Shows
Stillness in the StormsGates, Not Thorns: Are Your Boundaries a Prison?Support Steven's work. Treat him to a coffee stevenwebb.ukAre your boundaries keeping you safe, or keeping you stuck? I have never liked the word. This week a reader called Katherine gave me a better one: gates, not thorns.I have carers in my life 24 hours a day, so I could not build walls even if I wanted to. I had to grow the strength to let the world in instead, and that is where I stand on boundaries. A red line between two people is healthy. It is an agreement, not a wall...
2026-09-0618 min
Stillness in the StormsThere Is No Steven in Here: What I Learned at the Bottom of a Swimming PoolWho are you, really, behind all the roles? Sit properly with that question and no answer comes. That is the answer.Open me up and there is no Steven in there. In deep sleep there is no Steven either. We wake up and we come online and we boot the roles: dad, councillor, host, meditator. Each one needs a different set of skills, and you can only run one at a time. So who is watching the breath when you meditate? Ask whether you are aware of your left toe and you were not, and then you...
2026-08-2220 min
Stillness in the StormsPart of You Doesn't Want the Pain to Stop: Here's WhyWhy does part of you not want the pain to stop? Pain is inevitable. Suffering is the second arrow, and you fire that one.The first arrow lands and it hurts. Then we load the bow ourselves. Every replay in your head, every post, every phone call to a friend, is another arrow into the same wound. And here is the uncomfortable bit. The suffering loop feeds us, because it makes us the hero of our own story. Nobody wants to hear about the good day and the view over the ocean. Everybody leans in for the...
2026-07-2620 min
Stillness in the StormsWhat Your Anger Is Really SayingWhat is your anger actually saying? My teacher Jun Po told me he has never known an angry person who did not care.Sit with that one. Anger is the bodyguard. It steps in to put something right, to stop it happening again, to defend what matters. Throw the hammer away and you have thrown away an emotion that evolution spent a very long time building. A child is furious about a red T-shirt when they wanted green, and to them the world just ended. When you are in a life where things go wrong fast, the...
2026-06-2821 min
Stillness in the StormsUnveiling the True Self: Beyond Ego and IllusionWho is the you underneath the you? There is a self below the ego, and the ego is the part doing all the suffering.Ask who Steven is and the false self answers first. Podcast host. Councillor. Meditator. Man in a wheelchair. All of that is memory doing the job it evolved for, remembering where the bear was. Underneath it is something with no desires and no story, and you can find the edge of it right now. Are you aware of your left toe? You were not, and then you were. Now widen that until it...
2025-01-0821 min
Stillness in the StormsIt's Not About Them, It's About You: Embracing Inner Peace in Challenging SituationsWhen somebody treats you badly, why does who you are matter more than who they are?Let no man pull you so low as to hate him. That is Martin Luther King, and it is the whole episode. Somebody slams a door on you, cuts you up on the road, and you want to phone everybody and post it. Two hours later you wish you had not. Nobody made you angry. You chose it, fast, but you chose it. Strong words are expensive to your own peace. If their behaviour decides your behaviour, you are not free...
2023-05-1022 min
Inner Peace MeditationsBuilding Confidence and Inner WisdomFor the day you have a decision to make and no confidence in yourself to make it.About 11 minutes with Steven Webb's calm voice.Nothing gets pushed away in this one. Thoughts come, sounds come, and you watch them like a leaf floating down a river. The calm is not a reward for stopping the noise. It is what is left once you stop wrestling with it, and that gap is where your better decisions live.Treat me to a coffee, keep the podcast free, and get my Weekly Calm every Sunday. It...
2023-02-1410 min
Stillness in the StormsSimplifying Your Spiritual Journey: Finding Peace Amidst SufferingWhat if the spiritual path is far simpler than everybody is selling you? I needed it simplified or I was not going to make it.I got to a point where I could not do it any more. Deep shame, and the pain was enormous. So I started reading again after thirty years, and every single book said the same thing. Meditate. And I could not. Asking your mind to shut up is like asking your heart to stop beating. What actually worked was smaller. Ask what you are feeling. Notice it. Do nothing with it. Sit...
