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I'm feeling a bit anxious today, and I want to share that with you. Even though I help people manage their stress and anxiety, I still experience those feelings myself. Today, I found myself avoiding life by watching random videos on YouTube instead of dealing with my tasks. It's easy to get caught up in those moments of escapism, but I realized that acknowledging my feelings is crucial. In this conversation, we’ll explore how we all face our own storms, and what we can do to find stillness amidst the chaos. Let's dive in and see how we can navigate these feelings together.

Now and again, you have one of those days, and this was one of them. I really couldn't be bothered to do anything, let alone record a podcast.

Stress and anxiety can creep in on even the best of days. As I sit here feeling anxious and overwhelmed, I share that it’s a universal experience, even for those who help others manage their stress. We all face moments of doubt and avoidance, and I’m no exception. This podcast dives into the feeling of wanting to hide from the world and the struggle of confronting those feelings head-on. I share my recent experiences of procrastinating and avoiding responsibilities, like scrolling through YouTube instead of dealing with my emails. It’s all too easy to get caught up in distractions, but recognizing this behavior is the first step towards addressing it.

During this episode, I reflect on how life can feel overwhelming, even when it seems like everything is fine. The anxiety doesn’t always have a clear cause, and sometimes, it just sneaks up on us. I discuss how I’ve learned to observe my feelings and reactions, and how this awareness can lead to better coping mechanisms. We talk about the importance of showing up for ourselves and the power of doing something constructive, like recording this podcast, to help shift our mindset. It’s a reminder that we all deal with stress and anxiety, and it’s okay to feel that way sometimes.

The conversation also touches on the idea that we’re all just a few pages ahead in our life stories. No one has it completely together, and even those who seem to have it all figured out have their struggles. By sharing my own vulnerabilities, I hope to encourage listeners to acknowledge their feelings and take steps to overcome them. Life is about navigating through the storms, and the tools we build for ourselves can help us feel more equipped to face those challenges.

Takeaways:

• Feeling anxious and overwhelmed is something everyone experiences, even those who help others.
• We often avoid our responsibilities by distracting ourselves with things we don't care about.
• Recognizing our feelings and taking action is more important than simply feeling overwhelmed.
• Life is unpredictable; despite our coping strategies, storms will still come our way.
• The key to managing anxiety is to observe our behavior and respond constructively, not reactively.
• It's okay to feel stressed; what matters is how we choose to deal with those feelings.

Okay, Right now, I have no idea what this podcast is going to be about, apart from I am sitting here stressing.

I'm sitting here feeling anxious.

I'm feeling like as if the whole world is going wrong.

You know those types of feeling when you're a child and you know you've done something wrong or you think you've done something wrong and.

And your parents are about to burst in and they're going to shout at you and the whole world's going to find out that you just nicked the biscuits.

Yeah, that's how I'm feeling right now.

47 years old, sitting here and I'm.

And I help people all over the world have less anxiety, less overwhelm.

I help people all over the world find that stillness in the storms, hence the name of my podcast.

And yet here I am, browsing through YouTube, watching things that I have no interest in whatsoever.

I just found myself a moment ago watching someone play a video game.

I don't even care for the video game.

I'm not bothered about it at all.

But I was sitting there watching it, admiring the graphics, admiring.

I was avoiding life.

And now I'm recording a podcast telling you, because we're all in this.

We all do this.

Even.

Even teachers, even people that from the outside, when you're looking at them, when it seems like their whole life is sorted, it probably isn't.

It's just they've learned better ways to cope with different things than maybe you have at the moment, that's all.

We're just two or three pages, you know, we may be a chapter ahead, that's all.

And only on some things.

You know, some things were ahead, some things were behind.

But, you know, the reason why I help people with anxiety and stress is because I suffer from those things, too.

And this podcast, I guess, is going to share what I do, and I suffer from those things.

So my day has been essentially pretty good.

There hasn't been anything that would suggest why I'm feeling like this.

And I was coming up to lunchtime and I had my lunch and everything, and after lunch I was coming out to do my live on Facebook.

And I go live every day with a guided meditation, or at least weekdays about 2pm UK time.

And I had my usual problem and I had to go back on the bed.

Now I'm paralyzed just below my neck.

And so my carers had to help me out and sort me out.

But here's the thing.

Everything's fine now, that's dealt with and sorted, and I'm Terrified.

I'm like, I want to hide away.

I want to pull the curtains and turn off the lights and just say, I'll do it tomorrow.

I can't deal with this today.

So I've decided to.

Instead of carrying on on YouTube, avoiding my emails like I was doing.

I was reading the emails, but I wasn't.

Well, I wasn't even reading them.

I was bringing up the email Gmail and I wasn't even opening them.

I was kind of looking for a nice one.

I was avoiding the others that I need to reply to.

And like I'm laughing about it now.

I can now see it.

But I've been doing this for the last couple of hours or so, just completely avoiding life.

And it's.

And it's really funny when we catch ourselves doing it.

And that's the whole work is catching ourselves when we're doing it.

You know, this is what's going on in my life.

This is what's happening right now.

You know, am I being the best possible version of myself right now?

Am I putting all those tools into place that I know better?

And I wasn't.

I was staying on YouTube, staying, doing my thing, avoiding everything.

The only thing I didn't do is go to Facebook.

That's the only thing I haven't done.

And you know, I'm sure it would have happened within the next five, ten minutes or so and I would have scrolled down through and I would have made some comments on some posts.

I would have put the worlds to write in some way like that, you know, and I started looking at news sites and doing, going back into the same hold habitable behavior that I've done for many years.

But here's the thing.

I was able to observe myself doing it.

And now of course I laugh about it, but it's quite serious.

You know, what, what do we do when we're feeling anxious or we're feeling like something's not right?

