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In this podcast, Steven Webb explores the concept that there are no inherently positive or negative thoughts, emphasizing that while we cannot choose which thoughts arise, we can choose how we respond to them. He highlights the importance of observing our thoughts rather than getting entangled in them, suggesting that by doing so, we can significantly reduce our suffering. Drawing on personal experiences, Stephen shares how his journey through meditation and self-awareness has helped him better manage his busy mind and negative thought patterns. He encourages listeners to practice mindfulness by simply acknowledging their thoughts without judgment, allowing for a greater sense of peace and control in their lives. Join Stephen as he provides insights and tools to cultivate a calmer, more centered state of being, enabling you to navigate life's challenges with less emotional turmoil.

Takeaways:

• You cannot control which thoughts arise, but you can choose how to respond to them.
• Understanding that thoughts are not inherently positive or negative can reduce suffering.
• Observing thoughts as they come allows you to detach and prevent unnecessary emotional reactions.
• Training your subconscious mind involves choosing to engage with thoughts that serve you best.
• Thoughts should be viewed as trains at a station; you can choose which ones to board.
• By allowing thoughts to pass without engaging them, you cultivate a more peaceful mindset.

Links referenced in this episode:

• stevenwebb.uk

Exploring the intricate relationship between our thoughts and our perception of reality, Steven Webb delves into the profound concept that thoughts, whether deemed positive or negative, are merely fleeting phenomena that do not define us. Drawing from personal experiences and a background in meditation, he articulates how the mind's primary function is to generate thoughts, much like the heart pumps blood. The true power lies not in the thoughts themselves, but in our capacity to choose whether or not to engage with them. Webb emphasizes that while we cannot control which thoughts arise, we can certainly influence how we respond to them. This pivotal distinction can lead to a significant reduction in suffering, allowing individuals to cultivate a more peaceful existence. As he shares insights gathered from his journey through paralysis and meditation, listeners are encouraged to observe their thoughts without judgment, creating space between stimulus and response, ultimately leading to a more harmonious state of mind.

Steven also introduces the metaphor of a train station to illustrate how thoughts come and go, much like trains arriving and departing. Each thought presents an opportunity for engagement, yet we are not obligated to board every train that arrives. By making conscious choices about which thoughts to follow, we can train our subconscious to present us with more of what we desire, whether that be gratitude, joy, or peace. Webb's candid storytelling, including anecdotes about his challenges, invites listeners to reframe their understanding of thought patterns, shifting away from a binary perspective of positivity and negativity. This change in viewpoint can empower individuals to navigate their mental landscapes with greater ease and clarity, fostering a sense of agency in their emotional experiences.

Through guided meditative practices, Webb encourages listeners to embrace moments of stillness as a means to observe their thoughts. By stepping back and adopting the role of an observer, individuals can decouple their identity from their thoughts, gaining insight into the nature of consciousness itself. This meditative approach not only enhances self-awareness but also cultivates resilience against the mental chatter that often dominates our lives. As he wraps up the episode, listeners are reminded of the importance of sustaining this practice in daily life, creating a ripple effect of calm and wisdom that extends beyond meditation sessions. Ultimately, Webb's message underscores the transformative potential of mindfulness and the liberating realization that we are not our thoughts; rather, we are the aware witnesses of them, poised to choose our responses thoughtfully and intentionally.

Hi, and welcome to Stillness in the Storms.

I'm Steven Webb, your host, and I'm going to convince you there's no such thing as a positive thought or a negative thought by the end of this podcast. Bear with me. And it's a conversation I've been having more and more recently.

And I remember always talking to people about, you can change your thoughts. You can, you know, just think more positive thoughts. Just do that.

Well, I've come to the conclusion you cannot choose which thoughts to have, but you can choose which thoughts to get on. And there's no such thing as a positive or negative thought when it comes to the bigger picture.

However, we have thoughts that we like and we have thoughts that we dislike, and we can choose which ones to go on. So that's what I want to talk about on today's podcast.

Because I think when we understand the way the mind works, what its job is and things like that, we just suffer a whole lot less.

