Staying Calm Under Pressure

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'm going to talk about staying calm under pressure but I'm perhaps going to give this a slight twist that you might not be expecting.

So I had a little experience kind of in the last few days where I received unexpectedly actually and with very little notice,

I'm not sure about this company's ethics,

But anyway the renewal quote for my website hosting and it just ever so slightly took my breath away but not in a good way.

I think it maybe made my eyes water a little bit.

It was such a big figure.

And what I noticed was that initially I was like,

Oh my God,

That's a massive amount of money.

That's awful.

Why is it so much?

A little bit of quite busy thinking,

Not quite a bit,

Quite a lot of busy thinking about the price,

About affording it,

About everything else that we tend to think about when bills come in when we're not expecting them.

But I noticed that.

I noticed the panicky feeling.

I noticed the sped up thinking.

And I knew,

I knew that I was not in a good place or a good enough place to actually decide what to do about this situation.

I did have some initial thoughts,

Which were something around perhaps renewing for less time.

This was a three year renewal quote,

So it was quite considerable.

But then I just kind of left it because I thought,

I'm a little bit wound up about this and I'm therefore not in a good place to make a decision.

Now that's the seeing that I found to be super duper beneficial is seeing that when we're wound up,

It's not the price of the renewal that's causing that feeling,

It's my relationship with the price of the renewal,

Which was fearful and upset and whatever else.

It's my perspective on the renewal figure.

And we can see that because perhaps if somebody else received that renewal figure,

They thought it's fine.

They can notice and just allow it to be paid whether or not they could really afford it.

For some people that wouldn't bring about anything at all.

And for other people will be in a much worse state of mind than me about a big bill like that.

And what I noticed was that as I just left it alone and thought,

Oh,

Which is what I usually do with things that seem to be,

You know,

That where my perspective is off and I'm feeling riled up about it,

I tend to find that leaving them alone for a bit is a good idea.

Because of course our system is built to reset naturally without us needing to do anything.

So it's really handy to have such a fabulous system within us that will,

You know,

Given time,

It will just naturally reset.

Not that much time to be fair because within quite a short space of time,

I can't even remember when I had the first thought.

I thought about contacting a guy I know called Sam who I have met a number of times at networking events.

I've had a one-to-one with him and I've recently just been on a little webinar that he held which was quite useful about building a membership.

So he popped into my head and I thought,

Oh,

I know he kind of builds websites for people and builds membership spaces and things like that.

I wonder if he does web hosting,

Just the hosting without me needing to actually have him do work on my website.

So I dropped him a message and then just had a wonderful experience of working with him in terms of very,

Very quickly within 48 hours,

My website and everything that needed to happen all happened seamlessly.

His communications was good.

I could pick up the phone if I wasn't sure about something.

The whole signup process was easy and within,

Yeah,

As I say,

Within a short space of time,

My website was moved and it was just a bit of nothing really.

And I've called this session Staying Calm Under Pressure because what I would really love you to see is the bit about pressure and staying calm,

Like under pressure.

Where is the pressure coming from?

Where is the pressure?

What is the pressure?

Well,

It's interesting to relate,

But if you're feeling a feeling of pressure,

It's not coming from your renewal bill for your website.

It's not coming from the thoughts of your fuel bills at the moment or the price of car,

You know,

Vehicle fuel.

It's not coming from your partner's behavior or anything else in life right now that seems,

And that is an illusion,

It seems to be creating pressure.

And of course,

Reinforced by the wonderful press that will tell us that things out there are creating pressure.

They're not.

They're not.

It doesn't mean you're not human for experiencing the feelings of stress and pressure from certain,

You know,

That seem to be coming from certain areas of life,

But it's just not true that it works that way.

It is our perspective on things that creates the pressure.

So it's a bit of a mixed up thing really when we say staying calm under pressure.

Well once you realize that the pressure is coming from you and that calm in actual fact really,

Which is I hope what you're seeing as you're listening to these sessions,

That calm is actually your natural state.

It's who you really are underneath the pressure that's created in the illusion of,

You know,

Via the illusion of thought by the misuse of the power of thought.

Then when you take the whole phrase staying calm under pressure,

Which we use a lot,

Don't we,

It all just starts to look a bit like it doesn't actually make sense,

Which is quite cool really because it's one less thing to do.

Yay!

Because I don't know about you but I've got a lot to do.

Does it feel like sometimes you're spinning the plates?

You know when you say you've got a plate full of things to do and your plate's already full,

But then it feels like we're spinning those plates while they're full and juggling some balls at the same time,

Doesn't it?

But that feeling of pressure isn't coming from,

It wouldn't even be coming from you spinning plates and juggling balls.

You would experience some pressure,

Probably most of us would.

That would be a human response to that.

But it would still be coming from our perspective because if we brought in a juggler they perhaps wouldn't have the same perspective or a child who really didn't care whether all the things fell to the ground or whatever.

Anyway,

I don't know why we've gone into a little tangent there about plates of food spinning and balls juggling,

But if you've got a lot on,

Which we all have,

Haven't we,

As a rule,

In the physical world we've all got quite a lot of things to do,

I think it's really helpful for this not to be another thing you've got to do.

You know you don't have to stay calm under pressure.

Then in the moment you are aware that you are creating pressure with your thinking,

Then you naturally fall back into calm.

It's seeing the creation of pressure.

It's seeing that pressurized feeling that's building inside you,

It's probably a panicky,

Messy,

Horrible feeling,

Is coming from your perspective on something.

It starts to make more sense to just kind of take a breath,

Pause,

You know,

Just take a moment,

Not carry on,

And not make decisions when you're in that place.

I don't think you've noticed the kind of decisions that you make when you're not in a good place.

If you're anything like me they all go a bit pear shaped,

Don't they?

You know,

Like the decision when we're feeling under pressure to communicate with somebody we love.

We do that in a not very nice way sometimes,

Don't we,

When we're feeling under pressure.

So it's a really interesting little phrase to explore is staying calm under pressure.

Perhaps we just don't need to be under pressure.

I think the other place I'm just going to,

Oh,

I have to squeeze this in now.

But the other place where this is relevant is really that it seems like to get things done we need to be under pressure.

And so we have to create the pressure in our thinking to get ourselves moving and to do things and then try and stay calm with the pressure that we've created ourselves.

Which is just ironic really when actually we all work better when we're calm,

Not when we're under pressure.

We just don't work well when we're under pressure.

We're a bit rubbish.

But I hear this a lot.

I've heard more than one person in the last couple of days say,

I don't know where I would be without the stress.

I don't know who I would be without it.

And that I really felt that in my heart and I felt very sad.

I could see the emotion in the person,

The people who were sharing things like that.

That they can't feel.

They don't feel like they can function without the stress,

Without the pressure that's there.

It doesn't have to be that way.

The calm is always available.

It's only ever a breath away.

That's all.

Sending 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 Claire Downer,

Queen of Calm.

Take care and keep listening.