Can Addition Really Make You Calmer?

Addition cannot make you calmer. Because where we see lack there is judgment. Judgment is thought. It is thought which takes you away from feeling calmer. It really is that simple. Being calm is your natural state. It's the addition of thought which stops you from connecting to that. Less thought = calm. If you have been trying to feel calmer for a long time, you are finally in the right place.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the Calmcast, A time to feel calm and think clearly. I'm Claire Downham, The Queen of Calm, A Transformational Life Coach. I was a burnt out headteacher who finally made the journey to calm after years of trying, And I want to prevent you from having to do the same. The Calmcast is a series of short explorations gently guiding you back to your natural state, Which is calm and clarity. Just listen like you would listen to music with an open mind and curiosity. There's nothing else to do. Now let's relax into today's episode. So today's exploration is around addition, And you'll be relieved to know it's not a maths lesson. So it seems to me as I have journeyed through the world of self-development that the model we are being guided towards is a model of lack. Let me explain that more, That we are either born lacking in some way or that life can take away those qualities that most of us are seeking. Memories like calm, Clarity, Resilience, Confidence. The message is that those things can be taken away from us, And that therefore in order to get them back we must add in some things. We must add back in the resilience, Add back in the confidence, Add back in the calm and the clarity. And I think this is probably easiest to see around calm because when we really understand that where calm is, I'm not going to say where it comes from because it is who we are, That calm is our natural state. When we really understand that, This model just does not make sense. And it's coming through me quite slowly this morning, Which is really interesting to observe. The model of lack says we must put back in those things that are missing by doing something in the outside world, Doing something to ourselves, A tool, A technique, A practice, Whatever it is. Now here's a different model, A model that I truly believe to be true and that can be seen if you just open your mind a little bit to it and you start to notice how this is playing out in your life. It can be seen that you are made of calm and clarity, That you are innately resilient and confident, That first of all you are born that way. You know, That's why I'm able to talk to you and walk and do all of those things I learned to do when I was very small because I had that resilience and confidence to do that. And that's not that that's been taken away, But that it's always there. It is there in you and me and every single one of us, No matter what our circumstances may look like, No matter what our behaviour may look like, Every single one of us has those things innate in us. And the simple thing to know is that we have some thinking that stops us from seeing it. That's it. That's all there is. Now there's no need to change that thinking or deal with it or get rid of it using those tools and techniques I've talked about. There's just something around seeing the nature of what it is. And the thing is if there's a process of adding in an attempt to feel calmer, Perhaps you're starting to see that that is counterintuitive really. If we have us as this innately calm being and then we have some thinking that stops us seeing that and then on top of that we're going to put some more thinking in order to do all the tools and techniques and things to make ourselves feel calm. It's addition. We're adding more in, We're adding more noise, We're adding more process, We're adding more things to do. We're adding as well that layer of judgment. So there's us innately calm and well and there's a layer of thinking that's stopping us seeing that and then there's a layer of judgment of that thinking and then there's all those things to do on top of that. And I hope you can hear how that addition of all that stuff into our heads makes the seeing of calm really, Really difficult. And it's also what we might call downstream activity. Imagine that there's a river flowing and you notice that that river is full of rubbish, Loads and loads of rubbish in the river and you decide to be a good citizen and jump in and start pulling the rubbish out of the river. You can see the fish are struggling and the plants in the river, Everything's struggling so you jump in and you start throwing the rubbish onto the side and you might even get a skip to put that rubbish into. And you keep pulling more and more rubbish out of the stream but it's just exhausting because more and more rubbish is coming down the river from upstream. And in the end it's too much to keep up with this flow of rubbish coming towards you and you get out and you realize that there's more and more rubbish coming through so you walk just a little way upstream and you find that there's a great big pipe like the ones that builders use to push their rubbish down and it's just been knocked away from the skip it was supposed to be going into. So all you really need to do is just nudge that pipe back over the skip and then all that rubbish that was coming downstream before stops. It stops being dumped into the river anymore and that's what it's like if you are caught up in a lot of tools and techniques and attempts to fix yourself to try and make yourself feel calmer then you're downstream. The invitation is to look in the opposite direction to look to the source of how you are feeling to bring some awareness to the thoughts which are taking away from feeling calm to understand the nature of thought and what it actually is and to really reconnect to the essence of who you are. That person that you really used to be I guess or you still are but you can't see that little child who was 100% resilient and confident that's more close to the essence of who you are. You are made of calm, You are made of resilience and confidence and you are made of love and all of that is already there but that you can't see it because you've got some thinking you believe. And so the invitation as always is to bring a little awareness to this, To sprinkle a little bit of doubt on all that noise flowing through your head. That's all. Thank you so much for listening. There's nothing to do now but bring some awareness to how this is working out in your life. Listen regularly to experience longer and longer periods of calm. This has been The Calm Cast with Clare Downham, Queen of Calm. Take care and keep listening.