2023-02-0923 min
Stillness in the StormsDeep Gratitude – If the Kettle Had Feelings!What would your kettle say about you if it had feelings? That is not a joke. That is where deep gratitude starts.I did not want to record this one. You get up, you put the kettle on, it clicks, it boils, you pour the coffee and you sit down, and not one part of that got a moment's notice. Go deeper. The person who made it. The people who mined the metal. Do the same with the shirt you have on, the cotton, the field, the till it was sold at. That is when it stops...
2023-01-2824 min
Inner Peace MeditationsGrateful and A Positive Start To Your DayFour things to be grateful for, in order. A person, an object, something you are going through, and one thing about today.About 13 minutes with Steven Webb's calm voice. Perfect for the morning.A warm light starts in your chest and spreads out as you breathe. Then you name each one and finish the sentence, I am grateful for, and say why. The thing you are going through does not have to be a good thing. It only has to be teaching you something. Do this daily for two or three weeks and it changes...
2023-01-1512 min
Stillness in the StormsBe Emotional Not DisturbableCan you feel everything deeply and still not be knocked over by it? That is the whole trick, and it is not the same thing as going cold.We admire the person who stays cold and gets on with business, but nobody actually wants to be disconnected. The deeper you let yourself feel, the more joy is available at the other end too. There is an unhealthy version, where you become a victim of your own empathy. Empathy is you feeling them. Compassion is about us, and what could we do.One thing to try...
2023-01-1322 min
Inner Peace MeditationsRelaxing after a Busy DayYou have not stopped all day. This is the wind down, before the evening properly starts.About 9 minutes with Steven Webb's calm voice. Perfect for the evening.We start at the top of your head and work down to your toes, asking each part whether it is holding anything. Then you picture somewhere calm, a beach or a meadow, and you stay there a while. Thoughts still turn up. Give them a nod and let them carry on their merry way.Treat me to a coffee, keep the podcast free, and get my...
2023-01-1107 min
Stillness in the Storms3 Things I Wish I Knew Years AgoWhat three things do I wish I had known years ago? The first one costs you nothing and almost everybody gets it wrong.One. There is a canyon between knowing and doing. The person who can read and does not read has no advantage over the person who cannot. I know that and I still do not meditate as much as I should. Two. Everybody is winging it. The confident voice is not a competent voice, and once you see that, half your intimidation goes. Three. Treat the world the way you are, not the way they...
2023-01-0621 min
Stillness in the StormsBecoming Whole - My Favourite Subject and Turning 50What does it actually mean to become whole? I turned fifty this week, which is something I never expected to see.For years I could not ask for help. Somebody said I had a chip on my shoulder about being disabled and it landed hard, because underneath it was shame. How do I ask for help when I am the one who dived into the pool? Becoming whole is not denying the bits you dislike. It is integrating them. And here is my favourite part: opposites do not attract. The person who cannot decide dates the person...
2022-12-1422 min
Stillness in the StormsHow I Handle Toughest Times (probably shared too much here)Have you ever been so low that euthanasia started to sound reasonable? I got there this week, and I had never been there before.This is raw and I am leaving it raw. Autonomic dysreflexia sends my blood pressure to around 250 over 150 because my body cannot get a message past the break in my neck. It feels like a hundred needles going in wherever you touch me. I was put on the bed and back in the chair over and over until quarter past twelve, head pounding, sweating, freezing. Afterwards I watched ten minutes of Homes Under...
2022-12-0722 min
Stillness in the StormsHow to Genuinely Take Someone's PerspectiveCan you really know how somebody else feels? No. You can care deeply and still not be in their shoes, and admitting that is more useful than pretending.I agreed a system with the dentist. Thirty second intervals, three breaths, and I raise my hand. That is what my body needs because of autonomic dysreflexia, and somebody else with the same condition would still experience it differently. Two people in the identical event do not have the identical event. You cannot get there from a book or a film.One thing to try: Instead of...
