Episode notes
What if you are already living your best possible life? Not the nicest one. The best one available, because it is the only one that happened.
We play what if all day. If the accident had not happened, if the appointment had not been missed, life would have been perfect. You do not know that. I could have been an idiot who killed somebody in a car two months later. You cannot run the other version, so you are comparing your real life to a life you invented. And there is no DeLorean. Twenty toilet seats in a shop and I still cannot pick the right one, so I am not sure I would trust my alternative timeline anyway.
One thing to try: Catch one what if today. Notice you are comparing a real thing to a thing you made up.
In this episode
- (1:15) What my blood pressure actually does
- (3:11) I could have been an idiot who killed somebody
- (4:12) We play the what if game all the time
- (8:03) If that had not happened, we would have been on time
- (9:14) The lowest point, and what I do not know about it
- (11:43) Twenty choices and I cannot pick one
- (12:48) A wall of toilet seats, including see through ones
- (13:58) Without a DeLorean you cannot change this moment
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The question this answers
What if you are already living your best possible life?
Not the nicest one available. The best one available, because it is the only one that actually happened.
The heart of it
- You are comparing your real life to a life you invented and cannot check.
- The alternative you are grieving might have been considerably worse.
- Too much choice makes us miserable about the thing we already picked.
People tell me I would have been successful if I had not broken my neck. Maybe. I was eighteen, I drove far too fast and I thought I was indestructible. I could have killed somebody two months later and spent the next decade in prison.
I am not saying that would have happened. I am saying neither of us knows, and only one of us is certain.
There is a good demonstration of this in politics. When a government handles something badly you can see it, because other countries did better and you have something to compare against. But imagine every country had handled it well and the worldwide death toll had been tiny. Nobody would have had anything to compare it to, so all anybody would talk about is the wrecked economy and the jobs, and the people who saved all those lives would be voted out for it.
You only ever see the road you took.
Same with the traffic jam. You are certain that without it you would have been on time and the day would have gone perfectly. Or you would have been two miles further on at exactly the wrong moment, and you would never have known the jam saved you.
My lowest point was not caused by my life being bad. It was caused by having a picture in my head of the life I was supposed to be living. Married, settled, never dating again, sorted. I was so busy with that version that I was not looking after the real one.
And here is the small proof. Close your eyes. Put yourself on a beach, waves coming in, sun on your face, birds. Now open them. Are you on a beach?
If you are now miserable about not being on a beach, that is the whole mechanism in four seconds.
One small thing to try
Catch yourself mid what if, and finish the sentence honestly.
If that had not happened, then what? You do not know. There is no DeLorean and there is no way to run the other version.
Then look at the one you have, which is the only one on offer today, and ask what you are going to do with it.
Questions people ask
Is it wrong to want things?
Not at all. I like concerts and books and music and I intend to keep wanting them. The problem is not preference. It is standing in your actual life comparing it unfavourably to an imaginary one.
Why does choice make it worse?
Because every option you did not take stays available in your head. I once went to buy a toilet seat, expecting to be five minutes, and found a wall of them in more colours than exist in nature. Some were see through. I came out with a plain white one and I am still not certain.
Is this just making the best of things?
It is narrower than that. It is noticing that the comparison you keep running is against something that does not exist, so you have been losing an argument with nobody.
In this episode
Read the transcript
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0:01Steven Webb: Hey, welcome to my podcast, Stillness in the Storms. I'm Steven Webb, your host, sometimes known as the Inner Peace
0:09Steven Webb: Guy, because I help people have a little inner peace. For this podcast, I want to convince you that you're
0:15Steven Webb: already living your best possible life.
0:19Steven Webb: Yeah, really. You know, me, seer, paralysed, I can't walk, my arms have got limited function, I've got a bit
0:26Steven Webb: of a sore throat at the moment. And I'm now going to convince you that I'm already living my best
0:33Steven Webb: possible life.
0:35Steven Webb: Really? Yep. Let's dive in.
0:41Steven Webb: So, okay, before my accident, if anybody had come and said to me that your life's going to end up
0:46Steven Webb: paralysed and you're not going to walk and you're going to have all these problems, you're going to have autonomic
0:52Steven Webb: dysreflexia, which, in short, is a life-threatening condition, that if something goes wrong below my level of injury.
1:00Steven Webb: So an ingrown toenail or um I need the toilet or I some,
1:08Steven Webb: I don't know, a pressure on my knee or something like that that's hurting me and causing me pain or
1:14Steven Webb: discomfort. It sends my blood pressure really, really high. And I'm not talking like 140 over 110
1:22Steven Webb: or something. I'm talking like in the 200s, over 140, 150, like excruciating headache pain um
1:30Steven Webb: where I go kind of blue. I start to sweat down one side. And if it isn't dealt with within
1:36Steven Webb: about 15, 20 minutes, there is a possibility of a stroke or even worse. And that can
1:44Steven Webb: happen virtually any time to me um And it happens, I don't know, a couple of times a month normally.
