Your Hands Are Full: Why You’re Not Failing at Meditation

Q: Does struggling to meditate mean I'm doing it wrong?

Not necessarily. You might be too hypervigilant to close your eyes, or too exhausted to stay awake. I've fallen asleep in meditation more times than I can count. That doesn't always mean the practice is terrible. Sometimes it's a body running on empty.

Q: Shouldn't I just use willpower?

Sometimes it works, and for some brains it works well. Others aren't wired that way, however much you tell them. Teachers often see the world the way they are, because it's their only frame of reference.

Q: Is a quiet place enough?

It helps. A silent forest is easier than the kids pulling at you. But if you're carrying debt, grief or a pile of unfinished decisions, you can sit by the loveliest river and still be full on the inside. We need space around us, and we need space within us.

Q: Why do teachers say meditate first thing in the morning?

Sleep opens up space in the brain, so things take less effort in the morning than late in the evening after a busy day. If you're not getting enough sleep, you haven't got that space for meditation. I thought I was a night owl for years, until I discovered sleep.

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overwhelm · stress · meditation-how-to · self-compassion · sleep

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So before we ask someone to carry one more thing, look at what they're already carrying in their hands.

So just imagine someone walking up with their arms full of boxes or maybe carrying a couple of gallons

of something, one in each hand, and then someone comes along or you look up and say, "Hey, can you take

another box?"

Or, "Can you carry this extra?"

We immediately know they don't have the carrying capacity to do it, and we forgive them for it.

We don't try to force something more on them.

We try to solve the problem for them.

We like, "Well, can we take one of the boxes off you?"

Or, "Can we help you do it in another way?"

Or, you know, if you're a boss, you might say, "Hey, we got a wheelbarrow here," or, "I'll buy a forklift."

You know what I mean?

But when somebody is totally full with mental capacity and they don't have anything more, we cannot see

that.

And we say to them, "Meditate for 20 minutes a day.

Practise gratitude every morning.

Start journalling.

Exercise more.

Improve your diet.

Sleep better.

Think positively."

If you don't have the ability to carry more, how are you going to do these things?

So spiritual practice should help us to carry life.

It should not become another box rammed into our hands when we're already full and we cannot do anything

more.

Hi, I'm Steven Webb, and this is Stillness in the Storms, and this is a podcast that helps you through

difficult times.

So when I first joined the council, you always end up going to a new job or new things, and you end up

hearing these new words.

Now, the word capacity, of course I knew what it meant.

I've heard it before.

But it was used in a different context.

So I looked at capacity as, well, something's full.

It cannot add anything more, which of course is true.

But what does that mean in context to the council?

Well, it meant that they did not have the expertise or they did not have the funding or they did not have

enough time before the deadlines, things like that.

So technically, the word capacity meant so much more, and I think I use that when I'm chairing meetings.

Well, do we have the capacity to do this?

Not just have we got the time?

Is it have we got the finances?

Have we got the staff?

Have we got the expertise?

And I think this applies to businesses, charities, families, individual lives and all that, and including,

like, my care and me.

And I think there's always a willingness to try to do these things.

So when someone says, "Well, journal something," or, "Do this," or, "Let's do this charity thing," we

want to do it.

The good intentions are there, but we just may not have the capacity.

And then when we don't have the capacity to do it, we end up failing, and then we end up feeling terrible,

and the cycle kind of goes around and around.

So I was reading a study that just came out in October, that about a Swedish…

There was four teenage girls with PTSD, and they completed a five-week app-supported programme before

trauma-focused therapy.

It combined coping skills, grounding, and compassion-focused practices.

Researchers also gathered feedback from caregivers and the clinicians.

The practices were often considered meaningful and grounding, but people's ability to engage changed according

to mental capacity, cognitive load, school pressure and fatigue, neurodivergent, family strain, caregiver

availability, and technical difficulty.

And one of the caregivers said, "My willingness wasn't the problem, my life situation was."

And when I read through the study, what it really showed me is, and it made me think about it, is if you

just tell people to do more things without clearing the deck, that's like having a table full of items

and you're just shoving something else on there for them to do.

No matter how good the programme is, no matter how brilliant the practice is, no matter how important

it is for the council to do, it's still not gonna get done in some way unless you clear a bit of the table.

And it really did make me think we keep designing help for the person that we imagine should exist rather

than the exhausted person who is actually there.

And I think that's one of the biggest problems today.

But before I move on, I want to say thank you to the people that have donated this week.

So that is Yuva, Sarah, Dave, Angela, Daniel, Paul, Margaret, Cheryl, Kisha, Lis and Edona.