2022-11-1920 min
Stillness in the StormsSimplify Everything to Reduce AnxietyAre you overcomplicating it? Nobody noticed my dark green shirt today. Most of what we agonise over was never being watched in the first place.A friend of mine got told something at 18 that made him want to punch the person, and it turned out to be the best advice he ever had. The story does not have to be written. When the curveball lands on a Tuesday at four o'clock, you can sit with it rather than start the narrative. I am giving you permission to do nothing with what arises, including with this episode.
2022-09-2418 min
Stillness in the StormsHere's the Gap – and why it matters!Ever said something you regretted about three seconds later? There is a gap between what happens and how you answer it, and it is bigger than it feels.It feels like you have no choice but to react. You do. The gap is small but it is there, and meditation is what widens it. Here is the proof that it exists. Are you aware of your foot? You had to go there to answer that. That going there is the gap, and you can use it on somebody angry in exactly the same way.One...
2022-09-1623 min
Stillness in the StormsEnough Is Enough - I need your helpWhat are you actually waiting for? I am 49, I have everything I need to do the work, and I am watching Netflix instead. So I am asking you to hold me to it.Mark Twain said a person who will not read has no advantage over one who cannot. That landed hard. I have the chair, the arm, the time, and I still am not doing it. For years I told myself I was frightened of letting people down, then realised I let people down by not doing it. So no grand promises. Just accountability, and something...
2022-09-0214 min
Stillness in the StormsWhat Is in Your Control and Why It Is Important to KnowWhat is actually in your control? Far less than you think, and that turns out to be the good news. I spent my rock bottom trying to run the whole world.Your actions, mostly. Your words. Your response to a thought, which arrives whether you want it or not, the way paint gets delivered to your door. What you cannot control is the weather, other people's opinions, other people's words, nature, or the universe arranging itself around you. When you are angry at somebody, it is usually because they are not thinking the way you think they...
2022-04-2318 min
Stillness in the StormsWhat to Do When the World Is Burning and You Feel HelplessWhat do you do when the world is on fire and you can do nothing about it? You work out what is genuinely at arm's length, and you start there.I have no influence over soldiers. I have influence over myself and what I do locally, at arm's length, as one of my teachers puts it. Getting depressed about it does not improve anybody's life somewhere else. No amount of your misery helps them. Put the phone down a while, because every other post is about it, this episode included.One thing to try: Name...
2022-02-2712 min
Stillness in the StormsAre You a Healthy PEOPLE PLEASER?Can you be a healthy people pleaser? Yes. The unhealthy version agrees to the tea it does not want, because disagreeing feels worse than eating it.The unhealthy version changes who it is depending on the room, puts everybody first, and avoids the conflict rather than the meal. The healthy version can hold a difference of view without it turning into a fight. For me this comes down to care. Being paralysed just below the neck, I will not let anybody dictate what I can and cannot do.One thing to try: Next time somebody...
2022-02-2120 min
Stillness in the StormsThinking Positive Will Not Make You Happy – This Will!Can you actually control your thoughts? No, and being told to think positive is exactly why so many people feel they are failing at it.I hit rock bottom in a shopping centre and a security guard stepped down off his platform and walked over to me. Everything left me at once. For the first time in my life I could only think negatively, and it hurt so much I had no idea what to do with it. You do not have exclusive access to your own mind. It hands you thoughts the way a child hands...
2022-01-0922 min
Stillness in the StormsThis Is Where You Will FIND Your PASSIONWhy do we avoid the exact thing we most want to do? Because wanting it means we could fail at it, and I have been doing that for years.I want somebody to stand up at my funeral and say he did a good job, he loved deeply, he had an open heart. That is the legacy. And I procrastinate, avoid going live, avoid all of it. What is shifting now is that the discomfort of not having done it is finally getting worse than the fear of doing it. That is what actually moves people. Not...
2022-01-0217 min
Stillness in the StormsBeing Authentic and Genuine in a Non-Genuine WorldWhat does being genuine even mean when everybody only puts their best self out there? I thought I was authentic until I looked properly, and I am not.I am freezing cold all the time, on painkillers all the time, and I have just started diabetic injections. Some days it takes two hours to get me out of bed. If I never say any of that, people ask how I manage it all and assume I am not suffering. You do not want to share every bad day. But if you only ever share the good ones...