And I think that's why, the reason why, even being paralyzed, even being a city councillor, being in politics, being a frustrated meditation teacher or just a meditator, that my mind never shuts up. All of those things why I don't suffer too much, because I can observe the thoughts and go, ah, it's just a thought.

And then I can choose whether to get on it or not. So that's what I want to talk about today on today's podcast. So welcome.

You're in the right place if you want to have a little less suffering in life. And this is what led me to meditation, because I just was fed up with suffering.

I hit my rock bottom at the age of 40, and it was a pretty rough time. You would have thought being paralyzed, having all those problems and all that would have been reliable on everybody else.

From wiping my bum to everything in life. I literally cannot make my own toast. So I've got to put up with toast the way I get it half of the time, you know, and if you.

If you know me and you've been on this podcast more than, like, I don't know, 20 minutes, you realize that I'm obsessed with toast and the million different ways of doing toast, but I suffered a lot. And that's why what led me to meditation, it led me to understanding my thoughts, and it led me to, oh, moving from just being positive.

Let's just have happy thoughts to. It's not that simple, but it's actually more simpler than that. So what is a thought? Where does it come from?

Well, your brain, your mind, is designed to think, it evolved to think. That is its only job.

Just like your heart is there to pump the blood around your body, your liver is there to filter the blood, your muscles there to move something when you want it moved, things like that. So everything in your body has a job. Your mind's job is to work out the chemicals and tell the body to do different things.

It's to think stuff and then tell the different places to do it. So the mind has a way of having a memory in order to help and protect us.

So the mind in any given moment is just thinking stuff up and giving you those thoughts. The thoughts already happen by the time we're aware of it. So bear with me on this because this is like really quite important.

The process is really important. So right now you're not in charge of what thoughts come into your head. You're not even in charge of what goes into your eyes, goes into your ears.

But you're not in control of what sensations happen to you, just the same as you're not in control of what thoughts come up.

And we can prove this, because if I say to you, now, just sit back, just relax your body a little bit, just allow your body to relax and just wait for the next thought. Do this with me now. Wait for the next thought.

Well, a, your mind goes completely blank for a moment, but you don't know what your next thought is going to be. You cannot create a thought. All you can do is move on to another thought.

You're asking your subconscious mind for a thought and your subconscious mind gives you it. You're not in control of it, but what you are in control of is what you do with a thought.

So I use the analogy that you're sat in a train station and the trains that come in are the thoughts. You can choose to get on them or choose not to.

And if you choose to get on the thoughts that you like, the subconscious mind will give you more of those thoughts. If you choose. If you get on all the thoughts, the subconscious mind will just give you loads of thoughts.

And what I mean by getting on a thought, I mean by you have a thought, say you're thinking about. A thought comes into your mind. Let's say mint chocolate chip ice cream, which is my favourite ice cream.

And I always think of that whenever I go, what's the thought? And it always comes back to that, always that on my stomach. Nobody always, anyway. And then instantly I can choose to go on it.

I can think, oh, when was last time I had that? I can Then go down, oh, I had a not very nice one the other day, or I had it at the beach, or, oh, I can't believe I haven't had them.

And we create a story. That's what I mean by that. You create a story.

If I think about relationships, I could go down to what relationships I've had and what's happened to them. If I think about pain, where's the pain in my body? How did it come about?

And so if I just mention politics, that'll lead to a train of thoughts with you and politics. If you're in America right now, you'll probably think about the election and all that stuff.

If you're in Australia, you'll probably think about the kings just visited and all that, and should you become a Republican. So these are stories you're getting on it.

But if you understand the fact that you don't have to do that with your thoughts, when you understand the concept of you have thoughts but you are not the thoughts, and then you can sit back and observe the thoughts, Ah, there's a thought. And you can label it as one thing you could do, but you can also just have a thought and go, ah, there's a thought and do nothing with it.

You don't have to get on it, you don't have to make it into a story. And then you end up with this, like, superpower. You move from this reacting to every thought that comes into your head.

You feel like you gotta do something with it or you go off on it anyway. You join the story and you make up all kinds of things.

One thought leads to another, leads to another, and before you know it, you're 20 miles down the track on a train where you don't want to be. You think you're the driver, you're not.