Thank you.

You are awesome.

You help to keep these podcasts completely free with no adverts, and more importantly, the Inner Peace

Meditations podcast with no adverts.

It means people can have these meditations without somebody trying to sell them something.

And the more I think about it, I can put up whatever content I like, whatever you need, as opposed to

what someone's paying me to do.

And I think if someone was paying me, it would compromise what maybe I'm teaching, and that's something

that I just don't wanna do.

So thank you so much to all of you.

You are awesome.

And if you want to support in any way or you want to find out about my Weekly Calm newsletter, just head

over to stevenwebb.uk.

Right.

Back to the podcast.

So something we've been talking about quite a bit in council, at Cornwall Council, about mental health

and mental space, and I think it's all framed in the same way in this podcast, really.

And just take the one example, because I've been there.

When my bank account was literally in the overdraft every week, I'd get my money coming in, I'd have to

work out what I can pay, and it ended up consuming so much of my mental capacity.

Which bill can wait?

Can I afford to put my child on the school trip?

What food is left in the cupboard?

Can I afford more?

What can I do?

And it just uses up so much of your mental capacity.

For me and my partner at the time, Kember's mum, and even with my disability, you know, if I've got to

make five decisions before you're making an important decision, half of your brain power is already gone.

And this is why Mark Zuckerberg only wears the same T-shirt, apparently, because the mental mind only

has so much capacity.

If you've got 100% capacity to go to work, and you've got no money worries, and you've got nothing to

think about whether or not you can put gas in the car on the way home, you're gonna be much better at

the work.

You're gonna do better.

You know, money cannot purchase inner peace.

Let's be honest.

Loads of people will sell you a £2,000 weekend, or $2,000, just come and do all these things.

But it's not gonna buy you inner peace.

And I'll tell you why, because if you don't have the mental capacity, if you don't lay down the decks,

if you're already doing way too much, and these things are necessary in your life, it's not gonna help

you.

But financial security can provide some of these conditions in which peace can be easier to access.

So I'm just giving you that as an example of the financial side.

It might be the time side.

It might be the health side.

It might be just literally you're just doing too much for other people.

If you don't have that spare 5% in your brain, 5% of the time that something that's not used up by ordinary

life, you're not gonna be able to sit and do practice.

You're not gonna be able to do the, I don't know, the journal and things like that.

Now then, you could argue, okay, you need to force yourself to do it.

You need the willpower to do it, and I'm sure there's loads of people that come along and say, "Well,

I did it.

I had willpower.

I had all those problems."

Yes, and sometimes it can work.

For certain brain makeups, yes, it can absolutely work.

Others, some brains are organised, some brains aren't.

You know?

What we have found out is nobody is born with a certain type of brain.

The brain changes all the time, and the mind is constantly evolving or devolving and doing different things.

And I know I've struggled since Trump got elected.

He has used up so much of my mental capacity, way too much than I'd like to care to admit.

But I think I'm not alone.

I sit down to speak to Zen masters and all, and they're not far different.

And I know the Dalai Lama looks up and says, "Well, you know, if you haven't got the time to meditate

for one hour, then meditate for two hours."

And yes, brilliant advice, but is it realistic in today's world?

Probably not.

It is for him and his monks and everybody that's living over there, absolutely.

And I believe that will give you more peace.

If you can meditate more, and you've got proper instruction, and you've got a guide to make sure you don't

go down rabbit holes or different ways, absolutely I agree more.

The spiritual journey will help.

But if someone presents you something that you don't have the mental capacity to do, you're not gonna

do it.

It's not gonna help.

So how do institutions and councils and all that try to get over this?

They set up a new committee.

They have another form, a new website, a new training course.

We'll train a course into how to better manage your time and do things like that.

And the spiritual teacher might go, "Well, if you haven't got that, let's work out what you can take away,"

and things like that.

And yeah, it's lovely and brilliant, and I'm sure it's very helpful.

But when it comes to looking at in the big picture, when we can physically see that somebody is carrying,

we understand immediately.

Mental and emotional burdens are easier to overlook because we don't understand.

We can't see it.

We cannot feel it in the same way.

And this is when the spiritual practice becomes just another demand.

You know, everybody can find 20 minutes.

Just get up earlier.

Stop making excuses.

Still sit and push through.

Come on, the busier you are, the more you need to meditate, like I just said a minute ago.

These are all examples of ignorance to some belief, and I've said them all.

Just think positive.

I was a just think positive person for a long time.

Yeah, I know.

I know.

But we evolve, we learn, and hopefully I will realise in 10 years' time that I'm as ignorant today as

I was 10 years ago, as I will be in 10 years' time.

