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We're diving into some real talk today about life and its fleeting nature. I recently went to a funeral that got me thinking about our time here and how we often forget to appreciate it. I’m sharing 10 profound lessons that can help you reflect on your life and find some peace amidst all the noise. It’s all about embracing the moment, recognizing our connections, and understanding that life is short. So, let’s get into these lessons and see how they can change the way we live.

Have you ever wondered what the real answer to living a fulfilled happy peaceful life is? I have, and I think the best people to answer this are the ones that have already lived it and what they would do differently if they did it again.

The latest episode of *Stillness in the Storms* dives deep into the ten life lessons that we often overlook but can profoundly impact our lives. The host, Stephen Webb, shares his reflective thoughts triggered by recent funerals he attended. He emphasizes how these solemn events remind us of life’s fragility and the importance of making the most of our time. Stephen captures the essence of living with urgency, suggesting that recognizing our mortality can motivate us to embrace each day fully. He encourages listeners to reflect on their lives and take actionable steps to appreciate the present. Throughout the episode, Stephen intertwines personal anecdotes, philosophical insights, and practical advice, urging everyone to live intentionally and cherish the connections and experiences that truly matter.

As Stephen outlines each lesson, he stresses that life is short and that we must prioritize what is truly important. He discusses the significance of love and connection, urging us not to take our relationships for granted. Each lesson is presented with heartfelt honesty, and Stephen shares his own struggles with self-identity and the journey of embracing oneself. The episode is both a call to action and a gentle reminder that while life is unpredictable, we can find peace by focusing on what we value most. By the end of the episode, listeners will feel inspired to reflect on their own lives and consider how they can implement these lessons to live more fulfilling lives.

Takeaways:

• Life is short, so make the most of every moment and embrace each day with gratitude.
• Don't take things for granted; appreciate the little things that make life enjoyable and meaningful.
• Love and connection are what truly matter in life, so prioritize your relationships over material possessions.
• Failure is a natural part of the journey, and it's important to learn from our mistakes and grow from them.

Foreign.

Welcome to Stillness in the Storms, the podcast that helps you find inner peace in the midst of life's chaos.

I'm Stephen Webb, your host, and in today's episode, we're going to explore the 10 profound lessons that help you reflect on your own life and find stillness in all this chaos.

I was at a funeral today, and there's been a few funerals I've been to recently.

People that have passed away, ex mayors and ex people that really made a big difference in Truro.

And I go as the mayor, so I bound my chains and go.

And funerals always give you the ability to reflect, and especially when you're close, but not too close, if you're really close.

Like when I went to my nan's funeral, it didn't give me no time to reflect because I was mourning.

But when you go to a funeral that you can.

You can slightly take a step back and you listen to the eulogies and you listen to the songs that are chose and the words that are chosen and things like that, you can really sit there and reflect on your life, their life, the lives around you, and life in general, and what it means to be alive.

And there's nothing more of a reminder of being alive than death.

I think it was Tony Robbins that said everybody should be reminded the minute they're born that they're dying already.

And that sounds awful.

It sounds like a really negative, but it's not.

It's really quite a profound way of living your life.

And if you realize you at any point, you can leave this earth.

I've got a necklace around my neck.

This is memento mori, which basically means you can leave at any time, you can clock out at any moment.

It's a wonderful reminder of impermanence.

You know, nobody gets out of this alive.

And I think it's just really, really important.

And I'm going to go through some life lessons.

And while I sat there in the cathedral in this beautiful backdrop, I was reflecting on.

I had to record a podcast today, and I was listening to the eulogies and listening to conversations around me, and I just thought, what can I do a podcast on?

And I thought, well, what would.

What would I like to have heard of people that know they haven't got much longer to live?

What lessons could they teach us?

So I started to think about my life and what I would teach now to people years and years ago, what I wish I knew earlier.

And I'd done a little search on the Internet, different things, you know, profound life lessons, things like that.

And I've come up with 10 of them and I'm going to go through the 10.

I'm going to share my stories and things like that in amongst them and how they affect me.

