The Art of Moving On: Practical Wisdom for Life’s Toughest Moments

[00:00:00] Steven Webb: Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls. The most massive characters are seared with scars. Kali Gibran Dealing with difficult times, how to find stillness amidst chaos. I know, I play on my podcast Stillness in the Storms, but really the whole podcast is about helping people through difficult times.

[00:00:29] How do you find stillness when everything else is going wrong around us and the whole world seems to be burning right now and From politics to our own lives to what we do on a daily basis Just everything seems to be quite overwhelming at the moment But then we have things that go wrong in the everyday world.

[00:00:49] We have relationships that break up we have Illnesses that suddenly come, we don't expect it, we have, somebody may pass away and we end up in a grieving process, or [00:01:00] we end up hitting rock bottom, a business fails, or we go bankrupt, all these different things happen, all amongst everything else that's happening at the moment anyway, and, life is really damn difficult at the moment.

[00:01:13] And I wonder sometimes, was it easier a hundred years ago? I don't think it was easier, it was different. They did have a lot more time out in the fields maybe, walking. They did not have TV. They did not have the internet. They did not have the constant attention stream that we have. But it would have been different.

[00:01:32] I'm sure they would have been complaining about the same things as we complain about today. But that's what today's podcast is about, dealing with difficult times. And if you stick with me till the end, I'm going to talk about, A, what we can do in these difficult times, and also how to deal with a really serious relationship breaking up.

[00:01:51] Just an eight step process that we could go through. I'll share near the end of the podcast. But before we start, I want to say thank you to the supporters [00:02:00] this week. You are awesome. And those are, let me get the list. Drumroll please. Do I have a drumroll? Let's find some. I'm sure I can download some drumroll somewhere from the internet.

[00:02:14] There you go. We have Nancy, Debbie, Lori, and Sarah. You guys are awesome. And then there's a few members that donate every month. All of you guys are awesome. Thank you very much. You make all the difference. And if I'm helping you in any way, Brilliant now. Then also it's week three of my weekly Calm newsletter and I send that out every single week. And if you haven't signed up yet, head over to stevenwebb.uk. All the links are there. You can treat me to a coffee virtual hug.

[00:02:44] You can download my five Simple Practices for Inner piece, and you can sign up to my weekly Calm stevenwebb uk Steven spelt with v. Anyway, thank you to everyone. Let's get on with today's podcast. So [00:03:00] the quote I started with, Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls.

[00:03:04] The most massive characters are seared with scars. I do like that quote, simply because it's a follow on from last week. And last week I was talking about the present moment and there's nothing we can do with the present moment. So if we, when we make friends with the present moment and when we embrace it.

[00:03:21] And I gave you some practical tips on doing that. But then, what do you actually do with it? How do you actually move on from the present moment if it's particularly painful? How do you actually get your life back? And, and it's quite significant with me. When I was 18 I broke my neck and ended up paralysed just below the neck.

[00:03:40] Ended up, in America it's called quadriplegic. Over in the UK it's tetraplegic. I suffer from Autonomic Dysreflexia, which everybody that has a high level of spinal cord injury suffers from this condition. Which in short, basically, it's a medical emergency when it happens, so if I [00:04:00] feel any pain... Well, I don't feel pain actually, but if there is any pain or anything going wrong below my level of injury it sends a pain to my mind, my brain, it doesn't get there and it goes into like a feedback loop and everything goes haywire and it sends my blood pressure way high.

[00:04:19] Now then, it's called autonomic dysreflexia and your blood pressure doesn't go high like, oh, I better go to the doctor the next few weeks and... Get this sorted out. It goes to like 240 over 160. And a lot of people don't believe it goes to that high. And even when I had an attack a couple of years ago, the paramedics were out here and I said to them, my blood pressure is over 200 over 150.

