How do you care about what's happening in the world without it dragging you under? Practice first, news second. Then do one small thing and put it down.

Support me with a coffee and join my Weekly Calm every Sunday: stevenwebb.uk

The night I broke my neck, I only had to get through the next breath. My family were stood in the corridor with nothing to do, not knowing if I'd see the morning. That's the harder seat, and now we're all sat in it, every day, on a phone. Our hearts were built for a village, not 24 hour news. After the Boston bombing, people who watched six hours of coverage a day were more stressed than some of the people who were actually there. I'm a terrible news junkie myself, so I talk about the feed I keep deleting and putting back, Sid Owen from EastEnders, and why the brain can't tell the telly from a war zone. Underneath the anger there's usually a deep caring. The way through isn't caring less.

One thing to try: Before you scroll in the morning, sit quietly for ten minutes and write a small gratitude list. Then read the news, let yourself feel it, do the one small thing if there is one, and put it down.

In this episode

• (0:03) The night I broke my neck, and my family in the corridor
• (1:31) Our hearts were built for a village
• (2:07) The Boston bombing study: six hours of news a day
• (4:50) The brain can't tell the telly from a war zone
• (6:14) Caring without drowning: what you can do at arm's length
• (7:32) Under the anger there's a deep caring
• (9:51) Rabbi Tarfon: you can't finish the work, but you can't walk away
• (10:55) Thomas Merton and the frenzy of the activist

With gratitude to

Tamsyne, Bridie, Orsolya, Paul, Ciaran, Cynthia, Sarpa, Jens, Linda and Genevieve

The companion meditation: When the News Is Too Much: A Meditation to Care and Still Rest

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

The night I broke my neck and ended up in a hospital bed, and then going to theatre and having my halo

drilled into my head, and me just trying to fight to survive that night, it seems like it would've been

a terrible night for me, and it wasn't the best.

But for me, I only had to fight for the next breath, for the next 10 minutes.

For my family and those around me, it was awful.

They were passive.

They couldn't do anything about it.

They were just on standby in the corridor, not knowing whether I'd survive the next hour.

They must have felt helpless.

They must have felt, you know, useless in the moment.

It must have been awful, and I think it largely is for the people that are on the sidelines that are not

able to help.

And I think that's the place where we've got to in the world now.

We are all now sat in that sidelines.

We're all now in that corridor with the world going to pots in that theatre, and there's very little we

can all do, and it's a difficult place.

It's a difficult seat to have.

Hi, I'm Steven Webb, and this is Stillness in the Storms.

This is part one of two, A Tired World, and this one's Caring Without Drowning.

Now look, let's be honest, our heart was built for a village.

It was built for a community.

It was built for just a few friends, whether a cow got sick, or whether someone gave birth, or someone

passed away, or someone fell out with someone.

It was, you know, maximum 50, 60, 100 people.

And the news was just the wise elder maybe just saying what's going on.

And that's what we evolved to have.

That was the news.

Now we've got news 24 hours a day, literally.

And there was a study in the Boston bombing where they asked people years ago about how much it affected

them, and the people that watched it for six hours a day were more stressed and more affected by it than

the people that are actually there and experienced it.

And that makes total sense to me now.

The 24-hour news cycle is just relentless.

It pops up on your phone, the scrolling.

You get to the bottom of the page you used to, but no, it loads a new page in.

It's loading before you get there.

It knows what you pause on.

It knows what your triggers are.

It knows what you like or dislike.

Primarily, it knows what winds you up.

And it almost feels like we cannot escape from it.

I've deleted it on my phone, on the Samsung, if you swipe to the left on the home screen, you get a news

feed, and I've deleted it several times.

I've disabled it, and then a few weeks later I've put it back on.

I find myself just scrolling endlessly through it for half an hour in the morning, and then I think I've

filled my mind with all of that.

But it's almost addictive.

What am I looking for?

I'm looking for something that's gonna pick me up.

You know, am I looking for some bad news against Trump where the Supreme Court rules against him?

I don't know.

But I remember before I broke my neck, and it's almost like the timeline is before and after.

But I remember I was being picked up on the way to work behind the fish counter.

David Lob, my boss at the time, I worked at a local Tesco store, and he picked me up and he had the radio

on, and this was like 5:00 in the morning.

And I said, "What's going on?"

He said, "Well, we've just gone into Iraq."

Okay.

Didn't really know much about it, but they're...

Or Iran or something like that.

It was something down there.

And I just heard about it on the radio on the way down, but then that was about it.

We didn't hear about it the rest of the day until the six o'clock news in the evening.

And then when we went in the next time when we were there, it was twenty-four hours a day.

It was literally Sky News was there all the time, every hour repeating the same things from the hour.

And it almost felt like it was in our living rooms, and we couldn't tell the difference whether we were

in the war zone.

The brain doesn't know.

It's like when I was in London and somebody from...

Sid Owen from EastEnders walked past me, and I went, "All right?"

And he went, "Yeah, all right."

And it wasn't until after he walked past me that I thought, "Oh, wow, that's Sid Owen from EastEnders.

I don't know him at all."

But it was like a friend because I see him daily on the TV.

It was like I knew him.

It's so strange.

But the brain doesn't know it's in a TV.

It doesn't know that you sat there is not your friend from the village.

So it doesn't know that war zone is the other side of the world.

And yes, it affects us, and that's why it's so difficult dealing with these things nowadays.

It's recognising that we did not evolve for this.

And I am a terrible news junkie, but that's bad on me.