2021-10-2416 min
Inner Peace MeditationsResilience and Confidence Tree MeditationOne oak, a few hundred years old, alone in the middle of a field. Then you stop looking at it and become it.About 8 minutes with Steven Webb's calm voice.You feel the roots going down and the top of you moving in the wind. There is a creak up there and it does not worry you, because you are planted. Breathe in resilience, breathe out calm. It finishes on a line I rather like. Right, I can be a tree.Treat me to a coffee, keep the podcast free, and get my...
2021-10-1007 min
Stillness in the Storms3 Things That Will Make You Happier In Difficult TimesWould your life really have been better if the bad thing had not happened? Three things that keep me steady, and the first is that the alternative might have been worse.People tell me I would have had a wonderful career and a family if I had not broken my neck. They cannot know that. That year I had been kicked out of sixth form, run away from home and taken an overdose. My trajectory was not brilliant. Second, negative thoughts are not bad thoughts. Round a campfire at night, the pessimist who says stop the music...
2021-09-3015 min
Stillness in the Storms2 Words You Should Stop Using AND What to Use InsteadWhich two words are quietly framing your whole life wrong? Good and bad. I swapped them for healthy and unhealthy, and it took the harshness off everything, anger included.Nothing is simply good or bad. Everything has a healthier and an unhealthier version, and you usually have to go through the unhealthy one to reach the other. A teenager needs a bit of narcissism. Anger is a perfect emotion, and there are children starving, so I should be angry. The only question is which version I am running. I recorded this after a fortnight off, because I...
2021-08-3018 min
Stillness in the StormsShould I settle for what I have? Can I dream and want more?If I am grateful for what I have, am I still allowed to want more? Yes, and pretending otherwise is its own trap.Happiness is not a good experience. Happiness lives in the mundane. But I still look at the numbers every week, and I still want the podcast to reach more people. Eckhart Tolle gave everything away and ended up on a bench wanting a sandwich. Of course he did. He is human. A man I heard being asked about losing it all said he had had nothing and knew he could be content with nothing...
2021-08-0717 min
Stillness in the StormsThe Paradox of HappinessWhy does happiness keep moving the moment you reach it? Because you are chasing an experience and calling it a state.My whole life ran on once I get this. A better microphone, a better chair, a better whatever. Then you get it and the bar moves, because the goal was only ever a slight improvement on right now. The universe did not look at me and think, he is paralysed, we will let him off the bills. A concert is an experience. That last encore is not what life is, it is one wonderful thing that...
2021-07-3117 min
Stillness in the StormsI Know What You Are Searching For... Am I Right?What are you actually searching for? I joined the clubs, the forums and the groups, and none of it delivered.I was looking to reduce my suffering. That much I knew. What I did not see was that I was also looking for permission to be a lump on a chair who does not have to do anything. Comfort is not somewhere you retreat to. It is somewhere you grow into. You were already in it as a child and you left. And you have to lose something before you know what it was. Think how many...
2021-06-0616 min
Stillness in the StormsWhat Are Your HIDDEN Strengths?Does what doesn't kill you really make you stronger? Partly, and it also annoys me. Strength is the ability to deal with change, not the ability to jump out of aeroplanes.The older I get the more I think strength is just leaning in a bit. It is not parachutes and mountains. And there is a weakness worth naming, which is the inability to say no. Wanting to please everybody sounds generous and it does not end well for you.One thing to try: Say no to one small thing today that you would normally...
2021-05-3112 min
Stillness in the StormsBe Your 7 Year Old Self – Day 2 #MayorOfTruroWhat would today look like if you met it the way your seven year old self would?It is day two of being Mayor of Truro and I woke on Monday feeling sick. Not ill. Nervous. A seven year old tells you about their day like it is the most extraordinary thing that ever happened, because to them it is. I am meeting people today and I am excited like a kid going on a school trip. And underneath that, the thing I keep coming back to is that we are all the same. Alcohol, takeaway, Netflix...
