Find inner peace even with a busy mind. Steven Webb shares how to embrace your thoughts and use meditation techniques that work for you.

Support this podcast at https://thankyousteven.com.

Highlights:

• "You cannot quiet the mind to a point where you can stop your thoughts. There is no off switch." [00:01:30]
• "Meditation is not about quieting the mind. Do you get that? I hear why you with me? So why meditate, if it's not about quieting the mind?" [00:08:00]
• "The more you meditate, the more you see." [00:11:30]
• "Even if you have a busy mind, you can meditate. And you don't have to sit down and try to silence your mind for 40 minutes." [00:17:00]

Steven shares that the goal of meditation is not to silence your thoughts completely, but to embrace them and find inner stillness. Even just taking a few minutes to focus on your breath or listen to sounds can help calm your mind.

Benefits of this episode:

• Learn why you can't fully "turn off" your thoughts
• Discover meditation techniques to embrace your busy mind
• Find inner peace in small moments throughout your day
• Stop judging yourself and simply observe your thoughts
• Integrate mindfulness into everyday life

Welcome to stillness in this storm was podcast.

And this week's episode, I want to talk about some of the myths about meditation.

And about quietening the mind and how we can have quiet

mind, even with a busy mind.

And I think that's really important.

Lots of people come to me all the time and say, how do I quieten my mind?

How do I shut off some of those thoughts?

Some going to tackle some of those things in this week's podcast.

And I think it's one of those things that stopped so many people meditating.

When really it shouldn't stop you meditating.

Although it did stop me for a very long time.

But just before we do that, I want to thank the couple of people that

have given that donations this week.

You are awesome.

Sandy, Nancy and Audra . You really keep this podcast going.

You keep my motivation going and same as many others that do donate.

Yeah.

You can head over to thankyousteven.com.

There's a link to.

Joining my Weekly Calm newsletter.

It comes out every single Friday.

I'm about to write it after I do this podcast.

Because there's always a link to the new podcast.

What I've been up to behind the scenes.

And update on me writing my book, the gift of no choice.

It also helps hints and tips to help you find the little Stillness in the storms.

A little bit of weekly calm.

Yeah.

So let's get on with today's show.

First of all, I want to debunk the main myth in meditation.

And that is that.

That we can quiet in the mind to a point where we can stop our thoughts.

You cannot.

There is no off switch.

It's impossible.

Asking your mind to stop is like asking your heart to stop beating.

Or your liver to stop processing.

Your blood.

It's not going to happen.

And if it does happen, you're dead.

So stop wishing for that to happen.

But I get it.

You want that little bit of break from the thought she wanted that

little bit of peace and quiet.

Especially when you put your head down at night and the thoughts come racing in.

I had to put a guided meditation on twice last night to help my mind fall asleep.

Normally I can do a.

Body scan.

Normally I can do a few breathing exercises.

Count back from a hundred and sevens, things like that.

And unfortunately quite easily, not last night.

I was awake at one o'clock in the morning.

My mind just kept going through one thing.

It was a desire and then it was something I didn't want.

And then it was this.

And then it was that.

And none of it was important.

None of it was relevant to my life whatsoever.

But boy did my subconscious mind think my conscious mind wanted

to know all about it last night.

And it stopped me from sleeping because what stops you from sleeping?

Is when you don't feel in a safe position to go sleep.

So it keeps the mind active.

Trust me, my body was asleep.

My body was fast asleep.

Oh, just a reminder.

I'm also recording this.

As a video as well this time.

So if you head over to my YouTube channel which you can get the link on.

Thank you, steven.com.

You'll see me talking.

On a video.

I'm not sure you want to do that, it's there anyway.

So I'm just trying to share this podcast to reach more people and.

You just being here, listening to this podcast does help.

If you can leave a review, that'd be amazing.

But let's get back to the myths of meditation.

So basically your mind.

Has three minds, you have the instinctual mind.

That is literally.

Taking everything in from the sounds to the feelings to.

Emotions and everything taking them in.

And it's asking the question, is this going to kill me?

Is it really dangerous?

Do I need to panic?

And if no, it passed it.

Subconscious mind.

And the subconscious mind looks for a filing cabinet.

What did I do last time?

Do I recognize that sound?

Do I know it?

Do I recognize that word?