1:50Steven Webb: And my carers brilliantly just deal with it and everything's fine afterwards. And I'm
1:58Steven Webb: here sitting there thinking, well, am I really living the best possible version of my life? Well, okay, I could
2:04Steven Webb: be rich, I could be famous, I could be a movie star. I could be a humble, I don't know,
2:12Steven Webb: Baker with a large family, living in a really big home. I could be,
2:19Steven Webb: I don't know, a police officer. I could be anything, you know. But what am I? I'm a city councillor
2:25Steven Webb: and I quite enjoy doing that. I'm a mindfulness and meditation coach and I help people with that um
2:33Steven Webb: I'm a dad.
2:35Steven Webb: I was gonna say I'm a partner. I'm not at the moment, you know, I'm single, I have a roof
2:42Steven Webb: over my head, I have enough money to pay my bills. 50 of the time, I would say I.
2:50Steven Webb: But am I really living the best Possible version of my life.
2:55Steven Webb: Yes. And here's why look
3:01Steven Webb: people often say something like, well, I can see you has been really successful if you hadn't broke your neck
3:09Steven Webb: say Well I did break my neck. And you don't know, I could have been a real asshole and I
3:15Steven Webb: could have ended up two months later killing someone in a car and ended up in prison.
3:21Steven Webb: Yeah, but I don't think that would have happened to you. Well, you don't know, because I did drive rather
3:26Steven Webb: fast. I thought I was invincible. I was 18 years old, you know, I was doing dumb ass things I
3:34Steven Webb: wasn't caring about people. I wasn't. I was just caring about my. My kicks, my gratification. You
3:41Steven Webb: know, what happens if I did something worse, where I might have gone into, I don't know, some trade and
3:47Steven Webb: made a mistake and ended up killing lots of people? Or what if I ended up finding out that I
3:54Steven Webb: had a wonderful music voice, which I haven't.
3:58Steven Webb: But what happens if somebody liked my dosset tones? I don't know, my monotone? There's some bad music out there
4:06Steven Webb: somewhere. What if I ended up, you know, inventing something and becoming incredibly be rich Here's the thing. We play
4:13Steven Webb: these what if games all the time. The truth is, I don't know what all the alternatives were. I have
4:20Steven Webb: no idea, because we would never live them. We don't get the chance to live them. So while we're thinking
4:27Steven Webb: about the alternative as something wonderful and amazing, it may not have been. So when we start to
4:34Steven Webb: realise that, well, my alternative may not be great. It's like when we have a general election. You take
4:42Steven Webb: now with Donald Trump and Boris Johnson in the UK. They're both Republican and Conservative, which is quite right-wing
4:50Steven Webb: both of them.
4:52Steven Webb: And their handling of this COVID-19 crisis has been pretty bad. And you can say
5:00Steven Webb: it's been pretty bad because you can look at Germany and New Zealand and even Italy and Spain, where they
5:05Steven Webb: had a real big problem to begin with. They're really coping and the deaths are. And the infection rates are
5:11Steven Webb: massively down compared to us and America So we can say that they could
5:19Steven Webb: have handled this better. Now then, let's say Trump did not win the election and it was now the
5:27Steven Webb: Democrats and the Hillary Clinton was in power, let's say, because they're more left-wing and more socialists
5:34Steven Webb: um They close down the government, they closed or closed down the shops, they closed down the economy
5:41Steven Webb: and locked down everybody. But they only lost 5 000 people
5:47Steven Webb: And we closed down this country and we lost 2 000 people
5:52Steven Webb: Meanwhile, we've destroyed the economies because every country in the world's destroyed their economies. There isn't one economy that's
5:59Steven Webb: thriving right now.
6:03Steven Webb: But because we didn't see the alternative, the Democrats and Jeremy Corbyn the labor would be finished in this country
6:11Steven Webb: right now. They wouldn't be able to that coming the November election in America, the
6:19Steven Webb: Republicans would get in a massive majority because no one would have seen the alternative. No one would have known
6:26Steven Webb: what would have happened if Trump had gone in So
6:30Steven Webb: we tend to see the alternative through rose tinted glasses. What if Hillary was in with a lot less deaths.
6:36Steven Webb: Well, you wouldn't have had a lot well You would have had a lot less deaths, but you wouldn't have
6:41Steven Webb: known you had less deaths because you wouldn't have known the alternative. We do have the gift at the moment
6:47Steven Webb: of other countries messing it up so we can compare. But what if every country done incredibly well
6:55Steven Webb: and
6:58Steven Webb: we only had 80 000 deaths in the whole world?
