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 head teacher 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.
Out of the blue.
I've really started to see that out of the blue is where the best things come from.
The best ideas,
The best solutions to problems.
Really the best of me it seems comes from out of the blue.
This session is an example of that.
What's going to come out of my mouth next I never really know.
It comes out of the blue literally.
But that's not the way we've been taught to solve our problems is it?
I mean the irony is that our problems are created by us in the first place most of the time through our making of mountains out of molehills.
But that's a whole other session.
We'll talk about that another time.
But we've been told haven't we to think about it.
Do you remember,
I remember saying this to children when I was a teacher,
You know,
Just go away for five minutes and think about it and see if you can find the answer rather than telling them what to do.
I used to do that with their academic work but also with their behaviour.
Go and think,
Go and sit over there and think about what you've done.
I'm not sure how beneficial that really was thinking about it now.
But we have been told haven't we since being very small to value the intellect.
It's given so much value in the work we do in school,
In you know all the learning that we do from our homework to our exams to what we need to,
The hoops we need to jump through to get to the career that we actually want to have.
That is,
That has been so valued that working it out,
That thinking about it.
But I don't know about you but I've really started to notice that when I do that it just gets really sticky and messy and the answers are just not there.
And I think that can have a real kind of impact on us in terms of not feeling good about ourselves,
Feeling like we're failing because we don't have the answer to this problem we think we should have the answer to.
And all of that is,
Can be pretty exhausting.
But out of the blue really is where the best stuff comes from,
Where the new stuff comes from.
As I briefly mentioned earlier you know most of our problems come from how we're thinking about them or the size of them at least,
How they go from being molehills to mountains is created by us.
So it's ironic isn't it that we think that in order to solve the problems that we've created in our thinking we should use the same habitual old tatty tired thinking to solve the problem.
Thinking that isn't even ours anyway,
It never was,
Never,
Never was ours.
Somebody else's noise that ended up inside our heads.
And yet that seems so often to be the way to do it doesn't it,
To figure it out,
To logic it out,
Maybe to ask some other people for their bits of old habitual thinking to pop into the pot.
It ends up being a pot of noise and head fullness doesn't it really.
But when you really look at when the best stuff comes through it comes from space.
Not in a spaceship from the heavens,
I don't mean that.
I mean it comes from space inside us doesn't it.
I had a real realisation about this a little while ago because,
And I now know that this particular behaviour is a sign for me that I'm not providing myself with enough space.
And that is waking up at three in the morning with the best ideas for everything,
The way to solve problems in my business or you know the new ideas for my business,
The way to solve something that logistically doesn't like it's going to work in our personal life,
Whatever it is you know all the ideas for Christmas presents,
They're coming in the early hours of the morning sometimes.
And after I had a conversation,
A lovely coaching conversation I came to see that the reason why it was happening at three in the morning was that it was the only time my head was quiet enough when I wasn't doing something or processing something or working something out.
It was the only time when my intuition kind of went oh she shut up at last,
She stopped worrying,
It's time to emerge,
We can come out now,
There's a bit of space in her head.
Once the thinking was quiet because I was asleep,
There was space and when you wake up in the morning and there's not much on your mind I hope,
Bless you,
That can be,
Well that can be if you're waking up at three o'clock in the morning with all the ideas then maybe just look at that,
Is that because you're not giving yourself enough space during the day for that new stuff to come through because all the habitual noisy stuff and all the doing is filling that space.
It's definitely worth thinking about that because I found real insight in that,
Seeing how much I was filling the day with noise.
And you know that's my personal experience of seeing how it's out of the blue,
They just come out of the blue the answers.
You're generally not thinking about the thing that you're trying to solve or it can be something completely new,
It's something you're not even trying to solve but then something exciting comes through or something new comes through.
Now I'm not saying that every single thing that comes from that space is something you actually have to follow,
I generally just jot them down and see if they feel right.
But as I'm saying that I'm thinking why do I do that?
I guess there's often something where you think I could actually do,
I could actually do,
You know if I wasn't lying in bed,
I could actually do the next step for this thing right now.
And maybe sometimes just doing the next step and seeing what emerges from that,
Following the breadcrumbs is something to do.
There was a survey done,
I heard about once of entrepreneurs and it was basically asking them when they have their best ideas,
When do they solve those big business problems that they're not able to see past.
And it was always around,
You know they were spending time with their family,
They were on holiday,
They were in the shower,
Going for a walk or playing golf which us entrepreneurs are known for doing,
Not me though.
And that's when the space came through,
When there was space,
Space came through and there was space for something to come through out of the blue.
And I've just had a thought that,
And this is out of the blue,
That the way,
There's a beautiful metaphor there about how I see us as human beings being like the blue sky and the sun,
Always there despite our thought clouds and you know sometimes seeming to cover,
Cover that up.
And maybe that's what out of the blue is about,
It's coming from that which we really are,
That we are the blue sky and the sun,
We're that beautiful energy of life.
And that's where beautiful things can emerge from us,
Just out of the blue,
Out of the blue sky,
Which is what you are,
The blue sky and the sun,
Not that cloudy thinking that's often covering those things up.
So there's something to see here around when you are stuck in something and you can't see the answer or when you're just realizing that all your good ideas are coming at three o'clock in the morning when you'd rather be asleep.
Is there enough space for things to come through?
Is there enough presence for things to come through?
Maybe just bring a little bit of awareness to that and see what comes up for you.
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.
