From Surviving to Thriving: A No Tools, No Techniques Shift from Stress and Overwhelm to Fulfilment

Take a moment to consider your circumstances right now! Are they the ones you thought were going to make you happy? Have you been in that place where you reached the goal and then thought, 'is this it?' I remember that phase of my life when I was seeking happiness out there. Trying to make every thing and every person a particular way. It was exhausting. It led to burnout!

Then I learnt that happiness really only exists in the present moment. I have no idea how I will feel in the future. I love to have preferences and a direction of travel but now I know my happiness doesn't depend on it. If you are not happy now, what are you waiting for? Some illusive circumstance which will bring about happiness. What a waste of the precious present moment! It it might be helpful to know that happiness is your natural state. It is available inside you all the time when your mind isn't caught up in time travel. Don't wait until all your ducks are lined up as certain circumstances to be happy!

My definition of success has changed dramatically over the years. I bought into the societal story for a long time. Defining success in terms of wealth, prosperity or fame. It also seemed to be something to aim for in terms of academic success. It then became a big feature of my career progression; moving jobs to a promotion every 4 years whilst I was a primary school teacher then headteacher. 

Then there was a phase of defining success under my own terms. That brought about setting goals and targets and creating vision boards with my version of success. But now I see that is a trap. 

The 'when I have x, I will feel y' paradigm undermines everything we have right now. Whether that is for success or any other feeling, it is a TRAP! But what if you could feel successful right now? Enjoy the moment and celebrate what you have already done today. That really is success.

When we feel an uncomfortable sensation it makes sense to want it to go away. Of course it does. No-one wants to feel anxious, stressed, tense or in a low mood. But what if you could see all those sensations as disguised blessings?

You see, we are all thinking beings and we are all feeling that thinking. But the thinking we have is a collection of unconscious conditioning. So when we feel a sensation, that is letting us know that a part of that programming has been triggered. From that place, we can get curious. We can ask questions like, 'what am I believing that isn't true?' Past thinking, future thinking, should thinking, I am right thinking. No matter what it is, we can start to reveal the programme and in the revealing there is the start of releasing. No affirmations, no daily journaling. Just awareness and curiosity. 

If you would like to start dropping your programme without endless tools and techniques, you know how to get in touch.

Discernment is defined as the ability to judge well. I guess what I ponder in that is, how do we know if we are judging well when it seems that all we have to judge with is our own conditioned thinking. But I see that there is a space for discernment which opens up as we go deeper and deeper into the exploration of reality. 

What is real is that you are perfect, whole and well. What is also real is that you have been conditioned by life and that it is that conditioned mind which creates your reality (not actual reality). What else is true is that you feel sensations in your body. Those sensations are your emotional response to the 'reality' you are creating through that conditioned thinking. And that is where discernment can come in.

It's like there are two paths. 1: believing those sensations are information about the outside world and acting as if that were true. 2: realising that those sensations are letting you know about your conditioned state of mind right now and acting accordingly. So the discernment I am talking about is that ability to realise that all the thoughts that pass through your head are not true.

They say that curiosity killed the cat. The meaning of that phrase is that being inquisitive about other people's affairs may get you into trouble. When I invite curiosity, it is very different. I invite you to direct your curiosity inside in an enquiring way. The curiosity I invite starts with a simple understanding. The truth that your feelings are an update from your system letting you know about your state of mind. Your feelings are never telling you about the outside world, other people's behaviour or a mental illness label. Your feelings are letting you know about your thinking.

From that simple understanding the curiosity can come in. The question I love to start this exploration is, 'What am I believing that isn't true?' The answers don't have to be the actual words of the thinking. It seems to be more like a genre of thinking which comes to mind. Should thinking, future/ past thinking or thinking we know what is in someone else's head. When we start this enquiry, our natural system starts to self-right. The thinking and feelings pass without us needing to do anything. Awareness and curiosity are so powerful. If you would like to stop all that feeling management and control, please get in touch.

Seeking calm feels like a thing to do. There so many tools and techniques available to do that. I don't need to list them. But the thing is, you are calm. That is what you are made of. The seeking you are doing is covering that up. The searching is hiding present moment calm. It helps to know it is there. That it never, ever leaves you. When your noisy mind quietens it re-emerges. But your noisy mind just gets noisier when you are seeking calm.

You feelings are a beautiful update from your system. They let you know about your state of mind. Your state of mind created via thought in the moment. The thoughts that will pass if you let them. When you realise that the seeking of calm is creating the opposite, it suddenly makes less sense. Would you like to connect to your innate calm without all those tools and techniques?

There are more similarities than differences between us. I know that is very hard to see that sometimes but there are some fundamental things which are true for every single one of us. That we are connected to each other. No matter whether you talk quantum physics or spiritual energy, we are connected. To each other and to every other living thing in the universe. We are conscious, aware beings. Sometimes we are more aware of this than at other times. But it is always there. You might have noticed that when you give a thought a lot of attention, you feel that thought more. That is consciousness in action.

We are creating a reality using our conditioned mind to think and feel. So, when we think a thought and feel a feeling, where we think that feeling is coming from dictates which thoughts we act upon. When we are confused and we think our feelings are coming from the outside world, we take action in the outside world to 'solve' our feelings. Thinking is something we are all doing but it is the thing which separates us.

I spent a long time teaching people to add in order to feel okay. Adding affirmations, meditation and gratitude practices. Adding knowledge from self-development gurus. Adding podcasts, audio books and courses. I encourage others  to see themselves as broken and needing fixing. Like there was something missing which needed putting back in from the outside. 

I didn't see what I see now. That we are actually whole and well and that it is only our noisy head which stops us seeing that over and over again. When you see this truth, it makes less and less sense to add more things to our already busy heads. Tools and techniques are thoughts after all and more thinking takes us away from our innate wellbeing. Once we know how our psychological system works, it makes less and less sense to add more noise to it.

My journey to calm really started in January 2020 but before that I thought I was on it. For a long I thought the journey to calm was about meditation, yoga and affirmations. I experienced calm but it was hard work and I thought I had to keep doing all those things to be okay.

My journey to calm since 2020 has been so different. Rather than a process of adding, it has been a process of subtracting. A realisation that we are made of calm and that all those tools and techniques tend to cover that over rather than reveal it. So much has fallen away. My belief in my thoughts. The wrongification of my feelings. The need to be in a different feeling state. The need for other people and circumstances to be different.

Trying to control our feelings is like trying to fix a system which is not broken. A system which was created perfectly to support you in life. A much misunderstood system. You see, your feelings only have one piece of information in them; they are telling you about your state of mind. They are a perfect warning system. Like a tap on the shoulder from your amazing system to say, 'Hey you! Your thinking is like this right now.' Once you understand how this system is working and you begin to work with it instead of against it, your experience of life will transform.