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.
And today is an invitation and the invitation is to get curious.
I mean the invitation is to get curious anyway but the invitation today is to get curious about the source of your feelings.
So there's all sorts of places that we may have been told our feelings are coming from.
So for example our circumstances.
That's a really great example.
Let's start with that.
That it can look like the things in our lives,
The things that are happening,
The things that are occurring,
The things that we don't like in our lives are what's creating our experience and that if we create a different circumstance,
That we make a different circumstance in our lives,
That we can feel better.
There's another story.
I mean I suppose other people's behaviour probably could be categorised as being a circumstance anyway but there's also something around other people's behaviour.
The idea that other people's behaviour is the source of our feelings.
And I think that's a level at which an awful lot of us live for a long time.
I certainly lived there for a long time.
My ex-husband could create my feelings,
My hard job could create my feelings,
That being too busy could create my feelings,
That that was where they all came from from outside of me.
And then I think I went through a phase of believing that my feelings came from some kind of damage that was done to me in the past.
I felt the way I felt today because of some kind of damage that had happened to me in the past.
And what's coming to me now which has come through really recently is that that just doesn't quite make sense so much anymore because it's like not a proper equation is it?
It doesn't work all the time.
It often doesn't work that way so our circumstances quite often don't change and yet we change how we feel.
Circumstances seem something that we think is going to feel better for us,
A circumstance change that we think when we get there we'll feel better and we'll feel different and we get there and we don't.
And so the invitation today and always actually in these conversations is to get curious about that in your own life.
And there's some fun ways to do that.
There really is just in the way of bringing some awareness to ourselves.
I mean the other way where it really doesn't seem to work that the circumstances create feelings is other people isn't it?
We all have people around us who are responding differently to exactly the same circumstance and sometimes we might be quite puzzled by that.
Why do they feel so okay about this circumstance and I don't feel good about it or why does that person,
Why are they making such a fuss about that thing?
I'm not bothered about it.
And a fun example of this is emails in your inbox.
So I'm a person who if I get much above kind of a hundred emails in my inbox I get a bit touchy not touchy but I don't like it.
I don't like the feeling of having more than 100 emails in my inbox.
So at that point I do tend to do something about it,
Have a little tidy up,
Reply to some emails even and file some away,
Delete some whatever else it is and when it's like below when it starts to get below 100 I'm kind of okay with it.
But I know people who've got thousands of emails in their inbox and I don't know whether it bothers them or not but it doesn't bother them enough to do anything about it.
And also you know if you have got 5,
000 emails in your inbox have you noticed how that circumstance stays exactly the same but you don't always feel the same about it.
Some days it might seem really overwhelming and it might make you know you might get the sense of your feeling quite you know anxious about it or worried about it or overwhelmed by it.
And other days you really just don't care at all that it just doesn't bother you one little bit and that is it's worth just noticing that.
So other fun places to notice this idea of you know get curious about where your feelings are going wrong and that perhaps the rules we've been told about where our feelings coming from might be wrong are when you're having a shared experience with another person.
So a great example of this which we can now do again which is brilliant is that we can go to the cinema and if you are watching a movie with somebody else just you know enjoy the movie but just notice how you know sometimes you are laughing to the point of nearly bursting and the person next to you isn't even like this but it's not even funny.
And the same the other way around and you know for me it's invariably I'm crying and other people are crying at the movie because I get very emotional very easily these days and so I'll be crying at a movie and the people around me won't they'll be usually laughing at me crying because they don't know why I'm crying they don't understand it.
And the other place that's interesting is music you know you play certain pieces of music and you know the teenagers in the house will be like what is that old-fashioned dirge and the adults will be like yay this is great and vice versa you know that there are some tunes that I'm like oh who's that music still are we calling that music and I don't like it and it doesn't feel nice I don't feel good listening to it but there's just one piece of music isn't there and there's a really like there's a really beautiful analogy around this that I heard once I can't remember who shared it at first it might have been George Pansky actually but it's about dandelions and a dandelion is a yellow flower with green leaves you know that's pretty much it about dandelion it's very useful food for the bees in the early part of the spring now if you're a gardener you may have some quite strong feelings about dandelions you might not like them you might want rid of them you might want them not to be in your garden you might do everything to try and kill them you might try and dig them up you might be quite vociferous about that and quite vocal about blooming dandelions ruining my lawn I mean if you're the green keeper of some sports ground you probably really have some intense feelings about dandelions now if you're an environmentalist who knows that bees need dandelions and dandelions are kind of the first food of the bees as they're kind of coming into the into the spring then you you will be quite protective of the dandelion you'll feel quite you'll feel love towards it probably you'll feel you know you'll feel different you'll feel kind of have positive feelings I suppose I might call them towards the dandelion guess what though the dandelion is still a yellow flower has absolutely no ability to give people feelings it's just sitting there in the ground minding its own business but but there can be quite and then there'll be some people who can care less either way about dandelions but and there's a spectrum between the extremes of the grounds keep who's like every dandelion he needs to murder that second because it's ruining his ground and the person who knows that's the best food for the bees and they're they're like very loving of them like there's two extremes and there'll be every range of feelings about dandelions in between I mean I wonder what your feelings about dandelions are perhaps you don't have any perhaps you don't really care we've recently taken half of our garden and just we're left letting it go through its natural process of so we had dandelions and then we had clover that was really and we've got something else coming up now we've planted wildflowers and stuff for the bees so yeah I'm a dandelion lover there you go I've said it out loud in a public space I am I love dandelions so yeah so so the invitation really is to get some kind of curiosity bring some awareness to this idea that your feelings aren't coming from the places you thought they were that there's something inside each of us there's something unique to each of us that is bringing those feelings into our awareness and it isn't outside it's it's definitely inside so just get playful with that just get curious about it just notice how it's playing out in you and other people and start with some really quite trivial things like how many emails there are in your inbox or dandelions or music or movies or you know just fun stuff and keep it light so yeah get curious this is about raising awareness and nothing else 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 Claire Downer Queen of car take care and keep listening