7:03Steven Webb: Think about that for a moment. Every single country locked down and we destroyed the world's economies, businesses went under,
7:10Steven Webb: everything went terribly wrong economically, but it went really well. Regarding we managed to squash it,
7:18Steven Webb: maybe even just 10 000 deaths worldwide.
7:23Steven Webb: We wouldn't have any country or anywhere to compare ourselves to to say we did a good job. Instead, everybody
7:30Steven Webb: would be screaming about the economy, about their jobs, about all the other things because they wouldn't know of how
7:37Steven Webb: bad it could have been.
7:41Steven Webb: You see where I'm going? We don't know that the alternative would necessarily be better. But
7:48Steven Webb: when we're running late in the car, driving somewhere and someone cuts us up or someone stops us in
7:56Steven Webb: our journey or doesn't let us out and we end up late for the appointment, we're pissed off, we're mad,
8:02Steven Webb: we're annoyed. Because if that didn't happen, we think we'd be on time for the appointment, we wouldn't be stressed,
8:09Steven Webb: we wouldn't get anxious, I wouldn't have missed that bargain or whatever reason. We look at it as we would
8:16Steven Webb: have been on time and everything would have worked out perfect. Well, that's just bs. No, we don't know. Everything
8:22Steven Webb: would have worked out perfect. What
8:25Steven Webb: if that traffic jam has saved you from a terrible accident, but
8:30Steven Webb: you would never have known that accident would have existed without the traffic jam.
8:36Steven Webb: You know, it really is that um looking through our alternative through roasting to
8:44Steven Webb: glass illnesses So
8:47Steven Webb: if I sit here and look at my life right now and I constantly think that my other
8:55Steven Webb: life, the one in my head, the one I imagine would be better, I'm going to Be miserable. If
9:03Steven Webb: I think that if my long-term partner hadn't cheated on me, I'd be miserable. Well, if they hadn't cheated on
9:09Steven Webb: me would be living happily ever after. No, I wouldn't have had other girlfriends. I wouldn't have had ever fun
9:15Steven Webb: would I?
9:18Steven Webb: You know, perhaps I would have stayed with that other person and lived happily ever after we don't know. That's
9:25Steven Webb: the point. And when I hit the lowest point in my life, I was at the lowest point in my
9:30Steven Webb: life. Not because my life was bad, but
9:35Steven Webb: it was because I had in my mind an alternative of what I thought it was going to be. I
9:42Steven Webb: was going to get married, live happily ever after, never have to date again, never have to get. I had
9:47Steven Webb: my perfect partner, my perfect life, my perfect, perfect scenario And
9:55Steven Webb: truth was, it wasn't perfect at all. But it was the one I had. And I wasn't looking after the
10:00Steven Webb: one I had. I
10:03Steven Webb: was so focused on other alternatives, other versions. The grass is green on the other side. It isn't
10:12Steven Webb: water, the grass on your side. You
10:16Steven Webb: know the the alternative of not breaking my neck is not necessarily better. The
10:24Steven Webb: alternative of not having uprising and riots is not always better. If this bad thing did not
10:32Steven Webb: happen, life would have been perfect. Well, that's just, it's just an illusion way of thinking.
10:39Steven Webb: It
10:41Steven Webb: doesn't work. You
10:43Steven Webb: know, the truth is we don't have a magic time machine. We cannot go back and change it. We cannot
10:50Steven Webb: sample the alternative. You know we we're miserable now partly because we have too much choice.
10:58Steven Webb: I go in a supermarket and I see all the toothpaste and I'm like, okay, I gotta decide. Do I
11:05Steven Webb: want minty fresh breath, white breath? Do I want foaming toothpaste? Do I want little beads in it? Do I
11:12Steven Webb: want it in a long tube, a stand-up tube? Do I want it in eco packaging or not? Do I
11:17Steven Webb: want charcoal in it? And I'm like, oh, come on, I don't no why can't we just have three toothpaste
11:26Steven Webb: Expensive whitening and something else. Look after your gums, make it easy.
