How many roles are you playing at once? Employee, colleague, manager, mentor, parent. I was a councillor and a mayor, and I am loving not being one of those anymore.

Life keeps getting more complicated and some days I am just keeping my head above water. Mother Teresa put it best to an audience of about three people. The roles pile up, professional and social, and each one carries its own expectations. Underneath them there are core principles, and you are probably all of them at different times.

One thing to try: List the roles you played today. Just list them. The number is usually the surprise.

In this episode

• (0:02) Life getting more complicated, and keeping your head above water
• (2:46) Getting the whole back catalogue available
• (4:48) Employee, colleague, manager, leader, mentor, doctor
• (6:39) Councillor, mayor, and loving not being one now
• (9:07) Mother Teresa, to an audience of about three
• (11:17) The list of core principles, longer than I expected

With gratitude to

Jack, Virginia and Ashley.

Support the podcast and join the Weekly Calm: stevenwebb.uk

Thank you for listening.

Steven

Links to Steven Webb's podcast and how you can support his work.

• Donate paypal.me/stevenwebb or Coffee stevenwebb.uk
• Steven's courses, podcasts and links: stevenwebb.uk

Have you noticed how life's just becoming more and more complicated? Some days I feel like I'm just about keeping

my head above water.

Just some days I'm like, can the world just stop? I need to get off for just five minutes, please.

That would be so nice. Wouldn't it? Just.

Yeah, imagine having that superpower that literally you could click your fingers and the whole world pauses. And we

couldn't use it all the time, but nobody else knows their pause. Mind you, someone might have this superpower we

wouldn't know, would we? I might be, you might all have this superpower and I'm the only one that hasn't

got it. But imagine the superpower where literally you can click your fingers and the whole world stops. And

you can just collect your thoughts

then you can only use it say once a month for 20 minutes, but you could just, you get to

that work or you get to that point in the day when the kids are just on top of you,

works on top of you. You just have the phone call you just got all these things happening, and suddenly

before you know it, you're just so overwhelmed. It's like, click. I've just got half an hour to collect my

thoughts and sit down. God, wouldn't that be an amazing superpower?

On today's podcast, I want to talk about all the different roles we play and how complicated it has become

in our lives, and comparing that to 100 years ago to now, and what we can do about it.

I'm Steven Webb and this is Stillness in The Storms, the podcast that gives you a little inner peace when

you need it most and probably have it least, helping you to think a little bit different. And I want

to say thank you first of all to people that have donated a coffee this week. And to Jack that's

given me 30 uh he's just put up that it's anonymous, but I'm okay saying Jack, there's a few

jacks in the world, so I'm sure I'm okay saying that I wonder if I'm going to be in trouble

now. Thank you Jack. Anyway I don't know anything more about you than that, apart from you support it and

you're awesome. Thank you. But also thank you to Virginia and Ashley and katherine

and another anonymous.

And Laurel, our new member on buy a Coffee, you can join as a member six dollars a month or

sixty dollars for the year, and that will give you access to all of my meditations it's like confession I

didn't realise they weren't available. So I've just realised this week that I've got to put them all available And

that's my work that I'm doing this week. My back catalog of all my meditations, plus all the inner peace

meditations on the podcast. So yeah, I've got, we got seven members now. How cool is that? So thank you

to all the members that regularly donate every month. And to Nicole just 47 minutes ago donated a coffee, And

everybody that leaves a like a review. The reviews make a huge, huge difference as well. Oh, where can you

go? Yeah, thankyousteven.com and then you got a link to my main website. You can download the five simple practices

for inner peace and you could donate a coffee if you want. Thank you guys. Anyway, let's get on with

today's podcast. So we're going to unravel some of the complexities of all the many roles we play in life.

And I put together a list of roles because boy, there's so many of them, and I don't think we

realise how many different roles we play in a day and what it requires from us and the attention it

requires from us. And just switching between them is just absolutely exhausting. But what do I mean by roles? If

I give you a few examples of the kind of roles we play on a daily basis, and there's so

many of them. When I started listing, after a couple of minutes, I got to like one or two, and

then suddenly it just started flowing. How many different roles we play. So let's just look at family roles. You

know, I'm a parent, so my daughter phones, I'm a parent. Suddenly my mom phones, I'm a son, you know,

another family member or someone like that. Phones an uncle or someone like that. Phones, and I'm suddenly a nephew.

But you might have a cousin, you might have all, you might be a grandparent, or you might be a

granddaughter or something, you know, all these different roles require us to be something slightly different. And then you have

the social roles you're a friend, a mentor, you know, a neighbour you're a community member, or you're a volunteer.

All those roles are of social and then professional roles you're an employee, you're a colleague, you're

a manager, a leader, you're a mentor, you're a doctor, you're a nurse. You know, there's so many different things.

