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 presenting a pondering for you to perhaps consider the idea that,
You know,
The curiosity,
I guess,
Around if we could see inside each other.
And this has come up in so many conversations I've had recently.
And the conversation goes a bit like this.
The person I'm talking to is describing a state of mind,
A way of thinking,
A way of feeling that they think is wrong.
And either they just think it's wrong and they feel bad about themselves for feeling or thinking that way or that they see that it is a psychological disorder that they have a mental illness of some sort because they are thinking and feeling in that particular way.
And I've been sharing this idea that if we could see,
Like if we could see just for one day,
Even for one hour,
If we were out and about amongst people,
If we could see the ticker tape of people's thinking just for one day,
Just for a short period of time,
And if it was like a washing machine door and we could see their feelings whirring around inside them,
I think that would take a whole load of stuff off everyone's mind if we could just see that we're all going through very,
Very similar things.
Every human being is operating in the same way.
We just very like that we're a set of principles taking form.
And so that means that we all sometimes feel insecure.
We all sometimes feel anxious.
We all sometimes get out of bed on the wrong side and are in a bad mood.
And can you imagine that if we didn't see that that meant we were anything other than human,
How much that would take off our minds?
Because in so many of my conversations,
It's not the experience that people are having.
It's not their thinking.
It's not their feelings.
It's the fact that they think that is wrong.
It is the judgment of what is passing through us.
That that should somehow be nice and calm and happy all the time.
That our thinking should never be negative.
That our feelings should never be anything other than happiness,
Joy,
And contentment,
And peace,
And calm,
And all those lovely things.
It's the idea that's out there for some reason and I cannot really put my finger on that other than that is perhaps a model that is being shared with us by certain gurus,
Well-meaning,
Well-meaning,
But I don't imagine even they feel like that all the time.
But it looks,
Doesn't it,
Like it's somewhere to get to.
This panacea that once we reach this point,
Then everything will be marvelous when we're happy all the time,
When we're content all the time.
But that is not the human experience.
That is going against fact.
And fact is that sometimes you will have thinking that you're not good enough and that people are judging you and that you don't look good today and that other people are a bit horrible and whatever else it is that passes through your head,
It doesn't really matter.
I can pretty much guarantee though that I,
As the so-called Queen of Calm,
Have thought like that too in the last couple of weeks.
And the only difference is,
The only difference is,
Is that I know some facts about that thinking that perhaps you don't quite know yet and that's okay too.
I just take it all a lot less seriously now and I still have those same thoughts and those same feelings all the time.
But I'm not as bothered as I used to be.
And that is partly because I have so many conversations with people and I end up saying to them,
Oh yeah,
Me too.
Me too,
Me too I think like that.
Me too I feel like that.
You are not alone.
You are not exceptional in the way you are feeling and thinking.
Everybody has the experiences that you're having.
And that just makes you a normal human being.
But in previous talks that I've shared,
I've talked about this idea of being able to somehow transcend that,
To rise above it,
This human experience,
To be somehow excluded from it.
And as I'm saying that,
It makes even less sense than it's ever made before.
Why would any one of us be able to extract ourselves from a system that is factual,
That is how human beings operate?
Why do we think we can extract ourselves from that?
We can't,
But we can spend a heck of a lot of time trying to,
To the point of exhaustion.
Seeking and seeking and seeking again.
Seeking to not be human,
Really.
That is a lot of what the seeking is.
Seeking to be calm all the time or to be happy all the time or to never have an insecure thought or feeling.
It's the seeking of the impossible,
Which is why it is so tiring,
So exhausting.
And sometimes when we,
You know,
You will have experienced this because you have had conversations with people who've said to you,
Oh,
I feel like that too.
But maybe you've not really realized that what they're saying to you is,
You are human.
I am human.
We are both having a human experience that is created via thought in the moment that it comes into our awareness.
That is part of this wonderful thing,
This natural thing that is unfolding.
And we're all not thinking the same things at the same time,
Of course,
We're all living in separate realities.
And so in that way,
It's just come to mind that it is like how autumn is unfolding right now.
If you are a deciduous tree right now,
That's not an evergreen tree,
By the way.
That's a bit of my memory from some biology class I must have done many years ago.
And you have leaves which are changing color right now.
They are changing color right now.
But they're all doing it at a very different pace in a slightly different way.
Some are browning from the outside in and some are browning from the inside out.
And some are,
Some trees have got some very brown leaves and some that are still green and some trees are turning brown faster than others.
But they're all going to turn brown and fall off the tree.
As a human,
You are going to have human feelings and human thoughts and human experiences just like all the other humans.
You're going to do them about different things and at different times,
But we're all going to be doing them all the time.
And if the trees try to resist that,
Can you imagine?
Well,
They wouldn't,
Would they,
Because they don't think.
So they wouldn't see themselves as unfolding in the wrong way and do it and need to do something about it.
But we do.
If we could see that ticker tape of other people's thinking,
If we could see that washing machine style window to see everybody else's feelings,
I think we would breathe a sigh of relief because we would realize we're human just like them.
And that's really all we need to know.
Because in that place,
There can be some acceptance of how we are right now,
Knowing that we are just unfolding in a beautiful human way.
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.
