you need them all seven, but when I have to make a choice, I will choose the third one about the briefers. It’s the most important one, because when you don’t do the briefs, the briefer is such a source of everything else. If you don’t do them, you are much less creative, and you don’t have a view about everything you want to do. The intuition doesn’t work anymore. The briefer is giving this all to you. A briefer is also it gives you you have done something intensely afterwards you want to brief out, and the best way to breathe out is to do something where you don’t need to be focused. Because when you do something where you are not focused, for example, cleaning something or making a cup of tea, or you do something where you are not focused. Your mind starts simmering. You call it simmering. You might Yes, your mind starts simmering. And this simmering, you have ideas. And you think, oh yes, this, I want to remember. Oh yes, this, I want to do later. And this, I shouldn’t forget, and at the same time, you become calm. So you have done you have given a lot of energy. And during the briefer, it’s as if the energy comes back to you, and very quickly. So in my courses, they last for two hours, and then after 6070 minutes, I say, we now, we stopped for five minutes, and then I explained to people what’s a breather. So I said, don’t take your phone, yeah, don’t take your phone. Avoid communicating with other people. Just take a breather. Go stand for the window, go cleaning something, go to the toilet, go outside just for a couple of minutes, and then people come back and they are fresh. Yeah, they are fresh, and they have understood much better what we have done just before, music.

Eric Zimmer  23:06

I find this to be a really important one. Also, I’m working on a book, and the way I do it is I write for 30 minutes, yes, and then I get a little thing that tells me it’s 30 minutes. If I feel like I’m really in it, I’ll just allow myself to go a little longer. Yeah, if it gets to an hour, then I’m like, Okay, time to get up, time to do something different, to sort of replenish that energy I have something I can’t decide if it’s a bad habit or not. I think it well, sometimes it is, which is one of the things I like to do for a breather is to play solitaire on my computer. The reason I like to do it is it for me, the mind turns off, but it doesn’t serve the purpose of getting me away from my computer and my screen. So I try and make myself sort of get up and take a walk or do something like that. But sometimes that works for me is just my mind goes somewhere semi blank. Yeah,

Paul Loomans  24:03

well, what’s important with the instructions of time serving it are no rules, okay? It are just indications. For example, I like playing chess, and often when I’ve done something, I make a chess puzzle. And by the chess puzzle, I’m really concentrated, yeah? Because, if not, I cannot find find it, but afterwards I take a breather. Yeah, yeah. So I do both,

Eric Zimmer  24:24

yep, yep. Instruction four is a really interesting one, and I really like it. It makes a lot of sense to me. It says, give your full attention to drop ins, creating a relationship with everything you want to do when something unexpected happens, take it seriously rather than rejecting it. Yeah, so let’s talk about this one.

Paul Loomans  24:45

Yeah, that’s also a real Zen instruction, because people in Zen, they don’t study this nowhere is the rule is written on the wall. But because of the Zen practice, people are open. And so when someone knocks on the door, when someone is coming and asks you a question. What do you want? They are open to something else. And when we are working, it can be that you are working and you’re really in something and you’re really concentrated, and you have creativity and everything you don’t want to be interrupted at that moment, right? You do everything to not be interrupted. You close the door and you say, we are here. We are talking. But if it happens that someone comes in and says, Excuse me, Paul, I know you’re busy, I have a question. Then I say, one moment, one moment I finished my sentence, yes, here I can stop. Yeah, tell me. And then the person will tell me what is, what is going on and why he interrupts me. And then I will think, am I going to do this now, or am I going to do this in the future? So when it’s a short question, I will tell him, yeah, it’s okay. You can do it when it’s a bigger thing. I say, Okay, I understand you, but I want to finish this first. So let’s say, when do you have time? Can we see this in two hours, maybe, and so, but I give him full attention so he feels himself hurt, yeah. And also, because I switch 100% I can very easily come back to what I was doing, yeah, I can very easily find the same creativity, etc, again, when I would have been into in between the both. Ah, oh, you asked me a question. Yes. What is it? And I’m still working on my own screen. It’s stress.

