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 some kind of alarm bell that we can experience that can be really,
Really helpful.
That is the thinking it's about you alarm bell.
So the great thing about this alarm bell is that it is consistently right.
In that,
If you think it's about you,
That's the alarm bell.
It doesn't really matter what happens in the world,
It is not about you.
And it is in the taking of things so personally that we can create some real discomfort for ourselves.
Here are some examples that I have been very familiar with in the past and still now,
Of course,
Because I am human.
And that is things like if somebody does not reply to a message that you have sent and the stories we can fall into about that being to do with what that person thinks about us,
That they are rejecting us in some way and other stories that we try to kind of create around that.
It's not about you.
The non-replying of a message just to do with whether or not another human being picked up their phone or computer and typed out a message to reply to you.
Whether they did or did not have the thought to do that has got nothing to do with you.
Another great example of this is the look on somebody's face.
I have heard more than once people telling me that the look on somebody's face means something about them.
Not about the person with the look on their face,
But about the person who's talking to me.
So I've come across a few examples of this.
One of my favorite examples,
Just as an example of this playing out,
Was a post I once saw on social media where a woman had been to a fairly male-dominated networking meeting to meet all the business owners.
And she had perceived that the look on some of these men's faces meant that they were judging her.
That she shouldn't be there.
That the story that she had composed off the back of the look on someone's face was fantastical,
But utterly believed by this is an innocent misunderstanding.
This is not saying that this woman did anything wrong or there was anything wrong with her.
It was a really easy trap that we quite often fall into that the look on someone's face can mean something about us.
That it's a judgment or somebody looking down on us or somebody thinking that we're not okay.
We cannot know what the look on somebody's face means.
It's just impossible.
We have to be making that up from our perspective.
And that's a great warning bell for us.
Now one of the things closest to my heart in terms of thinking it's about me is my other half because you know when you've lived with somebody for a little while and you know they love you and all of those things,
It's really easy to think that if they behave in a certain way,
Of course a way that you've made explicit that they shouldn't be behaving,
That it's personal.
They don't love you enough.
They don't care about you enough.
And I am smiling because I'm laughing now because of course I absolutely never do that,
She said nodding her head.
I do it all the time.
Last night I think I was stroking my other half's arm and he moved it away from me and I was straight away,
What have I done wrong?
Have I hurt him?
I mean he just wasn't comfortable as it turns out.
But of course I had made up a little story first of all.
But you know the title of this talk today being if you think it's about you,
Sound the alarm bell is really more saying that if you think it's about you,
That is the alarm bell.
That's a warning because if you think it's about you,
That's definitely your head in story creation mode.
That is you making things up.
That is you taking a circumstance in the world and wrapping a story around it.
That is you making a mountain out of a molehill,
Which I've started to say a bit recently because somebody recently said to me that's what I do,
The reverse,
I make molehills out of mountains.
And I hope today that is what this talk is helping you to do.
And the wonderful thing to know is that if you are making a story up about somebody else's behaviour and making it mean something about you,
That means one definite thing.
Welcome to the human race because that is one of the most human things to do,
To make up meaning.
I'm seeing a lot about that at the moment,
That we literally can't function without making up meaning.
And actually our little brains want to just make the meaning as simple as possible.
So if somebody does something or has a look on their face,
We kind of,
The easiest thing to do is go,
Well,
That's about me then.
It must be about me.
And that's a really,
Really simple thing to do.
And our brains will always try to get to the most simple answer.
And that often involves looking outside,
Not inside because the world is what we see and hear and experience.
So it's really easy to think that it's that that is creating how we feel.
So the power of this is in non-judgmental awareness,
Which I know I say a lot and is sometimes hard to do.
It's simple,
But not easy.
I think we say,
Is just every time you notice,
Not every time,
But whenever you can notice that you've got an off feeling about somebody else's behaviour,
It's asking that question or listening to that alarm bell.
That alarm bell is telling you that you've gone into story mode,
That you are creating a story and you're wrapping it round this little circumstance.
I mean,
Really,
If you think about how tiny something like the non,
I mean,
Even physically,
If you see how tiny the non-replying of a text,
It's just a few words they're missing from the world,
According to us,
Of course,
Or the tininess of a slight frown on somebody's face or a slight look that we perceive as being something.
It's tiny,
Isn't it?
I mean,
It's physically tiny.
In time,
In time,
It's tiny.
It's so microscopic.
And so if we're feeling a strong feeling towards that,
It has to be because we've wrapped something else around this tiny incident,
Innocently,
Of course,
Always innocently.
So the sounding of the alarm bell is what your body is doing when you feel an uncomfortable feeling and you're thinking that somebody else is doing something personally towards you,
Thinking something about you,
Acting towards you,
Judging you,
Whatever it is.
It's a beautiful warning.
It's an alarm that is filled with love because it is there to help guide you to see what's going on.
And what is going on is that you have fallen into a very human trap of believing you're still thinking about somebody else.
And so the invitation is always to just have some fun with this.
Just you know,
You can get so curious about yourself and without any judgment because you're not doing anything wrong.
You're just living a human life where we get caught up in thought all the time.
But just bringing some awareness to that and just gently noticing those alarms from your body,
Noticing those emotional alarms and reading them accurately as a warning of thought,
Not of anything else,
Can be truly beneficial.
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.
Learn 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.
