What if this year you do not need a big change, just a slightly different altitude?
Happy New Year. We had a year with more time than we have ever had and most of us did not use it. I did not finish my book. Nobody would have judged me for watching Netflix and taking the odd call. That is the trap. You cannot have peace without some progress, and you cannot have progress without some peace. People will not start the climb unless they can do the whole mountain today, and that is exactly why they never start.
One thing to try: Pick the smallest version of the thing. Do that one. Tomorrow do it again.
In this episode
(1:35) I want you to have the best year, and I mean something specific by it
(2:33) We were all going to read books and get fitter
(4:13) Twenty years old, and the country music channel
(5:27) Nobody would have judged me for doing nothing
(6:29) Adulthood takes hold, but there are still small things
(7:56) Peace and progress need each other
(8:59) Halfway up the mountain today, the rest tomorrow
Support the podcast and join the Weekly Calm: stevenwebb.uk
Thank you for listening.
Steven
The question this answers
What if this year you do not need a big change, only a slightly different altitude?
Recorded on the second of January, after a year in which most of us had more time than we have ever had and did almost nothing with it.
The heart of it
You cannot have peace without some progress, and you cannot make progress without some peace.
People will not start unless they can climb the whole mountain today, which is exactly why they never start.
Nobody else's expectation of you is your business. Your own is.
I came home from Salisbury spinal unit at twenty, into a manual chair because my ego would not accept an electric one. I was not that disabled, thank you.
The carers got me up, sat me in the front room, came back at lunchtime, and left me there until my parents got in. Television in front of me. Sky had just arrived so we had thirty channels instead of three. At the weekend my friends took me into town.
Honestly? For a twenty year old that was not a bad life. And nobody would have judged me if it had stayed that way.
That is the trap, and I want to be clear about it. If I had spent the last thirty years watching television and taking the odd call, cheerful and not snarling at anybody, people would have said he is doing well, good for him. Nobody would have said a word.
The expectations other people have of you are lower than you think, and they are not the ones that matter. The one that matters is the picture you have of the life you would like, which most of us dismiss because we cannot see how to reach it.
You are not required to reach it. You are allowed to go some of the way this year.
Progress is starting the dishes when you are full and settled on the sofa.
That is the size of it. Turn the television off and write one page. Make two phone calls. One decent meal.
One small thing to try
Pick the altitude rather than the summit.
Ask one honest question: do I want to be doing exactly this at the end of the year? Some of it, probably. Not all of it.
Then choose the smallest daily thing that points at the difference, and do that. Nobody who has built anything did it overnight. They did a little each day, which is dull and is the whole method.
Questions people ask
Is this a New Year resolutions episode?
It is the opposite. Resolutions are the whole mountain by February. This is asking how much higher you would like to be by December, which is a question you can actually answer.
Why does progress matter for peace?
Because they feed each other. Sitting still with things undone is not restful, and running flat out with no peace does not last. You need a bit of both or you get neither.
What if my life is genuinely limited?
Then work with the room you have, which is what I have been doing for thirty years. The size of the step is not the point. Whether it is pointing anywhere is.
Read along
The transcript
It follows the audio. Press any line to jump there.
resilience · purpose · change · disability
Read the transcript
Welcome to my podcast.
And first of all, I want to say happy New Year.
It's.
I think some of us.
Be nice to see 2020 behind us.
I think that's a collective side release.
A relief at that part.
What's 2021 have in store for us?
Well, well, to be quite honest, it really is down to what
we do with it.
I really do believe this.
I think my life is a testament to that.
So in this podcast, you know, first of all, thank you for joining
me.
I want to talk about not settling for the life you currently
have.
You don't need to do that.
And I'm going to use my life as an example.
I'm severely paralyzed and I could have so easily settled for
less of a life.
But more about that in a moment.
I'm Stephen Webb and I'm your host of Stillness in the Storms podcast
that helps you to prepare and get through difficult times and have
a little peace during those storms.
And if you haven't already, it would be awesome if you could give
this review, give this podcast a review.
That would be amazing.
And thank you.
