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.
Conditions When I think about that word I wonder to myself how many conditions I have dictating my life.
I can think of a few around my other half,
My fiancee Bruce.
If he behaves in a certain way then I know I'll be happier,
I'll be more content,
I'll be more calm.
If he does this this way I won't be happy or content or calm.
When I say that out loud I really get the sense that I'm giving away my wellbeing to somebody else.
That's human by the way,
We're all doing it all the time.
Quite often we don't see it but when you start to see it,
It can be quite magical what actually happens.
Perhaps you can bring a little awareness to how many places in your life you have conditions in place.
If my day starts in a certain way I'll be okay.
I had a beautiful conversation with a client a few days ago,
A conversation around meditation.
There were some conditions she had in place.
First of all she needed to meditate.
There was a real sense that if she meditated and was successful and she had her own rules about that in that meditation then she could have a better day,
A good day.
But if she didn't meditate,
She didn't or she did it and it didn't feel so good and it didn't feel successful then the day wouldn't quite work as well.
So what those conditions do is not only do they encourage us or guide us to give our wellbeing away to something outside of us,
What they also do is create an invisible filter.
And I say invisible because on a moment by moment basis we don't usually see it.
But if we can bring a little bit of awareness and a little bit of knowledge that that's what's going on all the time,
It can bring some ease.
So what happens with that filter?
Well it's a bit like this.
If you have decided that a certain thing is,
That your wellbeing is conditional on a certain thing and that thing doesn't happen or that thing doesn't work out how you want it to,
Then what happens is then that's what you see in the world.
So let's take that example of meditation.
If that young woman says to herself,
I can only be okay if a.
I meditate and b.
That meditation feels to me like it has been successful and it isn't,
Then she has a filter in place which stops her seeing her wellbeing,
Seeing how she's okay,
Seeing how she's getting on with life and instead encourages her to see what's not going well,
How unpleasant she feels,
How uncomfortable she is.
That's just how it works.
That isn't saying it's right or wrong or that you're right or wrong if you're doing it.
It's just telling you that's how the system works.
Every single moment of every day your experience is being created via thought in the moment and when you've got a sticky thought,
Sometimes we call those beliefs,
They influence what you can see.
I know it seems like you open your eyes and ears and your other senses and you take in information from the outside world,
But it doesn't really work that way.
All the time the influence of thought is there.
It's creating your experience.
It's not the outside world and once you have one of those conditional filters in place,
It really does have quite a far reaching impact on what you see.
But all you really need to do is just bring a little bit of awareness to this.
Just a little bit,
That's all.
It doesn't take actually very much at all.
What if your wellbeing wasn't conditional?
What if you could see that it was there all the time?
Because here's a little secret,
It actually is.
It actually is there all the time.
It's there all day every day.
Your well-being,
Your resilience,
Your confidence,
Your innate wisdom,
All those things are always there all the time.
And then there's thought and thought gets in the way of you seeing it.
It's an inside out way of working.
It's almost upside down to what we see elsewhere,
Isn't it?
It really looks,
If you're looking out into the world right now,
In this modern world,
That we need to have certain things in place for us to be okay.
Certain conditions have to be met for us to be okay.
But as I mentioned earlier,
Can you really hear now that that is a handing over of our wellbeing?
And what that can lead to is exhaustion,
As I discovered unfortunately when I burnt out a few years ago.
I kept trying to make all the conditions be just right so that I could be okay.
But it never really worked out.
Because it was like playing that little game,
You know the one where the heads bob up and you hit it with a hammer to try and keep knocking them down.
But more and more heads keep bobbing up and the timer is whizzing away at the same time.
Life can feel like that if it looks like things have to be a certain way for you to be okay.
It never ever ends.
Because just when you think you've got all the conditions perfect for you to be okay,
Something changes and then you've got to go and deal with that.
And then something else changes and you have to deal with that.
And you end up continually trying to manage those conditions,
Control those conditions with the sense that you can only be okay if they are all exactly as you want them to be.
I even feel slightly exhausted just thinking about it.
But I do know that it's my thinking about it,
Not the actual thing of chasing my conditions and making them right and controlling them.
And all this ever is is an invitation to just start to notice anywhere in your life where you can see this playing out,
Where you can see that you are trying to control your conditions with the idea that if you do,
You're going to be okay.
So all you need to do,
And it's not very much really,
Is just bring a little bit of awareness and curiosity to this and see what you can see.
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 Calmcast with Clare Downham,
Queen of Calm.
Take care and keep listening.