You're sitting behind the driver, and the driver is your subconscious mind that's actually making all the decisions for you. And you're just deciding whether or not to keep patting him on the back.

And when, I mean by patting him on the back, you reward your subconscious mind with deep emotions. So if you have a thought and you're really happy about it, that's then like adrenaline to your subconscious mind. It's like, ah, I got it right.

And if you have a thought and it like really makes you frightened or angry, the subconscious mind, I got it right, because it's a strong emotion. Your subconscious mind doesn't know good nor bad, positive or negative. To a.

For example, to somebody that I don't know, let's Take somebody that wants to burgle a house, a positive thought would be a good loot. But to someone whose house that is, someone burgling, that's a negative thought, that's bad. So it depends on perspective.

It depends on the person to what is a positive and negative thought. And we're all in different situations. It's quite a negative thought for me to think about going swimming in the anywhere really.

I don't like water, you know, I broke my neck in the swimming pool. That's a negative thought for me. But somebody else, that's a positive thought.

But it's not the thought, it's what we, whether we like it or not, it's whether we want it or not. So the subconscious mind will give you the thoughts that your subconscious mind thinks you want.

And there's one other thing that the subconscious mind wants to do is it will give you thoughts to keep you alive and keep you safe in the present moment. But it doesn't have no timeline. It doesn't understand tomorrow, last week, next month. All it is, is in this moment.

So it's just giving you the thoughts that it thinks you need in this moment. And that's it. That's its only job. So we allow it to do its job and then we can consciously choose which ones to go on.

And while consciously choosing which ones to go on, we then have some kind of influence over what comes next. If you're not getting on any of the trains that you don't want, the subconscious mind will eventually stop sending those trains in.

Just the same as if you tell a child, yeah, my favorite sweets are green. They'll give you green sweets for the next 50 years. You've got to re educate it and say, no, I don't want green, now stop taking the green.

And that's the reality of the subconscious mind. It is like a monkey kind of child that's just repeating and doing the same things it's learned all the time.

So the more and more we train it to what thoughts we get on, the less suffering we have because the more thoughts that we actually want.

So when you have a thought that you want of gratitude or something like that, enjoy it, move with it, really sit down and go, hmm, I like this thought. And then the more of them you'll have.

But while we're trying to change a thought and talking about changing a negative thought into a positive and things like that, you cannot change a thought. Changing a thought is like trying to change the color of your top by thinking, try it now. I Don't know. You might be wearing a white T shirt.

Try just thinking, I want to change my T shirt to a different color. It's futile, you know that. But that's what we're trying to do. We're like, just change your thoughts, Change your thoughts patterns.

And we get told this all the time, just think positive. Change your negative thoughts into positive thoughts and then you'll all be happy. No, it just doesn't work like that.

You cannot change what's already happened. You cannot change what's already happened. I know I repeated that, but it's really important to understand that notion. So then what do we do with it?

How do we do this? Well, if you spend just a minute or so, a day or a minute or so every hour, just sit back and go, okay, I'm ready for my thoughts.

Let me have them and just watch them come and just observe them and see that they're just thoughts and learn to not get on them, learn to do nothing with them. And it'll be a really new concept. There's a difference between knowing this and actually doing it.

So when you learn to, there's a thought, why don't I have to do anything with it? You know, you might hear something in the street or something and you have to get involved where you can choose to, I'm going to stay out of this.

Not my monkeys, not my fight. And you can do the same thing with your thoughts. You know, this is a thought. I'm just not getting on today.

And you create this gap between the thought and how you respond to life. And you suddenly become clearer minded, you become more peaceful, you'll become happier, you'll become more wiser and more in control.

And all these things will just suddenly have a profound impact on your life as time goes on.

And you'll just become calmer and you'll certainly become wiser because you'll be in the 1 or 2% that actually recognizes their thoughts aren't real, they're just random and they're crazy. My mind is like a 247 committee meeting of about 10,000 different voices all, all arguing with each other constantly.

And I just sit back and watch them happen. I'm not going to stop my brain thinking, you can't do that. It's impossible. You will not stop your brain thinking.

And I just wanted to share that with you. It's thoughts of what I've been and conversations I've had the last few days. It's not a new concept.