I know how much it affects me and how much it does my blurry head, and I'm into politics because I'm a

politician.

That's my other job, and I think more people should be into politics and spiritual people.

You cannot avoid it, but you've gotta do it in a way that doesn't bring you down.

The caring without drowning was what this podcast is about.

But it's remembering what you can do at arm's length with what you have.

And some days just a smile, just a, "Hi, how are you doing?"

Is enough.

That may be all the energy you've got.

That may be all the capacity you've got some days.

Other days you may be able to do a bit more.

It really doesn't matter.

We're all being judged, we're all judging, we're all doing all that.

We know we're all doing all those things.

But at the end of the day, it doesn't matter.

As long as you can put your head down and go, "Do you know what?

I did my bit today."

And you'd be surprised how much that nudges the needle.

You'd be surprised how little good acts of kindness or little things you do make a huge difference.

You don't know how far that smile goes.

You don't know if that one person that you hold the door for or say hi or you treat to, I don't know,

a cup of tea or something, you don't know whether they go home and they go, "Do you know what?

I'm having a nice day today."

And they're so much happier at home.

And then that has a knock-on effect to the kids and a good night's sleep, and they have a good day.

So yeah, and I think underneath all the anger at the news and all the doom scrolling, there's usually

something quieter, a fear, a sadness, and under both of those, there's something that's easy to miss.

A deep caring.

A deep caring.

Actual caring.

We actually care about people.

I think that's why we watch the news because we care about what's actually happening.

It's not a bad thing.

We shouldn't look at the news as a bad thing.

But when it brings us down, when it's too much.

And there's a difference between feeling someone's pain and caring about them.

Feeling the pain, taking it into your own body hour after hour wears you right out.

But caring and really caring, the kind that does something, tends to lift us instead.

So the way through isn't less caring, it's finding the middle way.

Practice first, news second.

And I know that when someone just looks up and asks me how I'm feeling, or someone just gives me a compliment,

sometimes that's really enough to make a difference in my day.

In the WhatsApp group we got for donators, which I'll put a link.

If you treat me to a coffee, you'll get a link in the email to our WhatsApp group.

We're going through the monthly practice this month, every evening we just put one gratitude in.

And it's amazing, A, how many of us have got the same things we're grateful for, how connected we are

all over the world, and it's amazing how the big and little things really do make a difference.

I never realised I was so grateful for so many things.

We're, like, halfway through the four weeks, and that's, like, 14, 15 things that I'm grateful for that

I don't think about on a daily basis.

But I'll say more about the people that help this podcast in a moment.

There's an old rabbi, Rabbi Tarfon.

He is, he has a line that sometimes I just remember, and it says, "You are not obliged to complete the

work, but neither are you free to walk away from it."

You don't have to fix the whole thing.

You are never going to.

It's not realistic.

You're not gonna sort the war out.

You're not gonna lower the gas prices.

Your vote isn't gonna change everything overnight.

But that one little small thing, the real thing, it just nudges the needle, and enough of us do that on

a daily basis, it makes a huge difference.

And keep it about the load people are carrying, not about which side they're on, not what side you're

on.

The load is enough.

And we're all carrying it, whether it's politics or whether it's anything else.

Doesn't matter what side you're on, you're carrying the load.

Thomas Merton wrote this, "The frenzy of the activist neutralizes his work for peace."

And it's true.

If you're running around everywhere and you're fixing everything, and you've been an activist about everything,

and you're doing everything, where's the peace?

What are you really creating?

And I think that's worth remembering.

It doesn't mean you don't act.

The frantic doing and the doing that comes from panic cancels itself out.

Slow down enough to actually help.

That's not the same as not caring.

It might actually be what caring looks like.

Before I go on and wrap up, I just wanna say this stays free because of a few people buy me a coffee,

and some give a little each month.

So thank you to all of you.

This week the coffees come from Tamsyne, Bridie, Orsolya, Paul, Ciaran Kelly, Cynthia, and Sarpa.

Thank you.

There's a couple of anonymous.

Thank you to you, too.

Thank you to the donators on Insight Timer, and thank you to Jens, Linda, and Genevieve for your donations

on PayPal.

Really does make a difference.

The costs go up all the time with the more listeners, but that's brilliant.

So do the donations.

You guys are brilliant.

I love you guys.

Thank you.

And there's a new monthly supporter this week as well.

Thank you to whoever you were.

You were anonymous.

And to all of you, you know, really appreciate it.

If you fancy buying me a coffee, it's all over at stevenwebb.uk.

Of course, there's courses, there's a Weekly Calm, which is my Sunday newsletter.

But here's the one thing you can try this week.

Practice first, news second.

Before you go scrolling in the morning, just spend 10 minutes sitting in quiet.

Just write a small gratitude list.

Just journal a little bit.

Just choose not to scroll as far.

Just be mindful.

And I'm gonna try to do the same.

And when you do come to the news, read it.

Let yourself feel it.

Do the one small thing if there's a thing you can do, but put it down if you cannot.

And there's a meditation to go with this one.

It's called When the News Is Too Much, and that'll be linked below.

It's on Inner Peace Meditations now, if you'd like some help with the putting it down part.

So here's my question for you this week: What do you do when the news gets under your skin?

I'd love to know.

Reply on the website or in the comments on Spotify or in the reviews on Apple.

Now, if this did help, share it, like it, review it.

I love honest reviews.

Someone who's been doomscrolling a bit too much lately, I needed to do this podcast.

Take care of yourself and each other.

I love you.