But I want you to really, while you listen to this podcast, reflect on your life, reflect on your friends lives and different things like that, and embrace the fact that you're dying.

You know, you haven't got forever.

You're not going to be the 1 in 90 billion humans that have ever lived that's going to live forever.

You know, it's just not going to work like that.

You know, something may come along in 2, 300 years time and we may end up being able to live three, 400 years, but we'll still waste 300 of them if we can live to be 400.

It's just, that's the way it is.

And these lessons really go deeper and deeper.

And I was listening to the song My Way by Frank Sinatra as I was listening to the words and I've always loved that song, it's always been a great song.

But I was listening to the words because that's what Philip, I think maybe he chose or his family chose, I don't know, maybe it's his favorite song, I don't know.

But that was the song that they came in pushing his coffin with.

And the words in it mean something different every time you hear it.

And the older you get, the closer to death you get, the more important they are, the more deeper they are, the deeper the lessons.

I did it My way means so much more to me now at 50 than I did at 20.

And just, just that one sentence alone, he says, I, I've got regrets.

I've got a few, but too few to mention I've got loads of regrets.

As I get older, mentioning regrets don't seem so important.

It's that kind of thing that really does make a difference.

So just before I start on the 10 profound life lessons, I want to thank Sarah and Kelly this week.

You're the two awesome ones this week.

You're all awesome.

You're the two that were able to buy me a coffee this week and support the podcast, support the editing and hosting.

And it really does help me to spend a little more time on what I love doing and producing more episodes, researching episodes, things like that.

So I've made it easy for you guys.

Just visit thankoustephen.com and you can download the 10 Simple Practices for Inner Peace.

You could donate a coffee or more up to you.

Or you go to my website, and you can contact me and ask for a particular subject you like.

So let's move on.

I'll remind you of that at the end of the show.

Thank you, Stephen.com.

i'll remind you of that at the end of the show.

I want to move on to the 10 lessons because I really want.

If we can embrace just one of these, it'll change the way your life is now.

So let's move on to lesson number one.

Life is short, so make the most of every moment.

Time is a precious commodity.

It's the one thing that we all have the same mount off every day.

We don't all have the same life, but we all do different things with it.

My monitor's just gone off.

Okay, it's back on.

We all do different things with it.

We all.

You know, I tend to waste a lot of my time.

I watch Netflix instead of reading books.

And I always have more of a lesson when I'm reading books.

And it's always.

There's a deeper sense of, I don't know, fulfillment when I'm filling my glass with something that's really nourishing when I'm reading and doing these kind of things.

Then when I'm just mindlessly sitting there watching things move on the screen and it's just feeding me this information.

So livingst day to the fullest, you know, just enjoy each day.

You know, every day is a borrowed day.

Every day is a bonus.

It really is.

And you haven't got time.

Life is short.

You don't have time to do all the things you want to do, so do them.

You know, death will creep up on you, and that's a positive.

It's not a negative.

It's a reality, you know, when you really embrace it.

So number two, don't take things for granted.

Oh, we do that.

I always talk about the gratitude depth.

You know, we come out, get out of bed in the morning, we come down the stairs and we put on the kettle.

We just have our cup of coffee in the morning.

But how often do we think about the fact that the kettle just works?

There's electricity in the socket just waiting there to ooze out and make your coffee.

Your milk's there and everything like that.

Your fridge is.

Kept it cool all night.

You know, how often do we curse and swear when the fridge breaks down or the electric's not working or the kettle broke?

365 days I've heated up your coffee, and one day I'm struggling and you have a go at Me, same as the car.

We just take so many things for granted.

We overlook our blessings in life all the time.

You know, when was the last time you lied in bed and said, thank you, Quill, thank you, Pillow, for giving me a wonderful night's sleep?

You know, I got some meditations on my innerpeacemeditations.com and there'll be a link to it.

And thank you, Stephen dot com.

It's my other podcast, which is about number 11 in the spiritual podcasts in the world, in the US or in the world at the moment, it's doing really, really well.