Eric Zimmer  26:27

Yeah, I find this one is really interesting, because it ends up not being good for either person, like someone interrupts me, and I’m trying to give them half my attention, keep half my attention on what I’m doing. They’re not feeling like they’re heard, right? So it’s not good for them. And I notice it in myself. I get irritated. Yes, I feel irritated when I do sort of what you’re suggesting, which is, stop say, Okay, hang on a second turn and give them my attention. That works much better. I mean, I’ll notice it like I’m just sort of, let’s say I’m reading in the morning, my partner, Ginny, finds something really interesting as she’s doing her reading or whatever, and she says, Hey, I had a tendency in the past to sort of listen and sort of keep doing what I was doing, and I’ve learned, I don’t do it perfectly, but I’ve learned a little bit more to stop turn and either say, Oh, tell me about it, or to say, like you said, this isn’t a good time right now. I’d love to hear it, but could I hear it later? Kind of thing, exactly.

Paul Loomans  27:33

Very good explanation of the fourth instruction, yeah,

Eric Zimmer  27:37

one of the things I noticed in the past was when there are multiple things coming at me at once. I get very irritable, yeah? And so by doing sort of what you’re suggesting, like just trying to not do three of them, do one, then two, then three, that internal irritation seems to drop down.

Paul Loomans  27:55

Yeah. And just before you have paid some attention to one and to two, because you are doing three, but you paid some attention to the other two, which will come later. And because you gave them attention, they come down inside of you. Yeah, that’s also the fourth instruction. The fourth instruction is also drop ins. Give full attention to drop ins in your head. So

Eric Zimmer  28:15

when your mind interrupts you with something, yeah,

Paul Loomans  28:17

for example, there would be, Oh, I must not forget this evening. I have to that’s a drop in in my head, yes? So then I have to drop in my head. And I look at it and I think, Oh yeah, I’m going to do this. Not I have to do it, but oh yes, I am going to do this later. Okay? And then I return. So I give also the drop ins in my head full attention. Then they go into my subconsciousness, which leads

Eric Zimmer  28:41

us into instruction five, which I’m just going to read the sentence and let you explain it, beware of gnawing rats and transform them into white sheep. Yes. What does that

Paul Loomans  28:59

mean? Gnawing rats? When my children were young, we had Rats. Rats are very nice animals, okay, one rat who had died, and we had just still one rat left, and she was coming into our kitchen, and it was Mia, was her name, and she came into our kitchen and looked and saw and then she saw the meal of the cat, and she took the meal of the cat and put it into her mouth, not eating it, but putting it into her mouth and and hiding it somewhere at her places. And then that evening, we couldn’t find her back. She was disappeared. Mia. Where’s Mia? Well, never mind. We are going to sleep. We will find her tomorrow. And we slept in the middle of the night, I woke up and I heard under the bed, knick knack, knack, Knack. She was eating the meal. Yeah, under the bed. So it awakes you. And things you postpone, they awake you. They are like knowing rats, they awake you. In the night. In the night, you awake and you say, Ah, I have to still to do this. How can I resolve this? And I should have done this already. You start playing. Yourself that you didn’t do it. And so knowing reds, transform them into white sheep. And you do this by the books gives a manual for it. You ask four questions, but the four questions, they are, in fact, go and look at your ignoring red, going to look at it and look at it from all sides, and become friend with your ignoring red, and when you do so, it transforms. It has there’s nothing be done. There’s nothing done. It’s not been executed. But you have another relationship with your growing red. And for me, then it’s a white sheep. It doesn’t harm you anymore. It’s there, you know, it’s there. You know, it’s not done, but it will be done in the future, sometime, at some moment, at the right moment, it will be done in the future. So it has you have the relationship from sheep that walks behind you instead from growing rats who awake you in the night.