[00:04:44] And they were like, well, probably in that high, but let's take it anyway. And they went, ah, it's 230 over 170. I said, yeah, I told you. And then I was there talking them through as it was going up and down. And. Eventually we've managed to stabilize it and get it down and it can result in a stroke or [00:05:00] death.

[00:05:00] So I had to come to terms with this new life threatening condition. As well as being paralyzed and needing 24 hour care and having had my bum wiped having to have a shower I've got no privacy. Literally. I cannot even go toilet by myself, I can't get dressed by myself I long for that morning where I can just have a peaceful shower with nobody there with me.

[00:05:23] But anyway, that's that's that's suffering when I'm wishing something that cannot happen. Sometimes I do, I'm human I do focus on the positive sides and all that a lot of the time, but I'm human I'm allowed sometimes to Reminisce and what it would be like But anyway, you know when I was lying in the hospital bed and all that how do you move on from these difficult times that how did I move on from when my Computer shop bees knees computers went under and I went bankrupt Or when I was heartbroken and I hit rock bottom.

[00:05:57] So, I, I moved on [00:06:00] by... Okay, I did start drinking alcohol. I did start doing the wrong things. But, I moved on by realizing this moment isn't going to last forever. And, I accepted the moment for what it was. Not so much embraced it. That would be rubbish. No, I didn't embrace it. I wasn't, I wasn't that awake. I'm not even that awake now.

[00:06:22] But I did recognize the present moment. I recognize that no matter what happens, time keeps moving forward. So even when it's the most painful, I knew the next breath might not be. And one hour at a time, one minute at a time, one breath at a time. And it's always moving. The afternoons may not be as bad as the morning and the next day very much when we go to bed and we sleep on it, if we can get to sleep, the mind clears the next morning.

[00:06:50] It's not quite so bad. And that's the way you do it is that there's no magic holy grail. There's no kind of drink that you [00:07:00] can get rid of the emotional pain. And I'll tell you, I broke my neck. I broke bones before my accident. I, I was the casualty king when I was a child. My mom's always taken me to casualty.

[00:07:11] So I knew what physical pain was like. And ever since then I've got physical pain, but emotional pain, I'll tell you what, that's a whole nother level. When you've got that worry that you're in trouble or when you've got that gut feeling, I remember when I got really heartbroken when I was just 18. And I, it was my first real puppy love. And this person finished from me. I found out they were cheating. And I remember sitting outside the cathedral in Truro and I was sat on the steps and I was bawling my eyes out. It was Saturday afternoon. Cause it's a story of my life just like, like 20 years later, outside boots, but I was bawling my eyes out and my stepsister came to help me and I went back to my dad's at the time.

[00:07:56] I remember sitting at the table saying, do you know what? You could break every bone in [00:08:00] my body and it wouldn't feel nowhere near as bad as this. Okay. Seven months later I broke my neck, but I'd still stand by that statement. And I did, emotional pain is the worst. That grief, that it's just heart wrenching, I suppose they call it heart wrenching for a reason, but it's really in your gut and it's so painful and it makes you feel sick and it's so debilitating, it's more paralyzing than being paralyzed itself and I can say that, so when I say that it's just move on and things like that, it's not easy.

[00:08:35] Heartbreak is hell. And it may not be just heartbreak from a relationship. It might be just losing someone you love. It could be finding out that you've been diagnosed with cancer. It could be that you've lost your business or, or your children want to disown you. I don't know. I'm just thinking stuff up now.

[00:08:56] But it doesn't matter what it is. If it's painful, it's painful.[00:09:00] I'd rather have two fac any day of the week than I would emotional pain. So I'm not trivializing emotional pain by saying, just move on. I think that's why there's times when I've headed out one time in particular to take my life.

[00:09:19] It's not because I didn't want to live anymore. It wasn't because that there wasn't some joys in my life. It's because I was in that much pain. I wanted that pain to go. And I couldn't see any other reason of doing it apart from taking my life. Luckily, when I was sat on top of that hill, looking down over the river, first of all, I was thinking, no, my luck, I'm going to get caught halfway down.