You're a bus driver. And

then a phone call happens you're suddenly a son again you know, you get the point you've got your civic

roles you're a voter, you're an activist, you're a jury member, you're a student teacher, you know, a school board

member. You're a trustee, you're a patient caregiver, you're a partner, you're an ex-partner, you're a fiance, a spouse,

and

the list goes on. Just reading through the list is exhausting. So on a daily basis, just think about it

for a moment. How many roles have you already Played today? Yeah,

that

simple phone call, that simple to-do. List that simple. You may get the kids ready or you may be off

out today, or you may have had to make a couple of phone calls. You've got to play all these

different roles and flipping between them. Showing up as your best self into all them is absolutely so

demanding, so complex. It's so, and we almost simultaneously do it, and we don't bat an eyelid But

here's the difference. The more on your spiritual journey you go, the more aware you become, the more conscious, the

more you open up your heart, the more you realise, the more you see what's going on around you. The

more you want to show up as the best version of yourself in that role. But how do we do

it? You know, it's easy to say all the roles and all the problems with it and I don't know

about you, but, you know, I, I struggle. I'm a city councillor I was a mayor for two years. I

am I'm not mayor anymore, three four weeks ago now. And I'm loving the fact that I'm not in that

role anymore. But I love the fact I was in that role. But as a mayor, I was the civic

mayor. I was the council mayor. I was the council chair. I was a colleague and friend. Like I said,

I'm a dad, I'm a son. My mum phoned up early on she's got no broadband,

so I've been trying to sort that out Thank you Sky for trying to sort it out on Twitter, but

I've got to go up there shortly after I finish this podcast.

You know, we play all these different roles and to be quite honest, who are you in it? Is it,

you know, do you often feel that your sense of identity is lost? Who

are you where? How do you show up? How do you keep a sense of who you are in all

of these different roles? You

know, where's Stevie in all these roles? You know, Stevie's, that seven-year-old where's Steven? That adult. I didn't change my

name, I just, I felt Stevie as an adult. I felt like I needed to mature. Plus, Stevie Webb was

already taken.com, so StevenWebb.com wasn't so I could use that. So how we,

how we mold into the world rather than get the world to mold to us. It's really funny. Yeah. So

that's my main website, StevenWebb.com. Set of a v. Yeah I wonder how many people change their name by depot

just because they found a domain name. Anyway, I'm going off topic now, but isn't it funny how we do

play all these different roles and when we become more aware of it and the spiritual journey to me, let

me define that because I've just mentioned it to me, the spiritual journey is, is your heart opening? Are you

able to tolerate more? Are you being more compassionate? Are you understanding and being more loving? And ultimately, are you

suffering less? That's the spiritual journey. It's not about contacting aliens. It's not about being able to go on your

magic carpet and going um all day long. It's not about sitting in the bathroom, quietly on the floor, meditating

in the morning. It's about can you show up in a negative environment and raise the energy, raise the

vibration, and just bring your best version of yourself.

That's what the true spiritual journey is about I tell you who defined it best, was Mother Teresa.

When she said to a small audience of about three, she looked up and said, do you know what? It's

all well and good you're being calm and peaceful. When you're here with me. You got to go home and

be calm and peaceful in front of your family. That's where the work is. It's easy to do it in

a monastery or. On retreat. What do you do when you go home? That's where the work is. That's where

you've got to remain calm. It's not about eliminating all negative people and get rid of all people you don't

like. You're going to go into town, you're going to encounter the person that's having a difficult day. The spiritual

journey is how do I show up as a friend or a part of the community, or just a visitor

to a town with the open heart the compassion and the understanding. How do we do that?

And one thing that I try to work on is our core values. And

if you pick three core values and show up as those core values, no matter what. So before you shake

someone's hand, just say those core values in your head. When you walk through a door into an event or

you walk through a door into the day nursery or into your work, or when you're visiting a barbecue friends

or whatever, just before you go in there right okay I am this, this, and this. What does that look

like? And feel it throughout your whole body, and then you can bring those core values to all the different

roles in life. And you are showing up as yourself rather than having those roles define you. Does

that make sense? I should have. My phone keeps going off, so I apologize, but I'm on a roll so

I don't want to stop So my mom's probably gonna phone in a minute. Stevie the broadband's still not on.

Okay, I'm coming up there soon. Anyway, right. I, I digress. But we play these

different roles in our head switching and all that. So how do we show up? Well, first of all I've

written down a list of core principles, and again, with them, I didn't realise how many there were, and

you're probably all of these at different times, but which ones really resonate with you?

So I got to a list of 20 and I'll list them in the show notes. And authenticity.