Eric Zimmer  30:51

So this sort of blends right into instruction six. So we’re going to be talking about five and six here, which is to observe background programs, thoughts that keep going. Yeah, right. So for example, let’s say I have a gnawing rat. It’s a worry about something, and it wakes me up and I think, oh, I should have done this by now. I think we all know what it’s like for that to just keep coming. What’s happening when I am able to to use your terminology to make it a white sheep versus it continues to just gnaw away. Like, how does the transition happen? What’s the difference there?

Paul Loomans  31:32

Well, the sixth instruction is not only about gnawing rats. It’s also about worries. For example, when you have had a discussion with your partner, and it wasn’t resolved, then it becomes a background program. You had an emotion you were maybe hurt by your partner or by someone, by something he said to you, and your mind starts creating thoughts that have a higher speed as normal thoughts, and this is because hidden under the surface, you have an emotion, you are you have fear, or you are hurt, and you have an emotion, and this emotion that makes that your thoughts are going to turn into loops and won’t find any solution. So that’s the sixth instruction.

Eric Zimmer  32:20

Okay, so before we move on to worry when you’re talking about a gnawing rat, is that normally, does that mean we’re talking about a task, a thing that needs to be done? Is that kind of specifically what we mean when we say turn a gnawing rat into a white sheep? Is it we’re talking about these things that we think we have to do? Yeah,

Paul Loomans  32:39

I’m talking not only about glowing reds. I also talk about rough diamonds. Okay, glowing reds are things that you should already have done, but you don’t do them for one for one reason or another. And rough diamonds are plans you have for the future, but they are still not clear in your head, but the way you treat them is the same. So ignoring red gives you a lot of stress, but a rough diamond, you should polish it. You should polish it because when it’s polished, then it’s much more easy to execute them. Yep. And the way to do is, yeah. I have an instruction with four questions. I ask four questions about this task. And when you answer all the four questions, you know them much better. You have nothing done, but you know them much better.

Eric Zimmer  33:28

Yeah, an example of one of the questions is, what don’t I know? Yeah, about this task, right? Yeah, you

Paul Loomans  33:36

start asking, What do I know? I would have started Yeah, good beginning question. Then, what do I not know, which knowledge I don’t have, what what I’m not able to do, is the second question. The third question is, do I need some help? Is there a person who can help me? And Who could that be? Is there some help? And the fourth question is, Do I have a worry about something, and do I have limiting beliefs? This is too difficult for me. I should do it. And but it is as if you walk around this gnawing red or rough diamond, and you look at all sides and until you know it quite well, yeah, and then, and that’s important, because you have done this again. It is in your subconscious. And when it’s in your subconscious, may I talk now about the subconscious? Yes, yes. When it’s in your subconscious, I use the metaphor of a cave. So let’s represent a cave. And in this cave is stocked everything you want to do in the future, all your small tasks in the drop ins, all the big tasks, the rough diamonds and ignoring reds, they are all in this cave, and in the middle of this cave is your intuition, and your intuition is like blindfolded. It’s yourself in the middle of your subconsciousness, blindfolded. There is another part of the subconsciousness, and that’s the important thing. The other part of the subconsciousness is behind the wall. You cannot see it, but there. There is stuck. Everything you have done in the past, all your experience, all your knowledge, is stuck there. And between this first part, the future part, and the second part the past, there is unconscious thinking. We do a lot of unconscious thinking. When you think about a rough diamond, and you let it rest, and next day, or in two days, you come back to it. It has become more rich. You’re more clear about it. You have more ideas. You have done nothing in between, but you have more ideas. It’s coming closer to you. So the time surface suggests to put everything into the first part of the cave, everything you want to do in the future, and then to let it rest. Then the ancient subconscious part, with all your your memories and and all you have done in the past, will try to find solutions. Will try to find ideas, will try to to help and sense this all to the front part of the future part, and then in the middle, you have the intuition when you take a breather, it’s as if you open the door to your subconsciousness. So during a briefer, these good ideas, they come out of the subconsciousness. And also your intuition will tell you, during a briefer, the next thing that fits the best to the next moment is when the intuition may feel everything you want to do in the future and knows all the conditions that are around and everything else you want to do, the intuition will say the best thing you can do is this task. And so when you are taking a brief or you think, I’m going to do this now, and it can sometimes be very illogical for the rational mind. For example, last weekend, I had really a lot of things to do, really a lot of things to do, and I had promised my my wife, I would make on the toilet some photographs of the mountains in which we had been this summer. I started doing that. I worked on it one and a half, two hours, I worked on it something. It’s very nice, but it calmed me down. It calmed me down, and it made me ready for all the important tasks that come comes afterwards. So sometimes the choice of the intuition seems illogical, but I’m very well listening to her, him, him very well listening, because he takes also care of me and also for all the people around me. So