Then of course, in a week's time, whatever, is this gut feeling that something's not right.

It could be anything.

Right now my computer's really playing up and it's really annoying me.

And I don't know what's wrong with it.

I used to have a computer shop myself and I forgot to turn the phone on to silent.

You'll just have to put up with that because it's fine.

I don't get that many messages.

I was just thinking, can I get that out after editing?

No, probably leave it in.

So I haven't even prepared for this podcast.

I Haven't even got a script up in front of me.

So I thank you for your patience on this.

You know, this is real and raw, but this is.

This is life, right?

If you come to this podcast all the time, and I'll tell you how wonderful and beautiful life is now.

Wonderful and beautiful my life is.

You're not going to believe it.

You're going to be like, yeah, BS Ian.

Like that all the time.

No, you're right, I'm not.

Today is one of those days.

I'm not like that.

I'm feeling quite agitated.

And where do I feel agitated?

I feel agitated in my belly.

But the thing is, it doesn't start from there.

It starts on my thinking.

And of course, I started to feel hot.

And I was looking at a temperature in the room was going, well, it's 22 and a half degrees in here.

I shouldn't be feeling hot.

I should be cold.

Ah, COVID 19.

Have I coughed today?

Yeah, I was coughing this morning.

I've got a temperature.

I'm coughing.

Oh, my shoulder's hurting.

So I was talking myself into being poorly.

And, you know, and then, of course, I'm like, sat here in the seat.

I'm like, oh, my God, hold on to the seat.

What's going to happen?

You know, I've only got a few days to live.

So suddenly, just feeling a little anxious or feeling like something's not right has turned into, I've only got a few days to live.

How quickly does our mind jump to going to die?

Help.

You know, I just wanted to share this.

Just.

I just want you to know that you're not alone.

You know, these panic attacks and these stressful anxious times, they happen to even the teachers, even the people that are doing the podcast, doing the things, putting themselves out there.

You know, I do a lot of.

I meditate this morning.

40 minutes, 45 minutes.

Well, probably five minutes.

The rest of it is probably thinking.

But I did that this morning, and I've had a wonderful good morning, and I really cannot think of anything that's going wrong in my life right now.

So why am I feeling like this?

You know, perhaps sometimes doing the reason, perhaps, sometimes we're just, you know, I don't know.

So what do I do when I do things like this?

Well, I record a podcast or I. I do something I should be doing.

We know what we should be doing.

You know, go for a walk, do some exercise, take your mind off it.

And just by recording this podcast right now, I feel a whole lot better.

I feel like I Feel like as if I'm doing something constructive instead of sitting there in this bubble of, oh, my God, I'm gonna die.

And I'm not kind of making a joke of it, but it's really serious.

It makes us feel dreadful.

It paralyzes us completely.

You know, I don't know, something wrong with my USBs or something.

And I. I sold a camera and got a new camera, and the video is really jerky and there's something not right, and I'm like, oh, I'm just so stressed about it.

And really the reality is it's not going to mean anything in a week's time tomorrow, I've got a part that comes that fixes it, but I'm like, I need to fix it now.

I don't.

I need to take a breath.

That's what I need to do.

Let's do that.

Okay, I've done a breath.

Now how do I fix it?

No, I'm joking.

Some things you just have to wait and give a little bit of time.

Just let.

Let some things nurture and they sort themselves out.

And one of the advice I always give me and my we and one of my carers, Sasha, we always have this mantra of things work out.

Things always work out, and if they don't work out, you're dead.

And you didn't know it didn't work out anyway.

You had no idea.

No idea.

You know, it doesn't even suck to be dead because you don't know you're dead.

Ah.

That's how we deal with life.

That's how we deal with it, and that's how I deal with it.

Just recognize what we're doing, observe what we're doing, and take it lightly, laugh at it, and then you can do something with it.

The problem is if I layer on top of that anxiety and that agitation, and I layer on top of it more and more and more, I'm just getting more and more stressed, more angry, and I'm going to lash out with people.

I'm going to make my life a whole lot worse.

So it's a matter of just peeling back that layer and being vulnerable and going, well, do you know what?

I'm feeling like crap.

But I'm going to read a book, I'm going to go for a walk, I'm going to do my exercise, or in this case, I'm going to record a podcast.

So I've not really got much more to say on this podcast.

So I'm just going to leave it there and say, thank you for listening to my whims.

And this is me, and this is real.

And this podcast might be about finding that stillness in the storm.

Well, the storms still rage.

Even when you sort your life out, even when you got all the tools, even when you become stoic, even when you know better and everything like that, the storms still rage.

It's what we do with the storms is what we do in the storms that counts.

And the best way is showing up for ourselves.

What's the best possible version of me?

What would the best possible version of me do right now?

And that best possible version of me right now would record a podcast and share my story with you.

So it helps you to realize that, you know, I get anxious.

I get stressed, too.

And that's okay.

It's okay.

It's what we do with it that counts.

I don't.

I don't know as a master, I don't know a teacher, I don't know anybody, even counselors and everything that don't get stressed from time to time.

It's how we carry it, but it's what we do with a load.

And the more knowledge we create for ourselves, the more experiences and tools use them.

We know what to do instead of running around.

And I say, I don't get any messages now.

I do.

Instead of running around and not knowing what to do, we know what to do.

Take a little time out.

And right now I'm going to say, thank you for listening.

Thank you for indulging in my little narcissistic whims for the minute and making this podcast all about me.

But hopefully, if you just realize that I struggle, too, and if that gives you a little bit of comfort that you're doing all right, you're.

You're here, you're listening, you're showing up, you're doing all right.

So leave a review.

Thank you for listening, and have an amazing week.

I'm Stephen Webb, the host of Stillness in the Storms, the podcast you're now listening to.

Take Care by.