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.
So today's episode is entitled How to Feel Less Stressed but let me reassure you that you will not be given anything else to do because if you are feeling stressed in any way,
Shape or form,
You do not need anything else to think about or anything else to do.
I've entitled this session How to Feel Less Stressed because this morning I thought I'd do a little bit of research and I punched,
Punched,
Typed,
Punched,
I was flocking in,
I typed How to Feel Less Stressed into Google.
Other search engines are available but not really used are they?
And I got 153 million results.
I tried to imagine what it would be like to be somebody who was feeling stressed and to be faced with that number.
Here's something that I would think would be what that person's experience would be like is just more stressed because where on earth do you start?
How do you know which one of those things is for you?
You know,
Where do you even fit it into your life if you're feeling stressed?
There's pretty much no doubt that you've got a busy life with a lot going on and the last thing you probably need is more to do.
And that little piece of what I think would be somebody who's stressed responds to all those things to do is a clue.
It's a really,
Really wonderful clue actually because you may or may not have noticed that if you are feeling stressed and somebody gives you like one more thing to think about or one more thing to do,
You feel like you're going to explode,
Don't you?
Or you just feel like curling up in a ball and going into a corner.
I know I did.
It took me a long time to get to the stage where I just gave up.
I kind of powered through a lot really,
Which is probably why I burnt out.
I tended to power through that feeling that I couldn't do it.
Well,
Yes,
You have done that to keep going.
And that clue is pointing us to what I refer to as the truth about stress.
Well,
I don't just refer to it as the truth about stress.
It is the truth about stress.
And that is that stress comes from a noisy system.
And when I talk about noise in this session and any session really,
I'm talking about thought.
I'm talking about how busy our heads are.
Now,
I know that the commonly held myth,
Myth,
Did you hear the word myth,
Is that stress comes from the outside world.
That we are made to feel stressed by the things that are happening to us or things that are happening around us.
Our angry boss,
Our email inbox,
Our pressures from work,
Our relationships,
Our annoying teenage children,
Our in-laws,
Parents,
Whatever,
Whatever,
Or just our general circumstances.
So at the moment,
Of course,
We're being pointed to the cost of living going up and that being something to create stress.
Now,
Please don't get me wrong here.
Please don't think that I am not compassionate towards people who are in difficult financial situations.
We are tightening our belts too.
We are thinking about ways we can save money.
If you only knew how many layers of clothing I have on right now.
It's many,
By the way,
Many layers of clothing.
So it's not,
I'm not downplaying how awful people feel at the moment.
However,
There is freedom in knowing how stress really works,
What the truth is about stress.
And it works like this,
This explanation just works on every level.
So it works on the physiological level.
If you are feeling stressed,
That is because you have a system full of hormones that shouldn't be there.
Hormones that were originally meant to get you out of trouble when you are under attack,
Being chased by a saber-toothed tiger is what I generally say,
Because that's what we kind of think of,
Don't we?
We think our ancestors were chased by saber-toothed tigers.
So that system is being misused is probably the best word because there are no saber-toothed tigers.
There are just full inboxes and angry bosses and annoying in-laws and whoever else.
But the system is working exactly as it's meant to because,
But it's being misused in a way because we're generating those hormones that were meant to flood into our body to get us away from a saber-toothed tiger.
We are generating those hormones through our thinking because you have probably noticed that as a human being you can make yourself feel a particular way by thinking a particular way.
If I sit here in a chair and think about lovely things like holidays and fluffy bunnies and God knows what else,
I will feel lovely,
You know,
Because I'm feeling my thinking about holidays and fluffy bunnies.
I've no idea why I've gone for fluffy bunnies,
Never mind.
So that is,
You know,
That's where the feelings come from.
If I sit here and start thinking about my bank balance or other things,
You know,
Like if I sit and look at the smart meter,
I heard somebody say the other day they put the smart meter in the cupboard because it's creating anxiety.
It's not the smart meter creating the anxiety,
It's our thinking about,
Yeah,
Look at my smart meter every day whirring away in the corner and it does not create anxiety.
It creates an open space to get curious about how to make it go slower.
So it's not those things,
They're not creating our stress.
What stress is being created by is thought,
Busy mindedness,
Thinking about lots of things,
Thinking way ahead or behind,
Not being present because in the present moment we tend to have a lot less thinking.
That's what's creating all that unpleasant feeling.
That's what's stopping you sleeping.
That's what's having you eat things that are probably not so good for you.
And it might seem like you can run it off or meditate away or whatever,
But this is the issue with the search how to feel less stress getting 153 million results.
It is that all the stress management techniques and tools and ways to do it,
They're just adding more noise into your noisy system.
So here's what can happen is I'm at work,
I'm feeling really stressed about something and then I'm trying to remember what I'm supposed to do to manage that stress.
Now something very different happens when you understand the stress.
Your clever system will find a way when you understand that that uncomfortable feeling is coming from your state of mind.
You will just know what to do.
Like I just tend to know what to do now.
It can be pretty simple.
Often for me it's just that.
Now I'm not telling you how to feel less stress by breathing in the moment.
I'm just saying that in the moment when you realise,
Whoa,
My state of mind is word up here,
It's busy,
It's full of thought.
I know what to do to settle myself.
You don't need anything to do from anybody else.
You don't need somebody else telling you how to feel less stressed.
But when you understand stress,
It's like understanding any other system.
So driving,
I often use driving as an example because it's something that as an adult we can remember not understanding and then understanding.
And that's what I'm pointing to,
Going from not understanding stress and how it really works and understanding it.
So when you learn to drive,
You might not be so good at slowing down,
For example.
As you learn to drive,
Like if I see my speedometer now going above the speed limit,
I know how to make it slow down really quickly and I don't really have to think about that.
And it's like that for us.
If you're feeling stressed,
I guarantee your thinking is fast,
Speed it up.
You're not at your best when you like that.
And when you start to understand that,
When you start to understand when you're not at your best,
When you've got sped up thinking,
You find ways to navigate through that.
Just the same as when you notice a dial on your car,
Giving you some information,
You kind of know what to do about that intuitively.
You don't really have to think,
Oh God,
I have to think back to my driving lesson.
You don't have to do that.
You just know that you need to put your foot on the brake or you need to go get some fuel or you need to reduce your revs.
That's something we're doing.
That's good for the cost of living folks,
58 miles per hour.
Do keep sharing that all the time.
It's the most economical driving speed.
It's quite amusing on the motorway.
You feel very slow,
But actually it makes a massive difference.
Anyway,
That's a side issue.
So my answer to how to feel less stressed is to understand stress.
Just like how to drive better is to understand how your car works.
It's really,
Really much more simple than we think.
And we don't need everybody else's tools and techniques and things and falls,
And how to do this and how to do that,
Putting into our heads,
Especially when our heads already super duper busy.
So hopefully you found that helpful.
And I'm not going to answer how to feel less stressed other than understand it and then you will automatically turning lots of love.
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 Downham,
Queen of Car.
Take care and keep listening.