Eric Zimmer  37:25

this is where I run into problems with the method, and it’s probably somewhat rational brain, right? There are two sort of challenges that I see. One is memory. I do not have a good memory. I don’t retain things. Well, it sounds like you’re saying, if I look at things in a certain way, my subconscious will be able to remember them in a way my conscious brain isn’t. Have you found in the years you’ve been teaching this people when they just try and put something sort of into the cave that they never comes out of the cave. Yeah, yeah,

Paul Loomans  38:03

I understand what you say in the beginning. I suggest to people in the beginning, you may still use a list, okay, but when you make your list, turn it around, so you have made a list, and then you turn it around, and then you start functioning with your intuition. And then after a half a day, you can look on your list, didn’t I forget anything important? And then again, you you work on your intuition, and you will see that when the months and years pass and you do this, your memory starts to become much better, because you have taken the habit that everything you want to do in the future you have you’ve looked relative. You don’t think in terms of I have to do. You started thinking, and I want to do I want to do this. I want to realize that. And you know, also the way to do it, because you you wait at the moment, you know, okay, I have to do this. And so when I first do this, then I can do this, and then you let it drop down. So the subconscious is very well informed, also about the way how to execute it. And it will drop it on the right moment, and you will remember it you

Eric Zimmer  39:28

years ago, I made a rule for myself, and maybe it seems to have served me well, but it’s very different than this approach, which my general rule is, If I want to remember anything, a phone number, something to do later. A short thing I read in that book that was interesting, right? Like, I try and put it into my off board memory system, you know, yeah, which seems to have served me well, but to the point that you’re making, it’s sort of the polar opposite. Yeah.

Paul Loomans  39:58

I wait a moment. Yeah. What I’m doing is I wait a moment. For example, After this meeting with you, I’m quite sure I won’t jump on my bike going to the next thing. I will walk a little bit. I will walk a little bit. And during 510 minutes, then I remember, Oh, you said this to me. And oh, that was a nice part, and could have explained better. And I take time for that. I really make relationship with everything I do in the end. And also, what do I want to do next? There’s nothing will happen in the future that, yeah, well, for us, it was very quickly that was nice, and we were both ready to do this. But mostly I know the things I’m going to do. I know them, not very detailed, but in overview,

Eric Zimmer  40:41

yep. So this idea that our intuition will surface the right thing for us to work on. A lot of people’s experience is of procrastination, yeah, and sometimes it’s procrastination of certain things, yeah. But for some people without some sort of impetus. It’s across the board, procrastination, not doing anything. What’s happening in the mind of someone whose intuition is selecting what needs to be done and is working on them in a calm manner, and somebody who maybe doesn’t have lists, doesn’t have a system. They don’t get anything done. They procrastinate. What’s happening here?