Do I recognize that road?

And just ask that question.

Do I know this already?

Is that okay?

If it doesn't at that point, ill pass it over to you.

But what is constantly doing as well?

It's thinking stuff up there.

Things you might like to know.

It's what it's evolved to do exactly perfectly.

So if your mind is giving you thoughts, It's working perfectly fine.

The problem is it's not the fact that we want to shut off the thoughts.

It's the fact that we want to choose which thoughts to have.

You don't want to get rid of the thoughts to you enjoy.

You don't want to get rid of the thoughts that bring you pleasure when

you fall in love or something like that?

No, of course you don't.

But you want to get rid of the painful thoughts or the relentless thoughts or the

thoughts when you're trying to go sleep.

Or when you're trying to make some kind of decisions or when you're

trying to getting on and the mind is constantly, trying to distract you.

You're not going to stop it, doing that.

But what we can do, and I will go onto that a little bit more in this podcast.

Is, we can influence those to force a lot more.

And this is where meditation comes in.

Now then for a long time.

I thought I could not meditate.

When I hit my rock bottom at 40 years old and went through

the dark night of the soul.

And I say that so flippantly, it was pretty rough time.

For about two weeks.

I never felt a thing.

It was awful.

I was just like a zombie in a body.

And.

Yeah.

You don't want no thinking.

It's just I just had just awareness for a long time.

It was almost like day and night.

I couldn't tell a difference.

And it wasn't nice.

It wasn't peaceful.

Because there was no pleasure in it.

There was no joy in quietness.

In order to enjoy quietness, you have to have.

The ego's got to come online and enjoy the quietness.

Oh, the irony.

But after two weeks, my pains and my thoughts started to come back and my

mind was relentless and it was reminded me of every single painful thought.

That I could possibly have at the time.

And it was all the time, day, night.

It wasn't, but it felt like that.

It felt like there was no other thought apart from those.

And I started reading books.

And the books.

So much concentration because I was dyslexic.

That just reading a sentence and a couple of sentences.

And I read As a Man Thinketh.

Was enough to keep me occupied.

And I realized that like the Buddha says we are not what we think.

Thinking is separate to.

What the ego is what we are.

Which is even separate to the awareness, but that's a deeper story.

What we think isn't necessarily who we are and what we are.

I was reading all these books one after the other, and it

was taking months to read them.

And even the chapters.

And they would all say to me, I need to meditate.

I need to do mindfulness and meditation.

And I would sit down and I would immediately try to silence my thoughts.

And I would sit down to deep breath focus on your breath, one.

I couldn't get to three before losing count.

I could barely get to five before losing count now.

But I couldn't get to three.

I couldn't get to two without thinking about what I was going to do for T.

What I was going to do for lunch, what my friends were doing, what they

were up to, all the other things.

How warm it is, how uncomfortable it is, why you sat there, why you doing this?

Are you really breathing properly?

After all this time, the body then starts to question the breathing properly.

When you've breathing how much in your life.

And suddenly it's perfectly fine now, suddenly we're getting involved in that.

So it becomes complicated.

It becomes this rush of all these different thoughts that

just keep coming and coming.

And what you will realize with.

Any kind of busy mind is when you sit down to meditate.

The thoughts come more and more.

It's not that you have more thoughts.

It's the fact that you become more aware of them.

So the first thing you think is, oh, this doesn't work because.

I've got loads of thoughts.

So you mean they start giving up on meditation?

Like I did.

Can't do it.

Not for me.

I need a quiet mind.

If you needed, if you had a quiet mind, you wouldn't need meditation.

And I've yet to come across anybody that has a quiet mind

that doesn't need meditation.

And I also yet to come across anybody that cannot meditate.

Because meditation is not about quite in the mind.

Do you get that?

I hear why you with me?

So why meditate, if it's not about quieting the mind or meditation

gives us the ability to see what is.

When we sit in meditation or mindfulness and we just observe our breath,

we see the breath for what it is.

When we just listen to sounds, which is my favorite meditation.

Just listen.

Listen to the words.

Listen to the birds, listen to.

Next door, his lawn mower listened to the air conditioner.

It doesn't matter what it is, whether it's favorable or not just listen.

And listened.

You hear it for what it is and you do not make it into something else.