They're just meditations, basically.

So you have me talking and you have the other one.

You have me guided meditations.

Number three.

Love and connection are what truly matter.

You know, two of the main things we.

We.

We basically have need is we need that nourishment.

We need all those other things and all that we have attachment and all that, but it's that connection and that a sense of belonging, that sense of love.

At the end of the day, it's the relationships that we have that really make a difference in our lives.

And you know that if you ever spend any time alone, and we all spend some time alone, and I don't mean alone in the sense of with people or not with people.

When you're alone, you know, you could be in a relationship, you could be lying next to someone, you could be in someone's arms, and you feel alone.

That real sense of connection is what truly matters.

You can feel it.

And you don't necessarily even have to be in the same room.

You know, you can cuddle someone and not feel their connection, and you can be a hundred million miles away from someone and feel their connection.

So it's not necessarily right there in the room.

But when you prioritize connections to love over the stuff we dislike, the stuff we're pushing away, the stuff we don't enjoy.

Love, compassion, connection.

That's number three.

Love and connection are what truly matter.

Lesson number four.

Failure is a natural part of the journey.

Oh, boy, isn't it?

Don't be so hard on yourself.

It's the way we learn failure.

You know, you won't find anybody that's doing really, really well in life that haven't failed lots of times.

You know, the road is bumpy.

The road is really damn bumpy.

And I wish people had said that to me when I was really young.

They say, you know, go out on your journey, Stevie, but it's going to be bloody hard.

It's going to be really bumpy.

It's going to be really, really, really, really tough.

You know, it's a song by Sheryl Crow.

I knew it was gonna be tough.

Or someone says, we're tough, but no one says, gonna be this tough.

But yeah, it's a hard life, but it is what it is, you know, you cannot change it.

You know, when you hit that bump in the road, the bump's there.

We blame the bump.

And we're angry because the bump's there.

We're angry because of the failure.

Instead of looking at the lesson in the failure.

There's a gift in everything, and I genuinely believe that there's a gift in everything.

You know, sometimes you gotta look for it a little bit deeper.

You gotta really dig deep to find it.

Even in the most difficult circumstances, there's a reminder that life is precious.

It's the most damn precious thing you have.

Life itself is more precious than time.

It is time that gives you the ability to understand and enjoy life and experience life.

They go hand in hand.

Lesson number five.

Always be true to yourself.

Always be true to yourself.

Not always said than done.

Go easy on yourself.

But this is what I wrote.

It's easy to get caught up in the expectations and opinions of others, but the most important thing is to stay true to your own values and beliefs.

And this is another thing that I talk about is your leaves are fine and your branch and all that are fine, but where's the trunk and the foundations?

Where's your roots?

To who are you really?

What are your values and beliefs?

Why your values and beliefs that underpin your compassion and your love for the world and your connection to others, are you always living up to those values and beliefs?

If you're doing it in a relationship, great.

But if you're not doing it in your job and you're not doing it in all your other things, if you're around your friends and you're not staying true to yourself, but you're staying true to yourself and your family, you'll stay true to yourself no matter what.

And that doesn't mean true to all the people you try to be.

You know, I spend my life trying to be everybody else, and trust me, no one's as crazy and messed up and, you know, as ridiculous as me.

But I've kind of grown into loving myself because I can't be anybody else.

Can you be anybody else?

You've tried it.

You try to walk like them and talk like them and, you know, try to have jokes and be like them.

Maybe I'M self reflecting here, but self reflecting, perhaps I'm projecting here.

That's what I was looking for.

But the reality is, you know, yourself is the most truest, the most wholesome form you can be.

And learning to love yourself is not like, oh, I'm amazing.

It's all, I'm a work in progress, it's a journey and I'm doing my best.

You know, I spent so much time in that seven year old self that's trying to heal the world, realizing I cannot do that while trying to do that.

The paradox of it all is just hilarious.

It's just, it's a complete dance.

It's a joke.

Like Alan Watson say, it's a game.

The universe is playing a game.

Play the game.

Stay true to yourself, your values and beliefs.