Paul Loomans  41:25

Yeah, well, the theme stress is not only about time. The theme stress. And, you know, I wrote two other books, and in fact, there are four themes in which you can have stress. And now we touch another theme. You have the seller, and you have to, how do you call first floor? First floor, yeah, yeah. The first floor is about time. The second floor is about your beliefs, your beliefs and your opinions about things, and your things you repeat, also, your patterns, your patterns of behavior, yep. And someone who is postponing a lot of, lots of things, he has a pattern, yes. And it’s nice to go more profoundly into it and to look, why do you have this pattern in yourself? What is what is happening there? And mostly with people who postpone a lot of things. When you ask them, when they are satisfied, they have a very, very high standard. They want to do everything very perfectly. Yes, that makes them that it’s never the right condition to start, because they wait, that everything is in the good condition right to start and to make it perfect. When the person understands this, and he also understands this, is an old pattern. It’s a pattern that he created in his youth. He copied his papa, or his papa was saying, you have to do better. And so it’s an old pattern. Then he can start, and that’s my suggestion that I would give. He can start observing it. He starts observing it exactly at the moment that you postpone, and to feel the tension at that moment, to feel the attention from Okay, now it’s fear. It’s fear. I feel fear, right? I don’t want to start. And then, okay, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out. And the fear will go down when you wait, when you do nothing, the fear will calm down. And then you can make the step, the step to start doing something. And my suggestion would be to start doing something not too long for someone who is postponing a lot, just make small beginnings. Make 10 minutes. 15 minutes, you work on it, then you’ll make a step back and say, wow, I’ve started. I’ve started, and that makes it much more easy to continue afterwards.

Eric Zimmer  43:36

So for time surfing to work, your intuition needs to be working well. One possible objection could be that you are a 40 year Zen monk practitioner. Your intuition is really well sharpened. It’s working very well someone who is not had any of that sort of practice, who’s much more frenetic in their mind, not so calm. How does time surfing work? It sort of seems, on one hand, like you have to have good intuition for time surfing to work, but you get good intuition by doing time surfing. And we’re sort of caught in a in a little bit of a circle. So how do people begin? Is it just start at step one and do these instructions to the best of our ability, and this intuition will grow over time, and it’ll become something we can trust more as we do the other instructions consistently.

Paul Loomans  44:40

Well, it’s a right question. I think, of course, my Zen practice will will influence me and will make it maybe more easy for me to have a relationship with my intuition. But I have seen a lot a lot of people are instructed in time serving that they start to awake their intuition and do courses with five times. Two hours. So each week we work two hours together. In the second session, I start working on intuition, and then we are in the fourth and the fifth session, we work together. People show that they that have followed their intuition, and they and they become more calm, because you need the whole system, but one part of it is the intuition that awakes more by doing the other because

Eric Zimmer  45:22

you say trusting the method is an important precondition. Right to trust this method, which is just ultimately trust our intuition when at the moment that we’re starting, our intuition may not seem so trustworthy. Yeah, yeah. But you’re saying, You see, when people buy in and they do it, you can often see their intuition sort of start to guide them quickly, and they begin to then trust it more.

Paul Loomans  45:51

Yeah, there is a Dutch book about from Professor Dexter house, and it’s about the subconscious, and he explains a lot about the intuition. And when you read, he gives also good examples. He says, the inventions that human beings made, the big inventions, they come out of the subconsciousness, and they are made by your intuition. That’s not that the person is standing before, oh, this is it. No, he has thought about it? Yep. And then he let, he let Zimmer it, and then he’s walking in the forest, and at one moment he says, I got it, right, I got it. But the solution came out of his subconsciousness, not out of rational thinking,

Eric Zimmer  46:33

right? Yeah. I think part of the challenge, as I see it, is that I use this as an example, but I’m a former heroin addict. And there was a time heroin addict, heroin, yeah, I was, but I don’t know the word Oh, heroin, drug, opioid, oh yeah, heroin, yeah, yeah. There was a time where the messages I was feeling, they felt very strong, they felt very real, they were very destructive. Yeah. And so I think sometimes I wonder, with people who have had, say, trauma, childhood trauma, oftentimes they have an intuition, for example, that they are in danger when they are not in danger at the moment, how do we separate the subconscious, repeating, destructive patterns from the good part of the subconscious that is intuition. Yeah, I