11:33Steven Webb: Because when there's three to five items, I can make a reasonable decision to which one
11:41Steven Webb: I think is the right choice for me. But when there's 20 or 30, I'm like, I can't make the
11:48Steven Webb: right choice for me. So then when we come away with the picture we bought or the wallpaper we chose
11:56Steven Webb: the carpet, the insurance premium we just took out, you know, the toothpaste we just bought,
12:04Steven Webb: we're looking at alternatives, thinking, well, maybe that one was good. Maybe just that one, maybe. So we're not even
12:11Steven Webb: happy with what we're buying now. You
12:15Steven Webb: know, I was on the way over to my partners at one point and I said to her, you know,
12:20Steven Webb: your toilet seat is broken. And she goes, yeah. I said, I'll pick one up on the way over. And
12:26Steven Webb: she goes, okay. I just thought it'd be easy. I thought literally I could go to the store, say to
12:32Steven Webb: my carer, pop in, get a toilet seat, about 20 quid. And she went in. You're gonna have to come
12:39Steven Webb: in with me. I was like, why? I just want a toilet seat. Oh, you're gonna have to come in
12:45Steven Webb: with me. There's a choice of everything. So you went in there. There was a wall of toilet seats. I
12:51Steven Webb: mean, literally, there was more colored toilet seats than there is colours in the spectrum, I'm sure of it. And
12:58Steven Webb: not only that, they had toilet seats that were see-through So you decide on a colour, then you got the
13:03Steven Webb: material. Oh, wait a minute. A wooden one. That'd be warm on my bum. I'll go for that one oh
13:09Steven Webb: wait a minute it's porous oh wait a minute. It's the little more money Ah. She hasn't got nothing else
13:13Steven Webb: wood in a room So take the wooden one out. Oh, plastic one. Yeah, but that'd be cold. Okay. Oh,
13:20Steven Webb: I. Yeah, I picked up just a white one. That's the end of that story. I literally was paralysed by
13:28Steven Webb: choice. And
13:31Steven Webb: that's the problem. Now we're looking at our lives in a way that we're seeing lots of different alternatives.
13:38Steven Webb: That if I bought that car, if I said yes to that person, if I messaged that person, if I
13:44Steven Webb: stayed with that person, you know, you don't have all those alternatives. Once
13:53Steven Webb: you made the decision Once you're in, once this moment has arised you don't have the privilege. Without a DeLorean,
14:00Steven Webb: you don't have the privilege of changing this moment. You
14:05Steven Webb: know, if you think you can change this moment, do this for me. Just take a deep breath,
14:11Steven Webb: close your eyes. Imagine yourself on a nice beach. The waves coming in, the waves going
14:19Steven Webb: out.
14:22Steven Webb: And as we're aware of our breath and the waves happening and the lovely beach with the sun on your
14:27Steven Webb: face, the birds in the sky. Now
14:32Steven Webb: open your eyes. Are you on the beach? No.
14:37Steven Webb: No. The point is, if we're going to be now miserable because we're not on the beach,
14:45Steven Webb: that's why we're. That's why we're Struggling because in our minds, we want to be live in a certain way.
14:52Steven Webb: We open our eyes and we're not living that way, so we're miserable.
14:57Steven Webb: This is why you are living the best possible version of your life right now. Because if you
15:05Steven Webb: embrace that, you'll stop looking for alternatives. You'll
15:11Steven Webb: stop looking for the wonderful, magic life that's going to be happy for you. You'll stop longing and
15:19Steven Webb: the desiring a difference. It's okay to have preferences for what you want in this life.
15:26Steven Webb: I like to go to concerts I I like intimacy. I like having fun. I like reading a good book.
15:34Steven Webb: I like music. Nothing wrong with having those desires
15:39Steven Webb: and enjoy them, embrace them. But don't constantly look at your life and see that I should have lived a
15:47Steven Webb: different life. I should have stayed with that person. I should have, should have, should have. It'll just make you
15:53Steven Webb: miserable. It will just just drain you. So
15:58Steven Webb: accept this moment and go, do you know what? The thinner version, the richer, the healthier, the one that's
16:06Steven Webb: living in a different country, none of them are possible right now.
16:12Steven Webb: The only life possible right now is the one you have sitting here listening to this podcast. That's it.
16:20Steven Webb: None of the other are available to you.
16:23Steven Webb: None of them.
16:26Steven Webb: So embrace and accept this one and do what you will with this one, rather than denying this one and
16:33Steven Webb: trying to live some other life.
16:37Steven Webb: I'm Steven Webb and thank you for listening to my podcast. I hope you subscribe and I'd love
16:45Steven Webb: to hear from you. Head over there and click on the Contact Me. I'd love to know what you think
16:51Steven Webb: of my podcast. So if you've seen this on Facebook or anywhere else, you know, just connect with me.
16:59Steven Webb: Connect with me. And then I'm just interested is this change the way you see life? Does it change your
17:07Steven Webb: perspective on things? The thing is, the alternative is not always better. The
17:15Steven Webb: alternative could be a lot worse. Stop trying to live there.
17:22Steven Webb: Anyway, take care. Namaste, and thank you for listening to my podcast. You can head over to my website,
17:29Steven Webb: StevenWebb.com and start your journey to a little more inner peace. Take care, guys. Namaste.
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