And if you don't, and if you're not congruent to that heart, mind and spirit, if it's not congruent to who you really are, sit down and work out your values.

What is so important to you that you would die to keep intact?

What is it that is fundamentally so ingrained into who you are that you won't change your principle over?

And hopefully it's something that is in lines of compassion.

Number six.

Life is a journey, not a destination.

And I vote for this one.

The path of life is filled with ups and downs, twists and turns.

Instead of focusing solely on the destination, embrace the journey and savior the experiences along the way.

Look, we don't go to a music concert and beg them to play the last song.

You know, when you get to the top of the mountain, yes, it's great to have that view.

But turn around and sit down every now and again and look back at the view and enjoy that.

Embrace that you're learning life's lessons all the time and very often we're just so subconsciously going through life.

How many towns or villages do you drive through and you don't even remember driving through them because you do it so subconsciously.

You know, literally your arms and legs and your eyes and your brain and all that are driving the journey and you ain't even there.

You're thinking about your tea, you're thinking about next week, you're thinking about all the things you haven't done.

Embrace the journey while you're driving through that town.

You can't do anything else, just drive through the town.

You can't eat your tea later yet you're thinking about it.

You know, be in the moment, enjoy the journey.

And it is a journey, you know, you cannot be any other place than this moment.

You cannot, I cannot be 60 years old right now.

The most profound thinking is I'm already 60 and I'm already 30 and I've already done 20 and it's all there in this moment.

It only ever happens now, so you can only ever be here now.

I can only ever.

I can only be the age I am.

I can only be where I am.

Yet we're trying to always look at where, where we want to be, where we want to go and you know, it's fine to every now and again look at the top of the mountain and go, that's where I'm heading.

It's not fine to postpone sitting back, taking a breath and enjoying where you're currently to at the expense of life.

Lesson number seven, Take care of your body and mind and about our physical and mental health are essential for our well being.

Prioritize self care and take steps to nourish your body and your mind every day.

Well, I meditate and I do a few other things.

I'm going to be really hard on myself now.

I don't look after my body nowhere near as much as I should.

I look at my mind a little bit, but nowhere near as much as I should.

But I'm going to move off from me for a moment, you know, recognize it's the only body you will ever have.

Yes.

Every atom will change every seven years.

Yes.

You know all those things.

I know, I get all that.

We can go down those kind of physical routes, but really it's the only body you will ever have.

Learn to enjoy it.

And you need the body here to be alive.

You need it here and to, to live, to be a human, to experience this human realm.

And you need the mind.

You need to be able to think and be aware you're thinking and observe your thoughts and all these things you know, through your mind and body you experience what it means to be alive.

You need it.

Number eight.

Number eight.

Everything is temporary.

Oh boy, even this podcast is going to be over.

Everything is temporary.

Everything will move on.

Do you ever sit back and think, oh my God, how did I get to this age?

Where did the last 30 years go?

20 years.

Well right now feels like it its lasting for age ever.

Especially if you're going through something but just like that, click, you'll be 10 years older and the humans won't even be around In a few billion years time we'll be nothing more than, well, we might not even be a trace.

Hopefully there'll be a Few space rockets out there somewhere or spacecraft or whatever flying somewhere, hopefully not going to hit something that may bump into something at one point in the universe in some billions of years or whatever.

I don't know, I'm just going off track now for a minute.

But you know, everything is temporary.

Even the universe would die out.

Nothing is permanent.

The fact that things move.

But what this does, remembering that everything is temporary, it keeps everything in a long term perspective.

You know, this moment is temporary.

It won't last forever.

Lesson number nine.

So two more lessons ago.

Lesson number nine.

Embrace change.

It's the one thing that happens all the time.

Change.

It's the one thing that gives us this profound experience of life, is the fact that entropy.

Things change, things move.

You know, if atoms didn't shake towards each other, if the, if you didn't have all these chemical reactions going on in the body, if time did not exist, you know, that is change.

Embrace change.

There's nothing you can do about it.

And I wrote change is inevitable part of life.

