Episode 142
The Art of Slowing Down: Spiritual Timeouts
Links to Steven Webb's podcast and how you can support his work.
- Donate paypal.me/stevenwebb
- Steven's courses, podcasts and links: stevenwebb.uk
Taking little timeouts can be a powerful spiritual practice. I’m Steven Webb, and today we dive into how those forced pauses in our day can help us find inner peace, even when life feels chaotic. We often think that spirituality means lengthy meditation sessions, but it doesn’t have to be that complicated. Instead, we can use everyday moments—like waiting at a traffic light or taking a breath before a meeting—to reconnect with ourselves. Let’s explore how these simple breaks can help us manage stress and stay present, making our spiritual journey a lot more manageable and meaningful.
Finding peace in a fast-paced world can be a daunting task, but it’s all about perspective. This podcast episode dives into the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh and the simple yet profound practice of taking timeouts to reconnect with ourselves. I share my own experiences, noting that while I can smile and breathe, the challenge often lies in slowing down. The message here is that spirituality can be found in the everyday moments, not just in long meditation sessions or complicated practices.
Throughout our conversation, I encourage listeners to embrace the forced pauses in their daily lives, such as waiting at traffic lights or dealing with interruptions. These moments can be transformed into opportunities for mindfulness, helping us to breathe, reset, and refocus. By allowing ourselves to take these timeouts, we can cultivate a sense of calm that permeates our lives, helping us navigate the chaos with more grace and clarity.
I remind everyone that the spiritual journey is not a straight line; it’s filled with ups and downs, and that’s perfectly okay. It’s about becoming more compassionate toward ourselves and recognizing that we’re all doing our best. By integrating these small moments of stillness into our day, we can create a more peaceful existence and ultimately allow ourselves to respond to life rather than react. This episode serves as a gentle nudge to appreciate the little pauses that life offers us and to use them as tools for growth and awareness.
Takeaways:
- Thich Nhat Hanh teaches us to smile, breathe, and take things slow in life.
- Spiritual growth isn't just about long meditations; it's about finding peace in small moments.
- Using forced timeouts can help us reconnect with ourselves and find inner calm.
- Compassion and self-acceptance are signs that your spiritual journey is making progress.
- Life's ups and downs are normal; accepting this messiness is part of the journey.
- Each little moment of stillness helps us build a longer fuse to manage stress better.
Transcript
One of my favorite spiritual teachers has to be Thich Nhat Hanh from Plum Village in France.
Speaker A:And one of his quotes just says, smile, breathe and go slowly.
Speaker A:Well, I struggle with the go slowly, but I can smile and breathe.
Speaker A:I'm Stephen Webb, and this is Stillness in the Storms podcast.
Speaker A:That helps you find a little inner peace when you need it most and probably when you have it least.
Speaker A:And on today's podcast, I just want to talk about using these little timeouts as ways of a spiritual practice, because we often think the whole spiritual journey and enlightenment and waking up has to be about 40 minutes in the morning, sitting on a cushion and punishing our backs, and then we've got to read books and we've got to do all these things.
Speaker A:Do you know what?
Speaker A:That's great.
Speaker A:That's brilliant.
Speaker A:If that works for you, it doesn't work for me.
Speaker A:I struggle with that.
Speaker A:And I often talk about the spiritual journey as you know, in all the different guises it has.
Speaker A:If you are becoming more compassionate, you're judging other people less, you're starting to accept yourself more and you are suffering less and you're causing less suffering and arguments and all that around you, your spiritual journey is working.
Speaker A:There you go.
Speaker A:Let's not complicate it.
Speaker A:And it's messy.
Speaker A:It comes and goes.
Speaker A:It, you know, you get good days and bad days.
Speaker A:That's what happens in life.
Speaker A:That's part of life.
Speaker A:And I want to talk about using little timeouts that are forced upon us as a spiritual practice.
Speaker A:So I was about to leave earlier on because I had to get out to meet some friends of mine and I had to deliver some leaflets because they're going to deliver some leaflets for me.
Speaker A:So I had to bundle them up and I had to drop them off.
Speaker A:So I phoned them and said, I'm on my way.
Speaker A:I'll be leaving in about 10 minutes.
Speaker A:That was fine.
Speaker A:I put down the phone, I went and put my tray on the bed and all that, and I dropped the phone on the floor.
Speaker A:There was there in front of me.
Speaker A:What do I do?
Speaker A:There's not really a lot I could do.
Speaker A:I could get older, someone.
Speaker A:I've got carers and things like that.
Speaker A:But I thought, you know what?
Speaker A:Leave it there.
Speaker A:So I left the house and I went down and I met them and it was lovely because I could give them my full attention.
Speaker A:I wasn't looking at the phone in front of me.
Speaker A:I wasn't thinking where I had to be.
Speaker A:I wasn't thinking.
Speaker A:I got to check my emails I could give them my full attention and we had a wonderful conversation and it was really nice.
Speaker A:And it was nice driving there and driving back.
Speaker A:It was only five minutes around the corner, but it was nice in the respect that I wasn't always reaching for my phone.
Speaker A:So I want you to think about all the little timeouts that are forced upon you, the ways to disconnect and things like that, and think about in the way of, you know, we pull up to traffic lights and we often get annoyed and we often like, oh, you know, it's going to make me late.