Which is really important.

When it comes to meditation, it's seeing life for what it really

is and not what we think it is.

Not what our illusion makes out to be.

And that's where most of our pain and most of our suffering comes from.

Is we're making life to be something other than what it is.

You take a deep breath in this moment, you can do it now.

It may take a deep breath.

And if we just relax.

We'll see that this moment has very little wrong with it.

For us personally, we're doing alright.

Okay, of course, there's loads going wrong in the world.

Look at the political systems at the moment.

Look at the way religion is abused.

Look at the way religion.

Isn't.

All working out perfectly for everybody.

Look at the way economies are going.

There's rich and poor and there's people suffering the fires and all that.

I heard 36 people died in wildfires the other side of the world and all that.

Of course the world's burning.

Everything's gone wrong, but right now, when you take a deep breath right now

in this moment, things are okay with us.

And that's what meditation does.

It gives us the ability to go.

Okay.

My mind's been bothering me with thoughts.

But it's actually okay.

It's not too bad here right now.

And when we sit down to do that meditation.

We're distracted and we self judge, are we doing it right?

Is it.

The social pressures, the thing and what we should, and shouldn't be doing.

Oh, those things come into everybody's mind.

If they did an, I would question, there's something wrong with you.

A lot of the spiritual world says about we shouldn't judge.

Yes, we should.

But we should judge in a healthy way . Is this person going to hurt me right now?

Is this person a danger for me?

Is this person in danger to them?

So it keeps us alive.

Healthy judgment is a good thing.

We have to judge, whether that bear running towards us is

a danger or a friendly one.

It's not my gamut of judgment.

It's not mine getting rid of all these things, but it's about

seeing it clearly how it works.

So the more you meditate, the more you see.

There's unhealthy judgment.

There's unhealthy going with the feelings.

Oh, that's my mind.

Again, jumping to social media.

And when you see these things clearly.

You can then go with them or not go with them.

And this is where most of your pain will be reduced.

Is when you choose to go with them.

Most of the pain and this is what people really want to stop doing.

It's don't.

One to stop the thinking is they want to stop the autopilot as lead into more

suffering, more pain and more thinking.

They want to just be able to go.

Can I just have a gap?

Can I just have, can I stop the world just for.

30 minutes just so I can just pause.

Take stock of my current situation.

And then everybody else that'd be a super power.

I was talking to a friend of mine the other day.

And we were sitting in Victoria gardens.

My lovely conversation.

I was saying about a superpower and she mentioned that and I was like,

yes, that's the one I want as well.

Just to be able to click on fingers.

And we have half an hour.

Or 10 minutes.

And we can only use it sparingly.

Otherwise we would end up using all the time.

Nobody else knows the world's pause.

And you just get 20 minutes just to.

Okay.

I can just take stock.

What do I need to do?

Can I do my to do list.

And then you start it again and no one knew.

Or maybe everybody does have that superpower, but me.

Because you're doing it anyway.

Who knows.

Message may head over to thankyousteven.com and there's a

place where you could message me.

And let me know if you have that superpower and you're

using it all the time.

I'm just unaware.

No thinking about time because I'll be upset and.

I think it's like, Why not mean.

I want something.

Anyway.

I'm going off.

Off of the topic of the podcast now.

But the point is.

You can meditate, even if you've got a noisy mind , you're not

going to quiet in your mind.

You're not going to turn off all those thoughts.

That's perfectly fine.

The mind is not broken something like 30 to 40.

Thoughts.

Per minute.

And that's about 40,000 thoughts a day.

That's a lot.

It's no wonder we trying to shut them off, but the point is we're trying

to shut off the ones we don't want.

So what techniques can we use in order to quiet the mind a little bit.

So it becomes.

A useful friend, as opposed to an overthinking hyper Chimp.

one thing you can do.

He say, okay, look.

You're relentless.

What's your next thought?

And just wait for it.

As a little neat little trick and you can do it now.

So just way of that, just to just ask yourself right now, same

time as I asked you is what's my next thought and wait for it.

Oh, how brilliant.

You just have a peaceful mind for a moment.

But you, weren't not thinking you were awareness.

I consider that from.

Everything you can do.

Is when you sit down to meditate.

Reverse your breathing instead of breathing in first breath out first.