And resisting it will only cause us more pain and suffering.

You cannot resist change.

Embrace change as an opportunity for growth and transformation.

It's not always nice, it's not always smooth.

You know, we spoke about this earlier on.

It's always, it's not always pretty.

But change is inevitable.

It's going to happen anyway.

So you either embrace the fact that things change, embrace the fact that you know one thing becomes something else.

If you don't embrace it, you're just going to be fighting it and you're going to lose every single time.

And number 10.

Number 10.

And the final lesson.

Live with purpose.

Live with purpose.

We all have a unique purpose in life and it's up to us to discover what that purpose is and to live it out to the fullest.

Cultivate a sense of purpose and meaning in your life and you'll find true fulfillment.

And this is.

You know, you could think of a glass.

Is it half full, is it half empty?

And all forget that you've got a glass that you can fill with what you want.

Find what you want to fill with that glass with.

Fill it with something that nourishes you and that'll be your purpose and your purpose.

Your purpose right now may not be your same purpose in 10 years time.

So stop trying to look for that one purpose in life.

Your purpose in life is to do what your mind, body and soul is congruent with at that time.

That is your purpose.

And it will be different today than it will be next week.

Next year, 10 years ago.

But try not to miss it.

You know, you'll know when it's your purpose, because it'll just feel right if someone's got to beg you to do it.

If someone's got a. I was talking to one of my carers about it a few weeks ago, and they're training to be a nurse, and I try and say, look, if nursing is your purpose, nothing will stop you doing it.

Okay, We've got to pay bills, we've got to do all that, but as long as you can do those things, nothing will stop you doing it.

But if it's not your purpose, you might phone in sick.

You won't have that enthusiasm, you won't have that joy to do it.

You know, if it's your purpose, you'll jump through hedges, you'll do anything.

Much like that teenager that falls in love the first time and there's 10 foot of snow outside.

He'll find a way to see that partner.

The purpose at that time is to do that.

Nothing will stop them.

Live with purpose.

Live with something bigger than yourself.

And the purpose is, if it includes helping others, it's bigger than yourself.

And then it will give you real fulfillment.

I really, really will, genuinely.

So there's my podcast this week.

10 profound life lessons that I wish I knew sooner.

And I'm trying to live up to them now.

And I'm just gonna.

I'm gonna go back and just look through them quickly now, just now.

Lesson number one, Life is short, so make the most of every moment.

Lesson number two, don't take things for granted.

Number three.

Love and connection are what truly matter.

Four, Failure is a natural part of life.

Five, always be true to yourself.

Number six.

Life is a journey, not a destination.

Seven, take care of your body and mind.

Everything is temporary.

Number nine, Embrace change.

Number ten.

Live with purpose.

Yeah, I'm going to add one last one.

You often hear the line saying, you know, if you live life, live it like every day is your last day.

No.

Live every day as if it's a brand new day that you've never seen before.

Look at the flower for the very first time.

Feel the sun for the very first time.

Greet your friend like you haven't seen him for 10 years, even if you've seen him three hours before.

Just look at life as if it's amazing, because it is amazing just for you to be here.

A collection of Adams, being able to see that flower and see the beauty of it and to be aware that you can see the beauty in it is absolutely profound beyond belief.

It's taken nature a long time to come up with just this.

Embrace it.

Love it.

Absolutely.

Wow.

You know, you don't see the magic in that.

You don't need to add miracles to life.

That is a miracle.

The fact that you're looking at a flower and you can see the beauty in the flower and you're aware that you can see the beauty in the flower, that is.

That is life in a nutshell in a profound way.

I'm Stephen Webb and thank you for listening to my podcast.

If you can support me, go to thankousteven.com it would help me to get editing.

It would help me to do more research, do more shows, help me to help you and others find a little more balance and peace in the chaos of life.

And you can also download the five Simple Practices for Inner Peace, which I wrote a couple of years ago.

Now, it's still up to date.

It's still relevant now.

Thank you, Stephen.com and thank you.

You're awesome.

I love you.

Sa.