[00:09:41] It's going to be really painful and horrible. I'm going to be there all night. I'm going to be starving. It's going to be terrible. It's not going to go smoothly. I did think that, but the second one I thought about, it's also going to miss my daughter. I was going to miss what is later on in life. And. [00:10:00] I've done so much more since then.

[00:10:01] So I was like, let's give it another day. Let's just see if the pain eases tomorrow. And I think that's the main thing is life does move on. But what practical things can we do when we are really, really suffering? We could drink, we could get so intoxicated that we'd not even feeling the pain anymore.

[00:10:22] Well, I'll tell you what, the drink wears off and we need more and we need to up the anti. We could do drugs, so we're out, we're out of it. We could go to the doctors and we could medicate ourselves, medicate ourselves, okay, not the doctors, but we could take antidepressants, which I did when I lost the computer shop.

[00:10:38] I took antidepressants for two years. They really helped me. They helped. With the highs and lows, and I really needed them at the time, so I'm not against them, but always do it through the doctor. Never stop taking them when you feel better, because, only stop it and start it via the doctor. But [00:11:00] you just feel things so deeply, and, but what kind of things can we do to avoid it?

[00:11:06] I've just heard about not drinking and not drugs and not, not losing yourself in, I've mentioned two of them, sex, sex, and another thing that people will sex their way out of problems because sex is a great adrenaline. It feels absolutely great to have that orgasm and nothing more powerful.

[00:11:23] That's why they say, you can get over a heartbreak by sleeping with somebody else, going with somebody else because the adrenaline in the body makes you feel absolutely great. And it does. So you could sex your way outta it. You can eat your way out of it. Just, eat loads of food. I personally cannot eat when I'm heartbroken or when my, when I feel like I'm in trouble in some way, or, or when I've done something wrong or when I feel guilty I feel so sick.

[00:11:51] So I do the opposite. I don't eat. But whatever we do, it's avoiding. So what healthy things can we do [00:12:00] in order to try to cope and heal? Well, listen to music. And I have a weird one because I would listen to sad music to allow the feelings to come out. So I think a good cry doesn't hurt. So if I'm feeling really down and lonely, I'll listen to feelings that really bring that feeling out.

[00:12:22] And then normally after about 10, 20 minutes, half an hour, my body's like, yeah, I've had enough now. And then I'll turn to something better. Walking, go for a walk, find some time in nature, but really go for that walk. Really be present. Listen to every bird, listen to every little drop of the water going down the river.

[00:12:42] Really be present. If you're really mindfully present, you can't your mind cannot think about two things at once. It cannot think about the pain and the suffering and the pleasures of listening to the bird. What it'll do is keep flipping between the two. If I ask you to think of two things at once, [00:13:00] you'll flip between the two.

[00:13:02] You'll think you're thinking about the same thing at once, but you're not. Your brain can only, you can only be aware of one thought at a time. If you try it, pause, pause this podcast and try and think of two things at the same time. You'll realize you flip between the two. So, and don't get me wrong, you're not going to suddenly listen to the birds and not feel the pain.

[00:13:24] It's going to keep coming back. But the more you pull it away, the more you step in between the subconscious mind and the conscious mind, the more it will think about the better things, the birds. Meeting friends. Social connections are brilliant for healing. Say to your friend, look, can you just Can you just be my silent ear for 10 minutes and I'm just gonna offload for 10 minutes but please don't say anything just nod or just say to your friend look you offload on me for for 10 minutes and I'm gonna listen unconditionally to you [00:14:00] or avoid it altogether I don't know.

[00:14:03] Reading dive into other worlds and perspectives you know don't necessarily do self help books do any kind of books pick up a Charles Dickens I don't know. Pick up a Haynes manual. Do you have them in the States where they're manuals that help you to fix a car? But do something creative, do painting, that's brilliant.