Try that now breathe out first.

Instantly your mind goes quiet because it's got a focus on something.

And this is the whole point.

Meditation is about giving your mind something to do.

It's not about silencing the mind.

I took a little while to get that, but that's the whole point is

give your mind something to do.

And if you can get the minds, I'm going to focus on the breath, focus

on the sound, the running water.

The candle burning.

Whatever is a body scan.

They use mantra meditations.

Yeah.

Pick a word.

And I think I read somewhere that.

Buddha come from this and if you pick two words to set up most, put them

together and you just repeat that.

For 10 minutes.

You'll be surprised how quickly your mind quietens down.

And it's harder than you think.

Yeah, count in breath.

See if you can get to 10.

Just count the out-breath or just count the in-breath.

I'm gonna challenge you.

Can you get to 10?

Message me leave a review.

Just say yes or no.

Can you get to 10?

It's harder than you think.

And that's for everybody.

Even now when I sit in meditation, when I've really practiced for, I

doubt, 20 minutes, half an hour.

Every day.

I might get to a couple of months and I might be able to hold it for 10, 15.

Without the mind wandering in with something.

I do want to tackle one thing.

You don't have to meditate for 40 minutes a day to get the benefit.

Yes, of course the more you do it, the more benefit you will have.

But you can have a massive impact on your life and a profound effect on just doing

five minutes, three or four times a day.

I literally just sit there and go, I'm going to listen.

And just listen.

Without judgment without labeling it.

I'm just going to listen, listen it will lead to deeper insights that

will lead to more space in the mind for bad decisions, more energy.

More joy, more peace.

That's more my approach.

If I tried to sit down for 40 minutes in the morning, it could be partly a problem.

I'm sat down 24 hours a day anyway, because I'm paralyzed.

12 hours now I'm in bed, lying down the other half.

I tend to take five minutes out here and there.

Nearly every hour, I'll take a good minute or so out at least.

And just breathe or just listen.

Can I count to 10.

And those little timeouts reminds me when everything's going really wrong.

The subconscious mind says, okay, go to ypur breath.

I just started doing the automatic that's what gives me

more peace and more inner peace.

So when things are going really wrong or anything like that.

Okay.

Just brief.

I D I feel like I don't have to fight them back.

And that's my practice.

My practice is.

As much as possible during the day, all the time.

It's all well and good having peace and quiet seven o'clock in the morning.

Before the kids get out of bed and you're locked in the bathroom and you've got your

candles and you've got your sense and all.

So I want a good I'm in peace and quiet there.

What are you going to do when you're out on your bosses, stressing you or your

family's getting on your nerves when you're in the car and you're driving

along and the kids are screaming.

And suddenly you're going to get that kid stop me.

I'm going to get my incense stick out.

I'm going to get my candles.

We need some peace and quiet.

I need you to lock the doors.

I need you to go back to sleep.

No.

The idea is to.

Do that when you can.

But the idea is to bring that to everyday life, find the peace and quiet

in everyday life in amongst the chaos.

So his podcast is about, I don't tell you to avoid life.

I don't tell you to avoid negative people.

I don't tell you to avoid thoughts.

So avoid feelings.

I want you to feel everything.

I want you to have thoughts.

I want you to enjoy this wonderful, incredible experience I've been alive.

And it is, trust me.

It's It's an experience that you.

You won't repeat.

Your one chance it's here.

What someone estimated 16 trillion to one, the chance of you being alive right now.

We got a double that the chance of you listening to my podcast and middle life.

Come on.

That's pretty awesome.

My.

But that's what this podcast is about today.

I wanted you to know that even if you have a busy mind, you can meditate.

And you don't have to sit down.

And tried to silence your mind for 40 minutes.

You can literally take time out two minutes, 10 minutes here and there.

Just on the way to work.

Just listen, rather than put the radio on.

Just do different things.

Integrated into your daily life.

I'm going to ask you now to head over to thankyousteven.com.

You can either message me.

Treat me to a coffee.

That would be absolutely awesome.

And thank you to Sandy, Nancy and Audra.

For your donations this week.

Yeah, I just really appreciate you guys.

And anybody that can leave a review or anything.

Thankyousteven.com.

You're all awesome.

Love you all.

Take care and hopefully.

You stop trying to silence your mind.