Because that means I'm learning, which is brilliant.

I love the fact that I don't know.

I know what I'm gonna do a podcast on next week.

I don't know what study I'm gonna read and learn from.

And this is the thing with when it comes down to sitting down and meditating, 'cause that's what I talk

about most of the time is the spiritual journey.

You might be too hypervigilant to close your eyes, you know, too exhausted to remain awake.

God, the amount of times in meditation I fell asleep.

But it might not be because my spiritual practice is terrible.

It might be because I'm just literally running on empty and I'm not sleeping.

It could be something else.

You could be too physically uncomfortable to sit, pain somewhere.

And you'll hear these stories about good old Zen practices years ago when they went around and they'd

hit you with a stick and all that.

Brilliant, but I'm sure they didn't have people with disabilities and all that sitting there in the same

way and things like that.

You know, I think in some way we've gotta become tolerant to the capacities that we've got and what we

have, and that doesn't mean we sit back and go, "Oh, well, we don't have to do a spiritual journey.

We don't have to meditate.

I'm busy.

I'm too busy to do that."

Well, if you're just saying that, then you're probably not.

I'm just throwing this out there today in the podcast because very often we are at capacity of many, many

things.

And very often, I think as teachers, we see the world the way we are still because that's our real only

frame of reference.

And whenever anybody says, "Well, I've done all these things," they don't understand why someone else

hasn't.

I was having a conversation with somebody the other day about being organised, and they just said, "Well,

I managed to get through the financial worries because I was organised."

It's like, well, that's brilliant.

That's the way you're wired.

That's what you learned.

Whatever happened, that's the way you learned to cope with it.

Some people cannot be organised if literally you give them the trays to be organised.

And some people, it just doesn't work like that.

It's like I know it takes me 10 minutes to get down the hill.

And as a fact, I think it's about five and a half minutes I can get down the hill to a meeting.

I know that sometimes the lift is in the wrong place, and it takes an extra minute or so.

I know that someone will stop me on the hill and delay my getting to the meeting.

But do I look up 15 minutes before the meeting and go, "Oh, I need to leave early just in case those things

happen"?

I don't.

I literally look at my watch and go, "Oh, I can check my emails.

I can do this.

I can do this extra little thing because it only takes me five and a half minutes, and I can roll up."

Well, it's ignorant, and it's rude, you're taking the mickey out of other people's time.

But no matter how much I try, my brain just doesn't work that way.

It just doesn't.

You know, it's like asking a Formula 1 car to go on two wheels.

Not gonna happen.

Unless you have a crash, okay.

But I'm going off topic now a little bit.

But I think you see the point, you know.

Sometimes we're surrounded by kids.

Sometimes waking up in the morning is not an option.

Sometimes just writing a journal is not an option because we're literally at our mental capacity.

And meditation can help create space, yes.

But sometimes we need a little space before we can have access to that meditation, and I think that's

important.

You know, it's like saying to someone, "Go in and sit down," and there's no seats.

They say, "Well, meditate anyway."

It's like, "Okay, I can meditate standing up?"

Well, yeah, you can, but that's a different podcast.

You know exactly what I mean now.

So let's think about an electricity overloaded circuit, because I like analogies and this one works.

So you've got all your plugs used, they're all using electricity, and you feel like every single one of

them is needed in your life.

And it just works, but you know there's not room to plug in something else.

And someone comes in and says, "We need to plug this in.

This is a wonderful new practice, and if you plug it in, it'll make everything just work more efficiently

and brilliant.

You've got no more electric, you've got no more plugs, but just do this and it'll be absolutely fine."

And sometimes that may not be the practice you need.

That may not be the item you need.

But that's the kind of analogy, that's what I'm talking about, you're at capacity.

And the spiritual journey at that point, the meditation, the journal may not be what you need.

Maybe you need some more sleep.

Maybe you just need to eat something.

Maybe you need to cancel something or ask for help.

What I'm saying is sometimes meditation is not the answer.

Sometimes the spiritual journey, the new book, sometimes all of those things are not necessarily the answer

to finding some inner peace in that moment.

And sleep is a really good part of this because I learned on a podcast from Stephen Fry, they heard about

these whooshing noises from the front of the brain to the back.

First of all, they thought the equipment was broke, and then they realised that it happens several times

in the night, I believe, and it was found in independent studies around the world of sleep.

And what it found is the prefrontal lobe in your brain, I think that's what it's called, unloads into

the subconscious mind.

So when you go to bed, your mind's full of everything, and then when you wake up in the morning, you have

some space.

