Compassion

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.

Today I want to talk about compassion and I'm probably going to go down a couple of veins with this but we'll just see how it plays out.

So I was talking to somebody recently and they were complaining about the behaviour of their colleagues at work and I could hear in their tone of voice that they were getting quite riled about the behaviour of these people.

These people should know this behaviour by now,

This is part of our rules and regulations,

They've been trained on it,

They've,

You know,

Why don't they understand and we've just had an incident related to this kind of thing.

Is it not front of their minds that they should be doing this particular activity to ensure safety,

It was a safety matter.

And as I listened to them getting more and more riled up about what they were saying about what these other people weren't doing right,

I really saw,

Because it's really easy to see it in other people,

Can't always see it in ourselves,

But I really saw how the process they were going through of getting more and more caught up and more and more upset about what these other people had done was changing how they were feeling.

And in a conversation with that person,

I directed them to what I am going to point you to today.

And that is a multi-layered thing,

As these things are,

About compassion.

The first thing to know about how you're feeling about somebody else's behavior is that 100% of the time that isn't coming from them.

You don't have to like everyone's behavior.

You don't have to like the people who have wronged you.

You don't have to like any of that,

But it is helpful to know that the feeling you're feeling isn't coming from them.

The feeling you're feeling is coming from thought in the moment.

That's how that system works inside you.

You think it and you feel it.

That's how it works,

Which is why when this person was relaying this story to me and getting really wound up,

They weren't even at work.

They were with me,

Talking to me.

The thing that they were talking about happened the previous day.

And they were still feeling that thinking about those people's behavior.

So that's the first thing to know,

The first thing to know.

And this is rock solid,

Folks.

This is principles.

This is fact.

This is happening all the time.

Whether you like it or not,

Like gravity,

It is the truth.

And there is something so powerful in knowing that,

And this is why I am saying today that compassion is part of your self care.

And the first time I saw this with almost with a boom of insight was last summer.

It must be about a year ago,

Actually,

That my son had a car crash.

He was absolutely fine.

He was so fine that the message I received from him went a bit like this.

It started with,

It wasn't my fault,

Mum,

But I've crashed my car.

And I wasn't in Leeds where I live.

I was away on holiday in Bournemouth,

270 or so miles away.

So a long,

Long way away from where he was.

So obviously having received that message,

I got on the phone to him.

And one of my first questions was,

You know,

Are you OK?

Never mind the car.

You OK?

What did they say at the hospital?

And his answer was,

I haven't been to hospital.

So I said,

Well,

Didn't an ambulance come to the crash?

No,

An ambulance hadn't come.

Well who picked you up from the crash?

And he told me that his dad had picked him up.

And of course,

Then the realisation that his dad had picked him up from a car crash where his car was actually written off,

It's a pretty serious crash,

And not taken him to the hospital to get checked out.

And initially,

The well of feeling was so intense,

The anger,

The what a flipping idiot or perhaps some slightly stronger language than that.

Why would you not take your kids to the hospital?

Just out of character.

Who thinks like that?

You know,

Ranty,

Ranty,

Ranty,

Angry,

Angry,

Angry feeling horrendous to the point of angry shaking.

I mean,

There when you like angry shaking,

I was angry shaking.

And then I just had this insight,

Which was probably helped a little bit by the physical separation between me and my ex-husband and the thought that he was sitting in his house with no knowledge of me sitting in a tent in Bournemouth,

Ranting my head off about his behaviour.

And all of a sudden,

It just fell away as soon as I saw that I was creating this horrible feeling inside me as soon as I saw it,

It just it just fell away.

It was almost like I'd spotted the gremlin.

And by spotting the gremlin and putting out in the light,

I melted it.

That's an 80s reference for anybody watching.

If you haven't watched the gremlin film,

That's where you'll have to go to understand that reference.

So,

In that moment,

I realised that he couldn't be making me feel this way when it was something he'd done the day before,

Or earlier that day,

He was at home,

I was in it just couldn't work that way.

It had to be coming from me.

And then it fell away.

And then I had this moment of huge realisation that in that moment,

Much as many people I spoke to afterwards could see that they would take their child's hospital in that moment,

He didn't have that thinking available to him.

Full stop.

It wasn't that he thought I should do that and then didn't,

Or we might have done but that's what made sense.

Whatever the thinking was that made sense.

It meant that my ex-husband didn't take my son to the hospital.

And all of a sudden,

I just felt so much better.

I felt so much lighter.

And from that place,

I had a quiet mind and I took the action that made sense.

And that came from some insight around,

Well,

You know,

Who can I get to persuade my son he should,

You know,

18 year old lads are like,

I don't need to go to the hospital.

But actually his girlfriend and his girlfriend's mother were there.

They,

They became my,

My kind of aid on that and got Jack to the hospital,

Which was phenomenal,

You know,

And sorted him out.

And he was fine.

He had whiplash and concussion,

But he was fine,

Of course.

But I think if I'd stayed in that ranty,

Unpleasant feeling,

I would not have taken that evasive action.

I wouldn't have done what I needed to do.

I wouldn't have had the insight.

I wouldn't have had the quietness of mind to make a decision to help,

To help my son in the way that I thought he needed helping.

So this is what I'm saying when I'm saying that compassion,

Understanding that everyone is doing the best they can with the thinking,

Which looks real to them,

That it means that we can go through thought processes and journeys around,

Well,

I should have taken my hospital,

Shouldn't we could have had that conversation.

He could have made my husband have that conversation.

I'm not inside his head and I don't wish to be there.

But at the point at which the decision was made,

The thought that looked sensible was that Jack was fine and he would go off and be fine.

And that's all he had.

And so it means that no matter what somebody is doing,

No matter how wrong it looks to you,

No matter how it looks like it's bad for the whole country or whatever else,

You know,

At the moment,

There's some,

There's a lot of anger around between people who are making decisions that other people don't like,

As there always are in the world,

Of course.

And it's sad to see that because it's so simple when we understand that everybody's doing the best they can with the thinking that looks real to them.

And that that compassion,

That feeling for other people brings about a nicer feeling in us.

And that's why it's part of self-care.

Because if you're like this all the time about other people's behaviour,

That's not doing you any good.

And as a person who burnt out probably contributed to by a lot of ranting about the people's behaviour,

That was one of my stresses was me ranting about other people's behaviour,

Not the people's behaviour,

But me ranting about it.

I can honestly say that coming from a place of just going,

You know,

Actually they're doing the best.

They've only got this thinking available.

That's what they've got.

There isn't anything else.

It's part of my self-care.

It's part of me looking after myself and not ending up in that state of,

Of,

Of riledness about other people's behaviour.

I'm not sure if riledness is a word,

But it now is.

So all there is to do here is to bring some awareness and the awareness that I invite you to bring is to your feelings.

Your feelings are coming from thought in the moment,

Not from anybody or anything.

When your feelings are off,

It's telling you that thought is off,

Not everything else around you.

So just noticing that can be really helpful.

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 Clare Downham,

Queen of Calm.

Take care and keep listening.