And it just helps it to go through the ranks and it helps more
people hear it.
And the more people that hear it, the more people it might help.
And there's always someone that needs to hear the odd message.
And even if it's not you that needs to hear this message today,
one of your friends may need to hear this message.
So sharing and giving a review would be awesome.
And you can always pause it and give a review.
Now.
That'd be amazing.
Just a honest review.
Few lines, but the points I want to make.
You know, it's new Year, and I want you to have the best possible
year, and I don't mean the best possible year of like, going
from where you are right now to the top of the mountain, achieve
all your goals and have the most amazing 2021, but just move
on a little bit from where we are.
Very, very many of us, very many of us, many of us wanted to
achieve so much in 2020.
And when it came in, and even when the lockdown came in, I was
like, well, I'm going to write my book.
I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that.
And I didn't capitalize on it.
The world stopped just for a few weeks.
I know if you're a frontline worker or something like that, it
didn't stop for you, but for many of us, it did.
Many of us, it enabled us to just breathe a sigh of relief.
The World slowed down, we can get off just for a moment.
But we didn't use the time, we didn't capitalize on it.
We were going to read books, we were going to get fitter, we were
going to lose weight, we were going to do all these different things.
I was going to finish my book and get it out and none of these
things actually happened.
Certainly didn't for me.
And achieving the best possible life isn't about suddenly
going right.
This year I'm going to achieve everything.
I'm going to be my ideal weight, I'm going to get my perfect
job, I'm going to do everything I've ever wanted to achieve
and by summer I'm going to be the best possible version of me.
Well, it doesn't quite work like that.
Outside worlds always looking in, judging us or that's what the
way we feel.
And I've been thinking about it more recently about my life and
you know, we start to reflect at the end of the year and I'm reflecting
on my life and I remember coming home from hospital and this
was what in 1992, coming into 93, I, I came home from hospital
after spending 12 months in Salisbury spiny unit and other time
I was in a electric manual wheelchair.
I did not have an electric wheelchair.
You know, my ego wouldn't let me have it at that time.
I'm not that disabled, I don't need an electric wheelchair.
And I was in a manual wheelchair they'd provided for me.
And I was sat in my front room just a few meters away from where
I am, where I am now, a TV in front of me.
And after the carers got me out of bed in the morning, they would
leave me sat in that chair until after lunch and they would
come back and they would do me lunch, they would do my leg bag and
anything that was needed and then leave me there until my parents
got home in the evening.
And you know, I was about 20 years old at the time and that was
okay.
We had cmt, the country music channel.
Country music television or something.
It was quite new in the uk, so that's pretty cool.
I like my country music.
And suddenly with sky we had like 30 channels instead of three.
Life was pretty damn good and come the weekend and all my friends
would come and get me and we would go into town or go to a nightclub
and you know, my life, I gotta be honest, for a 20 year old that
was pretty well all right.
I didn't have to do all the cleaning and tidying up.
I didn't have to do all the hoovering and putting the bins out
that I had to before my accident.
And if I continue my life like that now, and I was still now watching
Netflix all day just sitting in front of the computer doing YouTube,
which essentially I do that quite a lot of the day.
But if I just did that and I didn't stand on the council and I
didn't do my podcast like I'm doing now, my YouTube channel, and
go live and write in my book and do my blog, if I didn't do those
kind of things and help as many of you as I can go through difficult
times, no one would have judged me for it.
They would have gone, well, you know, he's paralyzed just below
the neck.
If he just watches Netflix and goes on the odd zoom call with friends
and he, he's just happy and he smiles and gets on his life and doesn't
snarl at every little thing and doesn't isn't really grumpy.
They go, he's living a good life.
I don't blame him, you know, he's pretty well, doing all right.
But then people go, well now he's doing amazing because he's doing
these other things.
The thing is, no one would have judged me for not stepping up
and doing more than what I was expected to do.
Everybody has this expectation of what the level of what other people
should achieve.
Well, a, we should forget that, forget what other people's
expectations of us are.
That's, that's their problem, not yours.
But we do have an expectation of what we want to achieve and we
should take notice of that.