Paul Loomans  47:26

told you there are other parts of other parts of the house, yes. So now we are in the cave. We are in the in the cellar, in the cellar, we are in emotions, okay, and in the emotions, that’s another part in the second book, yeah. It explains that emotions are a medicine for us. But a lot of times, we mix up our emotions with our thoughts, then they become more destructive, or they change. Yes, when we have for example, when you have fear, fear is a medicine. It says you are in danger. Take care. That’s what the fear is saying. Then the ratio is coming the original mind. And the original mind says, I don’t want to experiment this. I don’t want to be in danger. And this feeling of fear, I don’t like it at all. So he starts to suppress the fear. The fear cannot come out anymore. It transforms into angriness. You become angry, ah, left me alone, and I don’t want this and or you become paralyzed, but you have another reaction. So in the cellar, I try to learn people to become friends with their also with emotions that doesn’t feel comfortable, but that are, in fact, medicines, so to become friend with your fears, with your pain, and to feel it and not to to obstruct

Eric Zimmer  48:49

it. Okay, so instruction six takes us into this area a little bit, right? Because we’re talking about observing background programs. And you say there are two major kinds of background programs that are running. One is worry, yeah, and the other is feeling hurt, yeah. And then you go on to talk about integrating these things. So how do we work with these background patterns? You sort of just said it, but I’m going to put it specifically on worry and feeling hurt.

Paul Loomans  49:20

For example, I remember when my children were 1415, years old. You know, as a parent, you have worries. You don’t know what they are doing. They go out and you know, they discover the world, but you don’t know what they are doing. So you have worries running

Eric Zimmer  49:35

loose. In Amsterdam, there’s all kinds of stuff in the city,

Paul Loomans  49:40

and the worries they make that your thoughts are going to what is it doing? I should do this? No, no, no, that’s not good. No, I should do No, I shouldn’t do nothing. No, it’s not good to doing nothing. Your thoughts, they start turning into a loop. And my suggestion is, at that moment the thoughts, you cannot stop them, so just all. Observe your thoughts. And that’s the sixth instruction. Observe the thoughts. Observe the background. Programs. Don’t believe them, but observe them. Yep, they don’t give you the solution. And at the same time, you’re going to your body, and you’re going to feel where is the fear? What does it do? In my in my body, you will notice that the fear will be in your here or here, and fear isn’t there, and you will remark that you are suppressing the fear. And the suggestion I give to people, the most easy way to be open to your to your emotions like fear and hurt, is to go for a walk, to go for a walk, and not a slow walk, but a walk in, okay, brisk walk, yeah, yep. And when you do that for 10 minutes, 15 minutes, you will already remark that the emotion becomes more calm because it takes off your resistance. And when the emotion becomes more calm, your head becomes clear, yes, yes, your head becomes clear. And then you think, Okay, well, I don’t know what my child is doing, but in fact, in front of me, I have confidence. I should just stay on speaking terms with my children and not try to act out of fear, but out of confidence.

Eric Zimmer  51:12

So we’re trying to allow the emotions and breathing room, allow it to be within us, to pay attention to it, but also moving helps that emotion, in a sense, move. Yeah, exactly, yeah. Because I think there’s this idea of being able to think our way out of something, and my experience is similar to yours, which is, when the emotional temperature is too high, the brain doesn’t work, yeah, does not think, well, it just cycles in, in, you know, fear, thoughts and and it’s similar to, like a two year old, when a two year old just, you know, when a two year old gets too angry, yeah, you don’t try and be like, Well, Bobby, you really should share your toy, because sharing is a foundation of Western civilization. And right, like, that’s not going to work. You’ve got to get it. You’ve got to, how do I calm the child? Yeah, and then we can maybe have a talk about it. Yeah, exactly similar. Yeah. Okay, we sort of already hit on intuition, yes, but we’re near the end of our time here. But let’s talk about intuition. Say a little bit more. How do I know when something to do is coming out of my intuition versus it’s coming out of, say, my fear?

