Directions Or Instructions

Would you like directions or instructions for the SAT NAV because I, like many others who want to help, could do either? I could tell you all the things I have done. All the tools and techniques I tried and how I went on my journey from burnout to Queen of Calm. But there's a really good chance, that won't help because that's my way. I don't want to tell you what to do and want to describe to you how life works because once you know that, navigating it just gets so much

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.

And today's exploration is about whether it's better to have the directions or be given directions or be taught how to use the sat-nav.

Now it's a great analogy this because if you can imagine that someone was sitting in the car with you,

Giving you the directions all the time,

Telling you which way to go,

But all the time they had the sat-nav in their hands and really could have told you how to use it and then got out of the car and left you to it.

I mean,

It's a lot of noise from that other person,

Isn't it?

It's a lot of telling you what to do and where to go when in actual fact,

With a little bit of understanding of how the sat-nav works,

Life could be an awful lot simpler for both of you.

And this really is analogous,

I think,

With how we get help when we're not feeling okay and how that help is given.

So my personal story is one of trying to feel calm all of the time.

I might have said at the time I was trying to feel more happy,

Probably more motivated that was there too.

And in order to do that,

I spent a lot of time seeking outside of me the answers.

I tried lots of different ways to do that.

And when I think about that,

It almost seems like being given somebody else's old maps out of a drawer,

Dusting them off and then trying to kind of follow what they had marked out as a route to happiness or calm or motivation.

And that they were very dusty old maps because there's somebody else's way and somebody else's way of doing things.

But I did that for a long time.

I kept trying everybody else's tools and techniques and all the things that people said were supposed to help you.

And I probably got some temporary relief from things.

I had temporarily,

I felt more motivated,

Temporarily I felt more calm.

But then I was lost again because the person who'd given me that instruction perhaps wasn't there to give me the next instruction,

Perhaps wasn't there to tell me that actually when they got to the end of that journey,

They weren't really where they wanted to be anyway.

And so there was this almost definitely this feeling of just feeling lost,

Feeling like I didn't know what to do next.

And I think because of looking outside of me for the answers for such a long time,

I'd kind of stopped trusting myself because somebody out there would have been telling me,

Well,

If you do it like this,

You're going to feel better.

And then I would do it like that,

Exactly how they told me to do it.

And I wouldn't feel better for anything more than a glimpse of time.

Now the thing is that those wonderful people who share all those things that have helped them and probably have helped other people they know are really well meaning and really kind and really want to help other people.

But it does stop us from connecting to our own directional system.

And that's something to know in this exploration,

In this conversation,

That you have a perfect working sat-nav system inside of you.

You might call it gut instinct or you maybe call that wisdom.

You might call it intuition maybe.

There's lots of names for it.

But you have an inner guide that has been made for you.

It's your inner guide.

It's inside you.

It's part of who you are.

And sometimes when you've got somebody else's dusty map in your hand,

Then you're really focusing on that.

That can put a lot of noise in your head that stops you from seeing your own route.

It almost is like wrapping the sat-nav device up in the map and hiding or hiding it underneath the map.

So the map is this noise about how to do life and how to feel better and how to make yourself do more things or whatever else it is that you're seeking,

How to not feel overwhelmed or not feel stressed or not feel angers.

It's all of those things.

But it's underneath this dusty map.

And really where I see that I have got the most help,

Felt more of the things I was seeking to feel is when somebody sat me down and taught me how to use the sat-nav.

Well,

Not just how to use it,

But taught me how it works.

Because when you have a really clear understanding about how something works,

It just works better.

And a really good kind of real life example of this is gravity.

When children are very small,

They don't understand gravity.

And so they have this habit that can look like naughtiness of throwing and dropping things.

But it's not naughtiness,

It's science.

They're just investigating.

What happens to things when you let them go in the air?

Now after a period of time,

Children get a really deep understanding of gravity just through doing that practicing,

Doing it over and over again and seeing how it works.

And then they don't have to think about it anymore.

You and I don't have to remember to put the mug down on the table or the glass or the plate or whatever it is.

We just do that now without thinking.

And your sat-nav is probably quite similar.

I doubt you think very hard about using a sat-nav.

You pick it up,

You open whatever application it is you're using,

You put in the postcode and off you go or the address or whatever it is and off you go.

It's not something you really think about because you know how it works.

When we know how things work,

We work within them much better.

We don't have to work against them anymore.

We don't have to wrap anything around our use of gravity because we just know how it works.

We don't need any tools or techniques to manage gravity because we know how it works.

So when you're being helped in any way,

Look out for that.

Is the help you're getting coming from a well-meaning place but telling you what to do?

Do this,

Then do that,

Follow this morning routine or that morning routine,

Do these tools and techniques and then you'll feel better.

Or is the help you're getting helping you to see how things work so that you can more easily connect to that inner guidance system that never ever stops working inside of you?

And I guess that's just something to really bring some awareness to,

To bring some noticing to.

And a question to ask yourself,

Am I being guided to find my own answers or am I being told what to do?

And that's where you can start to get playful.

Maybe you can start to explore yourself.

You know,

How does life work?

Or maybe you can reach out and talk to somebody who can help you to see that.

But if you are seeking help,

It's worth just noticing that.

Is this guidance telling me what to do or is this guidance helping me to see how things really work?

Imagine if you could work within your psychological system like you do within gravity,

Just with an inner knowing of how things work and without having to do all those extra things on top.

Just get curious about this,

Get interested and see what comes up.

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.