It's in Buddhism and Zen meditation all those different things. But I just wanted to put it in perspective. And I don't want to make anything big out of it because it's not. It really is quite simple.

You are not your thoughts because if you were your thoughts, you couldn't observe your thoughts. You cannot see something that your eyes. That's like saying.

That's like without a mirror or anything on the outside, a look at your eyes, it's like biting your own teeth, you know you can't do it. It's. Yeah. Looking at your own eyes. That's funny. Try it. Yeah, you just can't do it. It's impossible.

You can look in a mirror, of course, and you can talk to someone about your thoughts. You can, but you cannot see what you are.

So the fact that you can witness your thoughts and you can see your thoughts, you know, you cannot feel the actual electrical stimulation. You cannot actually see that. Of course you can, but you can actually witness the thought. So you must be something deeper.

There must be something beyond that thought that you are. Otherwise you would not be aware that you had the thought. You couldn't label it. I hope that makes sense.

There's no way you can label a thought just by. So I've got another podcast called Inner Peace Meditations.

And they're just meditations that are all kinds of things just to give you a little more stillness in the storms. And. And let's just do a quick three, four minute meditation now and there'll be an extended version on the Inner Peace meditations.

So just wiggle your arms, make yourself a little bit comfortable. If you're driving a car, don't do this. But if you're in a safe place where you can just take three minutes out, please do this.

So just allow your arms to relax. Allow your body to relax and become aware of your breath. And imagine you're breathing in calm, breathing out. Relax.

You don't have to do anything else here right this moment. You don't have to change your breath. Your body knows how to breathe, your body knows how to relax.

Your body knows how to be breathing in calm, breathing out. Relax. That should do. So just soften your gaze or close your eyes and just become the watcher of thoughts.

I'm just waiting for thoughts and I'm going to be aware of them. And the thought could be, oh, I've got an itch or I gotta do something later, or really, I don't want to be sitting there doing nothing.

And just be curious and amused by the thought. You can even say, hi, thought. And just by actively acknowledging it, you can just let it go. I have thoughts, but I'm not those thoughts.

And that's it really. So just shake out your arms and come back, come back in the room to me.

So if you think about it, just if you can learn to cultivate that in everyday life a bit more. When I sit down to meditate, my thoughts come thick and fast. There are actually no more thoughts in meditation than there are in normal life.

But in normal life, you're busier, you're walking, you're doing something, you might be holding something, you're actively reading or watching telly. So therefore you, your brain is already preoccupied with a lot of those thoughts in meditation.

Just like when you lie down to go sleep at night, your brain hasn't got all those other things to do, so suddenly you're aware of all these thoughts coming up, you're actually not thinking anything more. It's just your brain is constantly thinking because that's what it does. A brain that is not constantly thinking is dead. You know, that's the reality.

Yet we all want no thinking. No, you don't. You just want nice thoughts. Let's be honest. Or if you want to go to sleep, you just want less thoughts.

You want peaceful thoughts of go and sleep. And that's why my deep sleep meditation works so well. Because I don't say about get rid of all thoughts. I give you a thought to help you go sleep.

You know, a thought of safety and calm. And who knew I had a voice that helps people go sleep? That's a talent. You know, I could read the car manual and people will fall asleep.

Something the world really needs right now. Sleep is one of the greatest things.

But yeah, when we understand that we don't have to get on every thought suddenly, we can have more peace and less suffering.

We can have a thought of anger that would normally make us angry because a thought leads to a feeling, a feeling leads to a story, leads to more thoughts and more story, and then the cycle continues. What if you can just go, hmm, not doing it this time. And a few minutes later, the mind will think of another thought to go into. And that's it.

That's okay. So I'm Steven Webb. This is Stillness in the Storms. And I want to thank everybody that donates and treats me to a coffee.

You really help keep this podcast and the Inner Peace Meditations podcast, totally free. You can go to stevenwebb.uk and where you can just donate a coffee and buy a coffee for me. It just helps pay for the podcast and do all that.

So thank you deeply to all those that do that. I want to keep them free for everybody because who likes to listen to adverts? Not me. Take care, guys. And I love.