Speaker A:Well, maybe it's saving you from something worse.
Speaker A:You know, one of my favorite quotes I say quite often Here, Cormac McCarthy, you never know what worse luck your bad luck saves you from.
Speaker A:I think that's true.
Speaker A:We get stuck in traffic and we think about, well, if I wasn't stuck in traffic, I would have got there on time.
Speaker A:You don't know, you might have gone around the corner and you might have had an accident or other things.
Speaker A:So just when these timeouts are forced upon us, just use them as a practice.
Speaker A:What you do, just, ah, there you go, the old moment.
Speaker A:And it's just a way of, if you can just let the world settle in those moments during the day, they stop building up quite so much.
Speaker A:So when things do hit you, you just reset already and you can do it then of course, by the end of the day and your fuse is shorter and things like that, I get it.
Speaker A:But every single time you use these little moments, you're giving a little bit more time to the fuse.
Speaker A:All these little wonderful timeouts you can use to your advantage.
Speaker A:And Pema Chodran says interrupting our destructive habits and awaking our heart is a work of a lifetime.
Speaker A:And I think it's really just using these little moments, like walking through a door, getting in the car, putting up in a car park, just anything you have to do to make a transition, just use it.
Speaker A:Just sit there for 30 seconds.
Speaker A:Just stand there for 30 seconds.
Speaker A:Just become aware of your breath, breathing, calm, breathe out, relax and just do that.
Speaker A:It's.
Speaker A:You don't have to do any kind of Holy Grail.
Speaker A:You don't have to sit down, you don't have to hum, you don't have to think of anything profound and deep, just what's going on.
Speaker A:And you can extend it further.
Speaker A:Just listen.
Speaker A:What can I hear without judgment?
Speaker A:Can you purely listen what's really going on?
Speaker A:What can my eyes see?
Speaker A:It may seem like these things are almost fluffy and woolly and Childish and.
Speaker A:But what they do is they open your awareness up to a what's going on right now.
Speaker A:Because that's the only thing you have control over.
Speaker A:It's the only thing you can do anything with.
Speaker A:Then don't get me wrong, you can't change the present moment.
Speaker A:I talk about this a lot right now.
Speaker A:The present moment is what it is.
Speaker A:But you can become aware in the present moment, and it gives you the power and some control over the next moment.
Speaker A:Because you're here, you can respond rather than react.
Speaker A:And that's the wonderful gift of just.
Speaker A:The more and more you can build up these little moments, the longer and longer the fuse will become.
Speaker A:You just pause in the fuse for a moment.
Speaker A:And you know, muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.
Speaker A:And that's Alan Watts.
Speaker A:So during the day, you're shuffling the water and you're throwing more color in.
Speaker A:You're doing all these things.
Speaker A:You imagine if every single time you had a little timeout, you could just let the water settle a bit, and then it gets messed up a little bit, and you go into meetings, the kids call, kids call you, or things go wrong and it gets messed up a little bit, and then you get another little timeout, a little walk around the corner.
Speaker A:Let's settle a bit.
Speaker A:And every time, you just let us settle back instead of getting to the end of the week or the end of the month or maybe even just the end of the day, and the water is so turbulent and so colored that you've got to sit down for four and a half days in meditation just to get a moment's peace.
Speaker A:Okay, slight exaggeration, but that's what it feels like at times.
Speaker A:You know, when I get into bed at night, my head is just racing.
Speaker A:And even if I get sleep for a few hours, I'm waking up 5:00 in the morning and I replay the inside timer.
Speaker A:You know what it's like that same old.
Speaker A:But it's because I probably haven't used those timeouts during the day.
Speaker A:So this podcast is a little bit shorter today.
Speaker A:I just want to encourage you to take those little timeouts and enjoy them.
Speaker A:You know, as Alan Watts says, muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.
Speaker A:But you can do it a little bit every time.
Speaker A:You don't have to clear the water.
Speaker A:You just let it settle.
Speaker A:Just a moment.
Speaker A:Just give me 30 seconds.
Speaker A:Let me sell.
Speaker A:And if you just do that, I don't know, once an hour, the red traffic lights, the closed door, the interrupting phone call, all of those things, just use them as triggers to take a step back and just remain calm in the moment.
Speaker A:And that reminds me, I got Stillness in the Storms course that I've done that you can take and I've got a really comfortable way that you can pay for it.
Speaker A:You can do it for free or you can pay whatever you like.
Speaker A:And also thank you to anybody that donates coffees to this podcast and to the Inner Peace Meditation podcast.
Speaker A:You're absolutely awesome.
Speaker A:Thank you very much.
Speaker A:You keep it ad free, you keep it to the point and podcasts would not exist without you.
Speaker A:It's not cheap to host it and do it all.
Speaker A:And between this and the other podcast, they've had like something like 5 million downloads now.
Speaker A:And thank you to you guys for donating the coffees.
Speaker A:You pay for that.
Speaker A:So thank you so much.
Speaker A:Apart from that, head over to stephenweb.uk you can message me, get in contact, do my course or just take a little time out.
Speaker A:Take care, I love you and bye for now.
