How To Stop Trying To Always Be Calm

Are you trying to always be calm? Doing endless tools and techniques and suffering every time you don't feel calm. There are two things which might be helpful. Knowing you are made of calm and knowing that all your feelings are created inside out. Once you realise this deeply there is less and less to do.

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 we're exploring how to stop trying to always be calm, Which is probably a funny one for me to explore, You might think, When I am the Queen of Calm and it might look like I do try to be calm all the time. But in fact, The opposite is true. I did spend a long time trying to be calm. I did lots of different tools and techniques. I did lots of therapy. I poked around in the past to try and find the root cause of why I wasn't calm all the time. And it was pretty fruitless, If I'm honest. I kind of felt okay. I did a lot of meditation and I was okay when I was meditating. I was lovely and calm. And I noticed that still there was, I guess there was more calm generally, But there was also a lot of self beating up when I wasn't calm. You know, There was this sense that I, You know, I'm doing all this work on myself. I'm, I am, I am trying really hard to be calm. So why am I not calm all the time? And the simple answer to that question, Because you might well be asking yourself that question is you're not supposed to be. You're a human being and life as Sydney Banks said, I'm using this quote a lot at the moment, Is a contact sport. Life is a contact sport. And as a human being, You react to things sometimes. You know, The reactions you have sometimes where something happens and it's, It's visceral. It's it's there straight away that that upset feeling that angry feeling that frustrated feeling anxious feeling it's there so quick. What makes you think you can stop that happening? It's it seems to me that that happens in such an instant. That's that's almost automatic. Now, That is a happening that happens without us kind of making it happen. Was overuse of the word happening in that sense. But it's what happens after that, That takes us further away from calm or towards it. And one of the things that I've seen be really transformational is, Is the relationship with that feeling. If if we think that feeling is a problem, If we think that feeling is well, It's not calm. So it must be something bad. If we think that feeling is dangerous, If we think it's bad for us in some way, If we think it means there's something wrong with us or there's something wrong in the outside world, Then then the next thing that happens will be a reflection of that. It will be a reflection of that judgment we've made of the feeling combined with our already beginning to be upset thinking. So when we have upset thinking, Which comes like literally like we don't even see that initial we initially read a message, We initially see some of the behavior, Initially feel some kind of fear. That initial feeling is is our body letting us know about our state of mind. But then the layers of thinking that come after that, The judgment is the extra layers that then makes us feel worse and worse. And the issue is with with when we think we should be calm, That this this we're in this process of trying to be or to always be calm that gets in the way because actually your whole system has a natural resetting process that it will go through if you leave it alone, Doesn't need you to interfere really that the you of the thinking brain. And of course the thing is that you're already starting to feel you've already got off thinking and then you're making a decision about what to do about how you're feeling with your off thinking. So you're in this kind of loop really, It really is, It really is, I'm seeing it more and more as as a loop. And judgment that you're supposed to always be calm is a huge chunk of extra thinking into that mix. And then of course, If you think you're always supposed to be calm, Then there's an attempt to be calm again, Which may involve all sorts of, You know, Trying to remember what to do, You know, I've seen this person, She's done this thing on YouTube, And I that's supposed to help me. And the reason I do that is that can I can I breathe is a breathing technique I need to so with them, Then we're really caught up in our thinking again, With with what we need to do now to sort it out, What do we need to do now, So there's more business. And so what I see more and more is our attempts to be calm or attempts to not feel the way we're feeling to feel better in some way, Even if it's not calm, We're seeking that something we're seeking, Actually add so much noise into the system that we cannot we can't settle back down because there's all this noise of not calmness, What do I do about it? How do I get rid of it? Or what's wrong with me? Do I need to do all this in the outside world? What is it I need to do to make it go away? All of that then comes on board, And it's the business that takes away. So how can we stop trying to always be calm? It's not really a how I do say how don't I but not it's not really a how it's a know how really and knowing a piece of knowledge. Because when we have that knowledge of how our system works, That the inclination is less and less to try and manage the system because we have some faith in the system, We can see it, How it works, We kind of know what to do for ourselves in the moment. And it's so much simpler. And for me, That that's meant more recently, Just noticing that I'm not as bothered about how I feel. Emotionally, I mean, Like physically, I'm still a bit bothered really, Got the air date this morning. And that's a bit bothersome, But I'm not overly bothered about how I am emotionally. And what I've noticed as a result of that is that I am not trying to control it. And so it can naturally pass through. Now there is this piece of awareness that's really helpful, That can help us not need to try to be calm but naturally fall back into it. There's two pieces of information actually. The first one is that calm is your natural state. It's not something you need to go get from outside of you. If you think you've got to get calm in the outside world by doing something or changing your circumstances, Then that will be a fruitless search that will not end well for you. When you know that calm is your natural state, It kind of means that in the moment, It can just be a breath and a feeling of if you get on the floor and then you, That's something that I do, Doesn't have to be what you do. That's not where I'm not pointing to instructions here, Just descriptions. But I found that to me something that helps me sometimes is just taking a breath and giving myself a moment. But that comes from the knowing, That comes from me knowing that it is my natural state and that my system is all it needs really is a bit of a pause and it'll reboot back into that state again. So that's the first thing is to know that it's at your essence. I talk about accessing calm or revealing calm, Connecting to calm because you don't need to go get it outside, It's inside. It's who you truly are at your essence without your noisy mind chattering away. The second thing is that when you truly understand that all your experience is created inside out, But you know your feelings are an inside out job, Then you understand something different about your feelings. You understand that your feelings, Your emotional, Physical, Visceral response in your body is letting you know about your state of mind. And then it makes less and less sense to do anything outside because then you realise that loop, You've got off thinking, That's creating an off feeling and then you're using the same off thinking to try and make a decision on how to address the feeling. So you are trapped, You end up trapped in a loop really. So then you use your off thinking to try and sort out the feeling which creates more of the unpleasant feeling and then there's more off thinking and then you're making more decisions from the off thinking. Then for me it's just stop, Stop and know that you're okay, That that system can reset. But the awareness in the moment that I literally have a voice now that often says, But not always because I don't see it all the time, A voice that often says to me, Watch out Clay, Your thinking's dodgy. That's what comes to mind when I have, You know, When I have a riled up feeling, When I have an uncomfortable feeling, Oh, Hang on, What's churning away in there today or in this moment rather than today, Don't you think the same thing for a whole day. So there's a joy in stopping, Trying to be always gone. I have to tell you, You have a lot more time on your hands and a lot of other things seem to settle into place. So please do explore this in your own way. Get curious about it. Lots of love and have a fabulous day. 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 Downer, Queen of Calm. Take care and keep listening.