Paul Loomans  52:30

Yeah, I always tell people don’t see intuition as something mysterious. In fact, you know it already your intuition. Your intuition is that what is coming up when you don’t use your rational mind. So when I have a list in front of me, and it’s a rational list, you should do this and that you should done. And you shoot, you shoot, you shoot, you shoot, and you have tensions when you read it. Oh, yeah, I shouldn’t forget it. Oh, that must be very well done. But when it’s turned around and you have looked them well, at them, and they calm down because you know them. And so they are in your subconsciousness. You turn your list around, then you stand up, you stand up, and you walk to in your room, and you make a cup of coffee. And then with a cup of coffee in your hand, you think, I’m going to start with this. It looks like your rational mind, but because you have no list, it’s your intuition. When you have in front of you something written, your ratio will work. But when you are just walking around and you don’t have anything that tells you what you should do, your intuition will tell you

Eric Zimmer  53:36

what to do. Have you ever heard of the phrase eat the frog first? Yes, so eat the frog first is a, I believe it’s probably an American business phrase. It came out of the American business culture, some business writer, which says that you should do the hardest thing you have to do first thing in the morning. You’ve got something to do that seems unpleasant. You got to work on your taxes. And you hate working on your taxes, eat the frog first. Yeah, you’re actually saying, like, eat whatever you want first. There

Paul Loomans  54:06

is some reasoning in this. Yeah, okay, because we all have the same habit. In the morning we come into our working place. When we work with a laptop, we come up with our working place, we open the laptop, we open the email, yes, and at the moment you have opened your email, you’re lost, because you start answering the email, and your email becomes leading in what you’re doing, and it attracts you, and so you’re in it, and then you have worked two hours on your email, and then you have not done anything from the big things you wanted to do, right frogs. So what my suggestion is, when you come into the morning, before you open your laptop, before you open the email, you wait a moment, and I call it a wish list. You make a wish list. What do you want to do today? I make a wish list. This is what I want to do today, and that’s what I want to do. Oh, yeah, that’s important. And. Wish List is a wish list, so I don’t care about if I have time to do it. I just know I would like to do it. That’s the only thing I would like to do it. And then when I make my wish list, I shut it down. I’m not capable anymore to see it. And then I open my email, I open the email, and then boot. And then I see my email, and then I start. I only answer the two or three mails that are urgent, but the other emails I read carefully. So I see all the emails. I read them. I know all the emails in the inbox, and also the ones who stayed from yesterday. I have seen them. And then I shut down my email. So that took me maybe 10 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes. And then I make a walk, and I decide to make my first big action that can be a frog, that can be a frog, but at that moment, it is more probable that I will choose a big action that’s really important as the first action I’m going to do in this day. And then after one and a half hour working on it. I closed down, and then I opened the email again. And then it’s curious, because in between, in the one and a half hour I worked on this big task, my subconscious was thinking about the email. Yeah, yeah, in unconscious thinking. So I opened my email again, and I read the email for the second time, and then very quickly I answer, yes, I’m doing this. Oh, this is my advice I give to you. And very quickly it comes up out of my subconsciousness. And so that’s another reason why you see that time serving is more productive and without stress. So you get more better ideas, but you work, you work less on it

Eric Zimmer  56:43

because your subconscious is working on it while you’re doing other things. So when you come back to it, able to do it more quickly, exactly, exactly, excellent. Well, we are at the end of our time. We’ll have links in the show notes to where people can get your book time surfing, yes, and where they can find your work in general. And thank you so much for on such short notice, agreeing to meet me. Yeah, in the studio in Amsterdam. It’s been a real pleasure.

Paul Loomans  57:09

Well, it was a big pleasure for me. Maybe just one thing to tell is the real in January, they will come the second edition of the book, and the book changes from title. It won’t the name won’t be anymore time serving. The name will be I’ve got time.

Eric Zimmer  57:22

I’ve got time. Okay, all right, okay, and like I said, links will be in the show notes to where they can find you, and all of those things.

Paul Loomans  57:30

Thank you very much. Thank you.