Performance

What do you do to perform at your best? A morning routine, endless self-development or follow the gurus' tools and techniques. It seems there are lots we can do to perform at our best but here is something you may not have considered. Your perfection! I guess you probably don't look in that direction very much because we are not encouraged to do so are we? We are not encouraged to look inside and see what is really there; wisdom, calm and love. All inside you, all the time!

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 I am talking about performance in mostly I guess in the sense of our working life but probably this all works in regard to the things we might do outside of work or perhaps if you're somebody who does something physical like sporty or performance wise,

Acting etc.

Then the same will apply really.

Just performance in the sense of how we function as human beings on a daily basis.

And I used to spend a lot of time really very focused on trying to improve my performance.

I did The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod.

You may have come across that.

Read the book.

Did the six things that he recommends doing each morning and that included meditation and a gratitude journal and affirmations and visioning and all sorts of other things.

The only one of which really remains in my life now is exercise.

I do tend to do a bit of exercise at some point,

Not necessarily in the morning actually.

I haven't this morning kind of slept it well,

Stayed in bed a bit later so I didn't do that.

And then on top of that I had other things that I was doing on a regular basis.

Sort of with the idea that I could improve my performance,

Make myself better.

And I see this,

I just see the whole way it fits together differently now.

So I suppose then I would have seen that I was lacking in some way,

There was something missing from me.

Something that had perhaps been taken away or that I'd been broken by my experiences of life.

Or perhaps I was just born that way.

I don't know what I really thought about it to be fair.

We don't need to go there.

But I definitely got the sense that I needed to put in what was missing from me.

And that's not really how the human psychological system works.

That's just not how we're built.

We can't have our performance reduced by stuff that happens to us in life.

Not in that way that it's seen at the moment where it's actually been somehow removed and we have to put it back in by doing all these practices and tools and techniques and everything the gurus tell us to do,

We have to do that.

So the model is different.

The model that I'm going to point you to is just a different model.

It's really more of a truth about how human beings are built.

So we're all born perfect,

Whole and well.

We're talking about here.

The light that's in every baby's eyes.

The resilience of a toddler learning to walk.

The confidence of that child who is the first one on the dance floor at every family wedding,

Aren't they?

Everybody else is waiting until they've had three glasses of wine.

But the toddlers,

The little ones,

Are on the dance floor strutting their stuff.

I don't care what other people think about them.

They don't even have a thought.

I mean,

Imagine.

Imagine not having a single thought about what other people think about you.

I have a lot less now,

But there's still there.

There's nothing in the way of little people just doing their thing.

And that's inside us still.

And you probably see it sometimes in yourself.

Those moments when you just go,

Oh,

Do you know,

Hang it.

I don't really care what anybody else thinks I'm going to do what I want to do.

But then that little voice comes back,

Doesn't it,

And niggles away.

So the model I'm pointing you to is that of this,

The diamond,

The perfectly undamageable,

Whole,

Calm,

Peaceful,

Wise,

Loving,

Confident,

Resilient you is inside all the time.

You can't remove it.

You can't take it away.

You can't damage it because it's a diamond.

And there's no titanium involved in this conversation.

So there's nothing that can damage the diamond.

Not anything,

Not any of the things you've experienced in your past,

Not the traumas,

Not the horrible treatment.

None of it can take that away.

What those things do in our life is they create thought.

They create our beliefs about ourselves.

This concept we have of ourselves is just this layer of crappy thinking that is layered over the diamond.

Thought is the only thing ever stopping us from connecting to that which we truly are.

Just thought.

That's all.

It's some sticky thinking.

It's some habitual thinking.

It's thinking that keeps popping up and tapping you on the shoulder and going,

No,

Really,

You are rubbish.

You do need to do something about yourself.

But this conversation is the antidote to all of that stuff,

All of that self-development,

All those morning routines,

All those tools and techniques that quite frankly,

If you're like me,

You got tired of doing.

Like it just became I have to do this or I'm not going to be okay.

I know I'm not the only one who feels that way.

But that's just another layer of thinking.

So we have this beautiful diamond,

Pure,

Perfect,

Exactly as it is.

And then there's all this,

You know,

There's this layer of rubbishy thinking that we've kind of picked up and absorbed as we've gone through life.

And then on top of that,

There is another layer,

Which is the self-development.

And all that's happening is that now we were this far away from the truth of who we really are,

From the calm,

From the wisdom,

From the resilience.

And now we're even further away because we're doing all this sort of thinking about how we're not okay and how we need to fix ourselves.

And then the thinking about the tools and techniques,

Even just the remembering of them and the doing them every day.

And then that feeds into the belief that if I don't do them,

I won't be okay.

And all the time,

It's just what we as humans really need to do is look inside.

But we can't do that if we've got a head full of self-development.

Because actually the self is just the shitty thing,

The crappy thinking.

I just swore,

Shouldn't have done that.

Never mind.

It's happened now.

It's just this layer of crappy thinking.

There's something about starting to discern that that's all that is.

It's just made of Blair,

Other people's Blair that came out of them,

Directed us,

Our misunderstandings of what happened to us as we went through life,

The things that happened and we thought they meant something about us.

You can see this.

I've seen this in real time recently with a little boy who's in my life who I know an adult said something to him.

And he then a few weeks later repeated that back as if it was true about him.

Sorry,

Parents.

No pressure.

It's happening all the time,

But it's all made of the same stuff.

Because none of it has got more weight than any of the rest of it.

And the self-development is like another layer on top.

And actually it's about seeing the quality of it all as being thought.

The lovely well-meaning gurus who are telling you to do these things every day,

To manage yourself,

To perform better.

That's their idea,

That's their truth.

And when we get rid,

When we start to see through thought and what it is and how it constructs this world that we believe in,

As we start to see through it,

We connect back to that which drives us beautifully.

We were built to perform.

We were made that way.

Thought is the only thing stopping us from connecting to that,

To the truth,

To who we really are,

To the wisdom,

To the calm,

To the love.

That's what we're made of.

None of the other stuff is who we really are.

And as we see that,

The performance is a natural consequence because it's a letting go that takes us to our most high-performing self.

It's a revealing,

Not an addition.

It's a subtraction of,

A seeing through of.

Don't need to do all that stuff to be okay.

But of course it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

If you believe you need to do that stuff to be okay,

Then you will notice that you're not okay when you don't.

But my invitation to you is to remember,

Because all that's happened is you've just forgotten.

You've forgotten how to go on the dance floor first and dance your socks off without any wine inside you.

You've forgotten that you fell down and got up time and time again.

You've just forgotten.

So hopefully today has been a bit of a reminder.

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.

Reviews

That is amazing and exactly what I needed. Thank you for getting me back to where I need to be!!