It's like defragmenting the hard drive.

Do you remember that screen where it was all everywhere and it was a complete mess, and you see these

boxes moving, and you would somehow think your computer was running way quicker because it had room to

put files and place them down, whereas this time it's got, "I don't know where to place the file.

I've got, like, a big file and I've gotta put it in five different places."

It's not efficient.

But that's what sleep does.

Sleep opens up the space in the brain, so in the morning you can do what you need to do.

You can, whether you scroll the news or Facebook or read a book or whatever you do, it almost seems to

be a lot less effort than trying to do it late in the evening.

I don't know if you ever noticed that.

You try taking in a book late in the evening or after a busy day or taking in a book in the morning.

It's a big difference.

And if you struggle with reading, just think about the news.

Do you remember the news you read late at night?

No.

But you remember it in the morning, unless you're a night owl, of course.

There's always one.

I thought I was a night owl for years and years until I discovered sleep and I realised I'm a sleep owl,

I think now.

But the brain needs defragging, and our life needs defragging, and I think this is where it really does

help.

So if you're not getting enough sleep, you haven't got that space for the meditation.

This is why all meditation teachers recommend first thing in the morning, meditate.

You know, keep your brain clear, do your exercise, do all these things in the morning because of this

reason.

So I'm getting to the point now of wrapping up, and I think you understand what I'm trying to say in probably

20 different ways.

But we need space within to be able to do these things 'cause the practice happens within.

If the space isn't there, just the same as if you're gonna decorate a room in a house, you need to make

some space.

You need to move the sofas away, and you need to do all that.

And you can go into nature, and you can sit in a silent forest, and you can sit next to the thing.

But if you've got debt, grief, pain, responsibilities, fears, dozens of unfinished decisions, you know,

you've got the space externally, the lovely river, the lovely birds and the flowers and the butterflies,

but you don't have the internal space.

So therefore, you can sit there and try to meditate.

Yes, it's easier than when the kids are pulling at you, but it's still not really that productive because

you're still full on the inside, and practices need space on the inside.

We need space around us, and we need space within us, and I think that's what's really important.

So finally, I feel like this has been a bit of a marathon podcast, but I was really passionate when I

read that study because I think this is the problem with a lot of the spiritual teachings, and I think

a lot of the problem with nearly everything now is we are literally running at capacity.

So we can do, like, a compassionate capacity check.

We can just drop the judgement and just, like, say, "Do you know what?

I'm at capacity, and that's okay.

I've not been lazy, not meditating.

I'm at capacity."

So you can ease the expectations.

Today's practice may be just three breaths because I didn't sleep last night, I don't have the room inside

and I don't have the room outside, and that's okay.

But gently ask, what is currently filling my hands?

What is using my mental capacity?

Is it tiredness?

Is it money, pain, fear, responsibility?

What can be delayed, delegated, or put down?

Do I need to practise or do I need practical help?

And just pause on that for a minute.

So I've recorded a companion meditation that goes with this podcast about capacity, about my hands full,

and I'll link to it in the show notes.

And just in closing, that maybe today your practice is not to create more space.

Maybe it's to stop blaming yourself for having none.

You're not necessarily lazy, you're not broken, you may simply be at capacity.

And before you ask someone one more thing, look at what is already in their hands.

Just take note.

What are you already carrying before I ask you to do this extra thing?

And it may look like on the outside they're carrying nothing.

How do you know?

And compassion begins by noticing and sometimes by helping them put something down.

So instead of me telling you to go and practise this week, what I'm gonna say is be okay with just looking

and seeing if you're at capacity, and see what space you can clear on the table.

Maybe that might help.

So this week is all about compassion for where you are.

Don't forget, you can head over to stevenwebb.uk and you can join my Weekly Calm newsletter and maybe

just listen to the other podcast, Inner Peace Meditations.

And feel free to reach out.

If you've got an idea or you've got a problem you're going through at the moment, reach out to me.

Send me an email, and we'll see what we can do.

Perhaps we can do a podcast about it.

You don't have to be mentioned.

So until next week, thank you so much, and I love you.

Your Hands Are Full: Why You’re Not Failing at Meditation

In this episode

With gratitude to

The question this answers

The heart of it

One small thing to try

Questions people ask

The companion meditation

The transcript

One calm email.
Every Sunday.

Your Hands Are Full: Why You’re Not Failing at Meditation

In this episode

With gratitude to

The question this answers

The heart of it

One small thing to try

Questions people ask

The companion meditation

The transcript

More honest conversations

One calm email. Every Sunday.

One calm email.
Every Sunday.