[00:14:24] Get in the flow. I was in a conversation the other day and this person said to me a wonderful thing that she's seen on TikTok and she said just draw a flower with a sharpie, draw some lines and I might get this slightly wrong, draw some lines and then fill in those lines with a pencil. And just keep filling it in, keep filling it in and I know what she means by that because the more you do something, something tedious or something that's like, just one thing I have to do, like coloring in, eventually the mind goes okay I'll just color in and suddenly you're in the flow and that's [00:15:00] one way of doing it.

[00:15:01] So pick up a piece of paper, draw scribbles everywhere and then start with the biggest areas. And then the next biggest area, the next biggest area, carefully color every single one in a different color. You could color in each color for the current feeling you have inside your belly at the moment. I don't know.

[00:15:20] I made that up on the spot, but Physical exercise. Do something, move your body. It's really good at insight actually. When I was really heartbroken and I was exercising every night, I would have about six or seven songs. On my YouTube list and I had to get to the orange tree song by, I can't remember when, something Ryder I can't remember now and a wonderful tree, meet me at the orange tree or something like that.

[00:15:49] I'll lay my head down there or something, but I used to listen to that and I wanted to get to that song and I was so focused on moving my arms around and I was like, I was like doing that semaphore when you're directing [00:16:00] aeroplanes, I was doing that in my little computer room. But yeah, it takes your mind off it and it gives you insights.

[00:16:06] It gives you deeper wisdom because you're thinking about something different. And the best one, if you can manage it and it's not always easy, it's meditation. Sitting down and just be, be with your thoughts, be with your feelings. If you're feeling lonely, be with them. I'm feeling lonely.

[00:16:28] What's that look like? And it's what's really funny when you feel really lonely, and I've done a podcast about this, is if you allow yourself to be completely lonely, after about 10 minutes or so, the body gives up on it and goes, yeah, I'm not lonely anymore. I'm done with that. That's so yesterday. And there's a wonderful meditation and I might record it actually, because I haven't put it on the inner peace meditations podcast.

[00:16:55] But it's a wonderful meditation that just basically you move away from the earth [00:17:00] and you go further and further away until you're in the universe and you're just in there and everything's just stopped including the trees and nature, everything's stopped and there's no time anymore and it's just you observing this whole universe and there's nothing.

[00:17:16] No, nothing alive, no animals, no planets, no solar systems, no galaxies, anything, just you. And boy, do you feel lonely. You feel incredibly lonely. And then you come back down to the earth and all that, and you're still alone in your bedroom, but you don't feel lonely anymore. And it's this wonderful, like meditation that flips the switch that although you may not have the person you love next to you, you may not be in a group of people.

[00:17:46] And you can have both of those things and still feel lonely. I've been in a relationship, I've slept, slept next to somebody and I still felt lonely. I felt like they were a million miles away. [00:18:00] Expectations. But meditation, guided meditation especially can really, really help. Head over to Inner Peace Meditations, my podcast.

[00:18:11] Or I'll put a link to Aura, which is a wonderful, wonderful application that I put all my meditations on and I'll give you a my coach link to it below and I'll give you 30 days of listening to me and loads and loads of other coaches doing an awesome job on this app. And it's not just meditations, it's talks and everything.

[00:18:34] It's a really wonderful app and it really helps you sleep. It's called Aura, but there's a link below the podcast that I will. And I will say that if you do sign up, I will get part of the money. So thank you very much if you do, but you can always go to inner peace meditation podcast as well. But yeah, meditation is really, really difficult.

[00:18:56] But persevere with it. It's worth it. And if you have real difficulties, [00:19:00] reach out to me, go to stevenwebb.Uk, email me and maybe we can get together on whatsapp and I can help you with the practice. And if you want ongoing coaching, I have a couple of slots at the moment I can do it. I just want to say, I suppose the ultimate thing is, depending on how painful it is at the moment, just one breath at a time, to slowly move forward and realise this time shall pass.