Compassion, respect, integrity, love, responsibility, empathy, courage,

humility, gratitude, patience, generosity, perseverance. Self-discipline, optimism,

fairness, kindness, growth, balance, and peace. Then if you think about that, so if you have a

room full of. Nine people and each of those nine brought three of those things to the room. How

awesome would that be?

So respect value in others treating them with dignity and fairness, acknowledging their rights, values, and beliefs,

self-discipline, exercising control over one's actions and impulses. Maintaining focus on

long-term goals. Growth, pursuing self-improvement, seeking personal and professional development,

learning from experiences. So what do all these look like in a group setting and showing up

compassion, showing understanding kindness to others. Experiencing a genuine desire to help those in need.

So if we just pick three main ones, three things that resonate with us, then

we just remember them in our head. We go to sleep and we think about those three things and what

it's like to show up with that person.

What does that look like what does it look like to be a kind optimist and a generous friend?

What

does it look like to be Have be a dad with integrity, love, and balance.

So

all of these things have such good qualities that I I just think it's a simple way of

simplifying our complicated lives. A hundred years ago, you spent eight hours on the field or just

doing one thing. You come home and you might read a book or you'll have something to eat and you'll

sit down with family. You didn't have the internet, you didn't have all the tv, you didn't have all these

complicated things. We barely had electricity in most areas. Go

back 200 years ago, you probably only had two or three roles in your life. Whereas now literally we have.

10, 20, 30 roles on a daily basis sometimes, and it is really, really difficult.

I

really struggle with it on a daily basis,

and I think what you can do. Maybe I'll do a couple of meditations and all that to help you

find which ones of these really resonate with you. But the problem is we cannot go through every single one

of them because they'll all kind of resonate with you I hope they all do because they're all brilliant core

values I'd be quite gutted if one of those core values weren't present at all in my

life.

There's not one of them that I could read through that I would like to chop out, but

there's a lot there that I could work on, I could improve. And there's a few there that just really

resonate with me. You know, compassion

authenticity

and kindness. Those three really resonate with me. And patience. You know, maybe

when I'm coaching or when I'm helping someone that finds meditation difficult to get over some difficult times, I

can just sit down and I can show up as kind and patient and compassionate wouldn't

that be amazing. Imagine if everybody, imagine if we had like a t-shirt on and we were showing up as

those three words. And

you could have on the t-shirt, these are my three words, my core values point them out. If I'm not

living by them, how awesome would that be? How much would people change? I

don't think people would change at all. I just think we would embrace our true selves because I essentially, I

think everybody, these core values are. Innate to everybody. I, I don't think people don't have them.

I think people end up stuck in roles that they may be delusional or that

they may make mistakes or their actions are not matching their core values. And then it's difficult to get out

of. You know, we get stuck in these loops that are. You know, difficult. But anyway, I'll

list some of the roles and I'll list the core values in the show notes for you. Just

on a reflective question, if you had three core values and you literally lived up to them every day, how

much would that change? What? How much would it change each role you play? You know, I said compassion because

that really resonates with me. What does a compassionate son look like but it's one that takes a bit of

time. The one that tries to help. What, what is a compassionate friend or compassionate mayor or compassionate

chair for a council meeting? It's one that gives everyone a chance. It's a one that's fair. It's one that

understands. Some people in the room may find it difficult. So,

you know, these are not difficult, but it's just difficult to remember that they're there all the time.

So we have to come from that point of creation. And when I say point of creation, I don't mean

15.7 billion years ago or the day you were born. I mean the creation of every single moment right now,

this moment has been created or happening, it's just happening to us. I wouldn't say created it's probably the wrong

word.

But I'm sure you know what I mean. Every moment is arising. That's probably a better way of doing it.

Ah that's quite warm in the Uk at the moment. I'm sitting there I can hear the birds. I'm getting

to my afternoon nap. You can tell my, my voice has slowed down. It's like, right, okay. My afternoon nap.

And do I fight it here for the next three hours or do I just go and have a sleep

for 20 minutes? I think I'll go and have a sleep for 20 minutes. But look guys, thank you so

much for leaving reviews sharing the podcast. Think about what three words go through the list in the show notes.

Think about what three words that. Really resonate with you. Say the words, feel them deeply see whether they

resonate with you, and then every time you encounter someone or every time you have a different role to play,

really take notice of what would this role look like from those perspective of those three words, those

three core values, I think it it's a game changer. It really is a game changer. Because we can only

ever change ourselves. We can only ever, we can only ever be in control of what we bring to the

table. We're not in control of what other people bring to the table. Hence why every barbecue,

someone brings up some food and you go, why did you bring that? It's the same as our actions, you

know? Take care guys, and thank you and. If you can, um, support the podcast or you want to download

the five simple practice for inner pace head over to thankyousteven.com.

Otherwise, leave a review. That'd be amazing. Otherwise, I love you and take care and have a

wonderful week.