We should go, well, wait a minute, I, I wanted to do this, I
wanted to do that.
And I'm not really doing much of that in my life.
And I know adulthood takes hold and you have children and things
take a turn and we don't always achieve, but there is things
you can do.
There is those little things you can do on a daily basis that
will help you to get closer to the life that you would like to live
or the legacy you would like to leave.
Those little, small steps every single day that we don't tend
to do.
And it might be a few press ups, it might be making a couple
of phone calls, you know, eating one healthy meal or something
like that.
It really, I don't know what it would be for you, but what do
you want to achieve this year?
How far up your mountain?
Because we have a glimpse, all of us have in our mind somewhere
of the ideal life we would like to Live.
We often dismiss it and go, it's not possible for me.
I don't have the money, I don't have the brains, I don't have
the ability to do it.
So we kind of dismiss it.
But really, should we really dismiss it completely?
Can we not go part of the way towards it each year?
Even if we don't get there, are we going to enjoy moving towards
it?
You know, progress and peace are the two things that we really,
really want.
And, well, freedom as well.
And that's a different podcast about freedom and things like that.
But we want progress and peace.
And you cannot have peace unless you have some progress.
And you cannot have progress unless you have some peace.
So it's kind of a paradox, you know, not a paradox, but you need
them both.
And when I talk about progress, it, you know, if you're
sat on the sofa after a big meal or something like that, and
the dishes need doing, go in and starting the dishes is progress.
You feel happier.
We feel happier when we're making progress from our current
position.
You know, whether it's turning off the Netflix and writing that
one page, or we don't have to achieve everything we're setting
out to do.
We just have to make progress towards that.
And then we feel much happier.
We go to bed and we sleep better at night.
I'm just making that little bit of progress there.
And those little bits of progress will really improve your
life over time.
James Clear says that in Atomic Habits, it's.
It's the little changes that are the massive.
Have massive impact on your life.
People often want big changes.
You know, unless they can climb halfway up the mountain today
and do the other half tomorrow, they're not interested
in starting.
And they don't realize that everybody that has managed to achieve
a lot of the stuff in their lives, they didn't do it overnight.
They did it with a little, little bit each day.
A little bit each day.
You know, everybody that's grown their YouTube channel or everybody
has wrote a book.
None of them did it overnight.
They did it a little beach day.
So, you know, be honest with yourself.
Okay?
Be honest with yourself.
You know, what do you want to achieve this year?
What direction would you like to be going in?
You know, do you want to be still doing what you're doing today
at the end of this year?
And just some of the things.
Yeah, not all of the things.
Not all the things.
I'm not saying go out and do anything radical like packing your
job or move away or anything like that.
I'm talking about decide the attitude, the altitude that you want
to get to decide how much peace you want and then work towards
it.
I hope that helps.
Hope that helps.
The next podcast is 10 things is really awesome about being severely
paralyzed.
It's a bit of fun really, but it's got a really important point
to it.
That's the next podcast and the aim is to put a podcast out 11am
every Friday morning UK time.
So this one here, not quite that time, but every Friday, 11am
Keep an eye out for stillness in the storms.
Please subscribe, Enjoy.
Leave a review.
That'd be amazing.
You know, the podcast is about giving you some stillness and inner
peace, giving you the wisdom and courage and the strength to deal
with life when it sideswipes you.
And want to thank you for joining me today.
You know, I'm deeply humbled and grateful.
I love the feedback I get from these podcasts and it means so much
and it means more that you get something from it and that's the
feedback I like.
So if you'd like to leave a review, that would be amazing and
awesome.
And my website is stevenweb.com and it really made
my day.
If you head over there and booking a coffee with me, I'd like
to know you, my audience.
You know, I want to know a bit about you.
So booking for a coffee for me completely free, 15 minutes and perhaps
you can ask me some questions and I can answer your questions on
the next podcast.
Who knows?
Well, the next one after the one about my 10 things that is really
awesome about being severely paralyzed.
Take care guys.
Have an amazing weekend and I'll chat to you again next Friday,