[00:19:25] It's not permanent. So just before I round up and we come to a conclusion and I just round up on everything that I've said in the podcast, very briefly, I did say I would give you 8 ways in which you can move on from a serious relationship, and this may not necessarily be a romantic relationship, it could be a work relationship, it could be.

[00:19:47] You've left your job. It could be that even losing someone through a death or something like that. So the first thing is, acceptance and knowledge of feelings and allow [00:20:00] yourself to grieve. It's normal. It's a normal mix of emotions. Embracing permanence. We spoke about that. Understand that pain and heartbreak are not permanent.

[00:20:12] As the saying goes, this shall pass it will ease, you, you will love again, you will be able to open your heart, but it'd be really, really difficult. Seek advice, seek support, reach out to your friends and family, and consider professional help if needed. Even first stop, go and see your doctor, say I'm really struggling practice self care, engage in activities that nourish your soul, listen to music, walk, meditation, exercise, indulging hobbies, everything I've just said, you know.

[00:20:44] Not bad advice at you, is it? Avoid unhealthy coping mechanisms. I said that as well, see? Stay away from addictions. Stay away from things that seem like a good fix, but you're just adding problems [00:21:00] later on. If you use drink now to avoid something now, you've got to give up that drink later or you've got to allow that to, then there's nothing wrong with a bit of drink, a bit of like recreational drugs, things like that.

[00:21:12] If it's going to give you a little bit of a I don't know, a bit of an experience, nothing wrong with that. But if you misuse it to avoid, that's a different story. And it becomes a lot more complicated. I've done it for a long time with drink, trying to get to sleep. And it was hard. Reflect and grow, use this experience to learn about yourself.

[00:21:35] And that's what I was saying last week on the podcast as well. Use the present moment. Use it as a springboard onto your next thing. Take a deep breath. Take your time. Don't rush into another relationship. Give yourself time to heal. If you're not healed, you'll take the same problems from that relationship into the next one.

[00:21:53] You have to be back to the person you were before that relationship or before the relationship [00:22:00] started Soiling everything that goes wrong because relationships are bloody difficult They're hard work They're not like Disney, I blame Disney for ruining relationships In the space of an hour and a half you meet someone, you fall in love and you live happily ever after And then see the sequel should be you're getting divorced.

[00:22:20] It's a nightmare and how do you overcome it? It doesn't work like that. Does it Disney you're to blame? Yes, I said take your time so embrace positive thoughts I've done a whole podcast on this as well and I'll link below as well You don't it's not about changing your negative thoughts into positive ones.

[00:22:40] It's about Cultivating positive thoughts when you have a positive thought get on it and if you look at all your thoughts as trains, they're coming into a station and you're observing them. Only get on the ones you want to get on with. Acknowledge the others and let them move on. So if you have a thought or that person's doing something that you really, it's a [00:23:00] painful thought, just go, yeah, thanks for the thought, not now, I'm thinking about doing my gardening, or I'm thinking about something else.

[00:23:10] And the subconscious mind will eventually learn the kind of thoughts that it wants to give you. because it does want to help you, but it doesn't know how to. So it'll just keep giving you the thoughts that you put most emotion into it. So that's the ways really acceptance embrace permanent seek support, practice self care, avoid unhealthy coping mechanisms, reflect and grow, take your time, embrace positive thoughts.

[00:23:37] So summing up this podcast, thank you to you guys that support me. You are awesome. Take a deep breath, breathe in calm, breathe out relaxed. And remember this moment is temporary, it will move on. You don't have control over time. You don't have the ability to stop this moment and stay in it [00:24:00] forever.

[00:24:00] It will move on no matter what. Life will dish you another problem next week. You can guarantee that. And it's just building that resilience. If you want to join the weekly calm head over to Steven Webb uk. If you can donate a coffee, virtual hug or anything, or leave a review, you are awesome.

[00:24:22] Thank you. You can do it all over stevenwebb.uk . Take care. I love you. See you soon.