Do you need an hour to reset, or would thirty seconds do it?
Thich Nhat Hanh said smile, breathe and go slowly. I am hopeless at the going slowly. What I can do is use the small forced pauses. I left the phone at home to go and meet somebody, and I gave them my whole attention for the first time in ages. Alan Watts said muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone. You do not have to clear it. You just have to stop stirring for a moment.
One thing to try: At the next door handle, stand still for thirty seconds and breathe before you go through.
In this episode
(1:31) It is messy. Good days and bad days
(2:34) I left the phone at home and it changed the meeting
(4:15) Every small reset buys you a longer fuse
(5:02) Thirty seconds standing still is enough
(6:59) Let it settle a bit, again and again
(7:54) Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone
Support the podcast and join the Weekly Calm: stevenwebb.uk
Thank you for listening.
Steven
The question this answers
Do you need an hour to reset, or would thirty seconds do it?
We have decided that the whole spiritual business means forty minutes on a cushion punishing your back before the day starts. That is brilliant if it works for you. It does not work for me.
Smile, breathe and go slowly.
Thich Nhat Hanh
I am hopeless at the going slowly. I can manage the other two.
The heart of it
The small forced pauses in your day are already there. Traffic lights, a door handle, a car park, waiting for a kettle.
You are not clearing anything. You are just stopping the stirring for a moment.
I was about to head out to drop leaflets off, and I dropped my phone on the floor. Being paralysed, that was that. I could have got somebody, and I thought, leave it there.
So I went and met them without it. I gave them my whole attention, which I had not done in a long while, and it was a lovely conversation. The drive there and back was better too, because I was not reaching for anything.
Then there is the traffic light you resent because it is making you late.
You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.
Cormac McCarthy
You might have gone round the next corner into something. You have no idea.
Here is what the little pauses actually do. Every one of them adds a bit of length to your fuse. By the end of a day the fuse is short, and that is normal, and every timeout you took that day made it slightly longer than it would have been.
Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.
Alan Watts
All day you are stirring it and adding colour. Let it settle for thirty seconds now and again, and it gets messed up again, and you let it settle again. Otherwise you reach the end of the week with water so churned that you would need four days of meditation to see through it.
One small thing to try
At the next door handle, stand still for thirty seconds and breathe before you go through.
Nothing profound required. No humming. Just what is going on right now. If you want more, ask what you can hear without judging it, or what your eyes can actually see.
Then find the others. Red lights. Pulling into a car park. The interrupting phone call. Once an hour is plenty.
Questions people ask
Is thirty seconds really enough to count as practice?
It is enough to be worth doing, and doing it hourly beats one long sit you will skip on a bad week. Little and often is the whole trick.
How do I know the spiritual side is working at all?
If you are more compassionate, judging people less, accepting yourself more, and causing less trouble around you, it is working. Do not complicate it.
Can I not change the present moment at all?
No, and that is rather the point. What the pause buys you is awareness in this moment, and that gives you some say over the next one.
Read along
The transcript
It follows the audio. Press any line to jump there.
mindfulness · present-moment · buddhism · breath
Read the transcript
One of my favorite spiritual teachers has to be Thich Nhat Hanh
from Plum Village in France.
And one of his quotes just says, smile, breathe and go slowly.
Well, I struggle with the go slowly, but I can smile and breathe.
I'm Stephen Webb, and this is Stillness in the Storms podcast.
That helps you find a little inner peace when you need it most
and probably when you have it least.
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.
Do you know what?
That's great.
That's brilliant.
If that works for you, it doesn't work for me.
I struggle with that.
And I often talk about the spiritual journey as you know, in
all the different guises it has.
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.
There you go.
Let's not complicate it.
And it's messy.
It comes and goes.
It, you know, you get good days and bad days.
That's what happens in life.
That's part of life.
And I want to talk about using little timeouts that are forced upon
us as a spiritual practice.
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.
So I had to bundle them up and I had to drop them off.
So I phoned them and said, I'm on my way.
I'll be leaving in about 10 minutes.
That was fine.
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.
There was there in front of me.
What do I do?
There's not really a lot I could do.
I could get older, someone.
I've got carers and things like that.
But I thought, you know what?
Leave it there.
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.
I wasn't looking at the phone in front of me.
I wasn't thinking where I had to be.
I wasn't thinking.
I got to check my emails I could give them my full attention
and we had a wonderful conversation and it was really nice.
And it was nice driving there and driving back.
It was only five minutes around the corner, but it was nice
in the respect that I wasn't always reaching for my phone.
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.
Well, maybe it's saving you from something worse.
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.
I think that's true.
We get stuck in traffic and we think about, well, if I wasn't stuck
in traffic, I would have got there on time.
You don't know, you might have gone around the corner and you might
have had an accident or other things.
So just when these timeouts are forced upon us, just use them
as a practice.
What you do, just, ah, there you go, the old moment.
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.
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.
But every single time you use these little moments, you're giving
a little bit more time to the fuse.
All these little wonderful timeouts you can use to your advantage.
And Pema Chodran says interrupting our destructive habits
and awaking our heart is a work of a lifetime.
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.
Just sit there for 30 seconds.
Just stand there for 30 seconds.
Just become aware of your breath, breathing, calm, breathe
out, relax and just do that.
It's.
You don't have to do any kind of Holy Grail.
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.
And you can extend it further.
Just listen.
What can I hear without judgment?
Can you purely listen what's really going on?
What can my eyes see?
It may seem like these things are almost fluffy and woolly and
Childish and.
But what they do is they open your awareness up to a what's going
on right now.
Because that's the only thing you have control over.
It's the only thing you can do anything with.
Then don't get me wrong, you can't change the present moment.
I talk about this a lot right now.
The present moment is what it is.
But you can become aware in the present moment, and it gives
you the power and some control over the next moment.
Because you're here, you can respond rather than react.
And that's the wonderful gift of just.
The more and more you can build up these little moments, the
longer and longer the fuse will become.
You just pause in the fuse for a moment.
And you know, muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.
And that's Alan Watts.
So during the day, you're shuffling the water and you're throwing
more color in.
You're doing all these things.
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.
Let's settle a bit.
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.
Okay, slight exaggeration, but that's what it feels like at times.
You know, when I get into bed at night, my head is just racing.
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.
You know what it's like that same old.
But it's because I probably haven't used those timeouts during
the day.
So this podcast is a little bit shorter today.
I just want to encourage you to take those little timeouts and
enjoy them.
You know, as Alan Watts says, muddy water is best cleared by leaving
it alone.
But you can do it a little bit every time.
You don't have to clear the water.
You just let it settle.
Just a moment.
Just give me 30 seconds.
Let me sell.
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.
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.
You can do it for free or you can pay whatever you like.
And also thank you to anybody that donates coffees to this podcast
and to the Inner Peace Meditation podcast.
You're absolutely awesome.
Thank you very much.
You keep it ad free, you keep it to the point and podcasts would
not exist without you.
It's not cheap to host it and do it all.
And between this and the other podcast, they've had like something
like 5 million downloads now.
And thank you to you guys for donating the coffees.
You pay for that.
So thank you so much.
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.
