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.
Life is a roller coaster,
Isn't it?
Have you noticed?
Perhaps not just in recent years,
But generally speaking.
But it seems that there is a message out there that we're going to explore today.
And the message is that it's possible to get off the roller coaster or that it's even possible to stay at the top of the roller coaster and never do those stomach wrenching dips that roller coasters bring.
I've had a few beautiful conversations with people recently and there's been this definite sense of seeking to get off the roller coaster.
And to be honest,
The human roller coaster is more of a crazy wiggly line,
Like a ball of string that's got tangled up.
And we're always just pulling that next little bit of string through,
Aren't we?
Through the knot,
Through the mess.
Life is full of these ups and downs.
I mean,
Personally,
I've got a few of those going on at the moment.
I have a frozen shoulder.
I have some issues with my adrenals.
I'm not sleeping very well.
But what I'm noticing is that when I am resisting that,
That is,
When I'm thinking to myself,
I really don't want to be on this roller coaster right now,
There's more on my mind.
There's more to think about.
This resistance is thought.
As Michael Neill often says,
It doesn't go in a wheelbarrow.
So it must only exist in thought.
And when we have resistant thinking to what is in life,
When we resist the roller coaster,
When we get the idea that it's possible to get off it or stay at the top,
Or even straighten it out so it doesn't have those ups and downs anymore,
We feel that resistance.
Unlike a real life roller coaster,
Which I genuinely feel does leave your stomach at the top of those bumps.
Unlike that,
When you are considering the roller coaster of human experience,
You are not feeling that experience.
You're not feeling the outside world bashing you about.
You're feeling your resistance to what is.
That's what that uncomfortable feeling is.
And the uncomfortable feeling you might be feeling right now,
You might be calling it overwhelm or stress or anxiety.
If you just bring some awareness to it,
Is it possible to see how you are feeling,
You're thinking about something?
And quite often that thinking is resistive thinking and judgmental thinking.
I think it goes a bit like this.
There's the roller coaster.
And we're in one of those low bits of the roller coaster.
Feeling like we left our stomach at the top of the last bump.
And we judge that as being wrong.
The circumstances are wrong.
The other people are wrong.
We're wrong in some way.
And from that place of judgment,
There comes this resistance.
This trying to push to make it change.
And I'm not saying if you're in an unpleasant situation,
Don't try and change it.
But it's really interesting to me what happens when we do stop resisting.
If we consider the model where,
Well the truth really,
Where we're always feeling thought and the more thinking we have,
The more overwhelmed we feel,
Then if we drop that resistive thinking,
If we drop that judgmental thinking,
Then there is space.
And space is the place from which change can come.
When you have space in your head,
New creative thought has the opportunity to come through you.
If your head is full of resistance,
It's really much more difficult to do that.
But of course,
That too is part of this human roller coaster of life.
It really is,
Unavoidably so.
But it's possible to begin to experience it less,
That feeling of overwhelm.
And there's nothing to do.
I don't know about you,
But that feels like a relief when you've been doing a lot of things for a long time to try and fix yourself.
Me too,
By the way.
There's nothing to do,
But there is something to see.
There is something to get curious about.
You can be the detective,
Noticing how all of this is unfolding in your life.
Bringing some curiosity to what is happening.
Can you bring some awareness maybe just to the places where you are making something wrong?
Now,
I suspect quite a lot of the time,
The things that you make wrong are within you.
Wrong feelings,
Wrong thoughts,
Wrong behaviors.
Even if you brought a little ease to that,
A little acceptance to you,
To who you are right now beautifully unfolding as you are,
Being that messy human that you are.
Knowing it's okay to be that.
I'm that too.
It might be helpful to know that the queen of calm is also a messy human individual who was awake at one o'clock this morning and unable to get back to sleep for about two hours.
So if I look a little tired or I sound a little tired,
That might be why.
But it's okay.
It's all okay.
And if we can just see that in ourselves,
That will create space.
If we just accept ourselves as we are right now.
The whole messy lot of us.
And I really do think that if we can fall into that place of acceptance for ourselves,
There is a lot more space to accept other people and other things and all the things that are coming up.
So all there is to remember today is that feeling your feeling is resistance and judgment.
It's not,
You're not feeling the roller coaster.
You're feeling your resistance to the roller coaster and your judgment of those low parts of the roller coaster.
And as always,
There's just an invitation to notice how this is unfolding in your life.
Be curious.
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 Claire Downham,
Queen of Calm.
Take care and keep listening.