2021-05-1910 min
Stillness in the StormsIs it possible to Love Everyone?How can I say I love you to somebody I have never met? Because your suffering is the same as my suffering, and once you see that there is nothing else to say.Your hopes and your dreams are mine with the details swapped. If you want to understand my suffering, look at your own. That is what loving yourself actually means, because once you accept that suffering is part of you, you stop needing other people to be different. Some have built walls out of fear, and it is harder to see in them. It is...
2021-04-2915 min
Stillness in the StormsHow to Deal with Life's Pressures (Anxiety, Overwhelm and Stress)Where does the pressure actually build up? Not in the big things. In the notifications and the small unanswered stuff, in a cooker nobody thinks to let out.A river with no rocks and no twists in it is not a river anybody stops to look at. Some days I do not want to meditate or do anything useful. I want to sit and let the moment settle, and that is allowed. We all have our vices and nobody is without them. The cooker keeps building until you notice it, which is why nature works so well...
2021-04-1614 min
Inner Peace MeditationsMy Peaceful Place (Guided Meditation for Timeout)Not escaping the moment. Bringing some calm into it, and then taking that out into the rest of the day.About 11 minutes with Steven Webb's calm voice.You pick the place, not me. Somewhere in nature you actually like, where nobody will find you. Then you fill in the detail. The weather, the breeze, what you are sitting on, what you can hear. I leave you there a couple of minutes and keep an eye on the clock.Treat me to a coffee, keep the podcast free, and get my Weekly Calm every...
2021-04-1609 min
Stillness in the StormsWhat Would You Teach the World? (I asked Twitter and got amazing answers)If you could teach the whole world one thing, what would it be? I asked Twitter and read out every answer. Not one person said maths.To fish. Be kind. Communication. Gratitude, which took a surprisingly long time to come up. Your ego is not your amigo. And my favourite, crochet, because it is relaxing, therapeutic and you end up with a blanket. I read out some genuinely good news first as well, because the world is not only going downhill, whatever it feels like.One thing to try: Answer it yourself. One thing, for...
2021-04-0518 min
Inner Peace MeditationsForest of Curiosity (Reduce Anxiety and Stress)A forest where nothing in it will hurt you. Everything you meet is friendly, and you have nowhere to be afterwards.About 13 minutes with Steven Webb's calm voice.You walk in and the light comes through the tops of the trees in patches. Animals pop their heads up, have a look at you, then get on with their day. You end up sat at the base of a big tree by a stream, watching butterflies. Take the curiosity back out with you, because you can go there from a car park or a waiting room.
2021-04-0112 min
Stillness in the StormsForget Gratitude – Do a Stock-Take InsteadHas gratitude turned into another thing on your to-do list? Try a stock take instead. Walk round the house and actually look at what is in it.I used to do stock takes for a living and hated them. Counting ice cream bars in the freezer at the end of a long night. But the idea works on a life. Open the cupboard. Open the fridge. Look at the clothes. Get in the car and notice that it starts. You do not have to write three things down every morning for this to land.One...
2021-03-3109 min
Inner Peace MeditationsDiscover the Infinite Possibilities of Your True SelfWho is doing the observing? There is no answer, and the more confused you get, the closer you probably are.About 13 minutes with Steven Webb's calm voice.We watch the breath in real detail. The start of it, the speeding up, the pause where it changes direction. Then I ask who is watching, and you go looking, and there is nobody there to find. From that place there is no wanting, no pushing and no fear. Everything else comes out of it, which means you are not stuck being who you have always been.
2021-03-2512 min
Stillness in the StormsPerhaps Happiness is NOT a CHOICE?Why am I so happy in a wheelchair? I get asked constantly. The honest answer is that I am not always, and I no longer think happiness is simply a choice.I cannot feel anything below about my nipples, so half the time something is wrong and I have no idea. I do not look at the accident through rose tinted glasses and imagine the better life I would have had. There was no other deal on the table. Happiness moves depending on where you are standing. At the doctors, happiness is just wanting the ordinary day...
2021-03-2011 min
Inner Peace MeditationsMorning Gratitude for Yourself and AllGratitude only works once it becomes a habit. Do this one for a few weeks, until you can run it without me.About 10 minutes with Steven Webb's calm voice. Perfect for the morning.Breathe in appreciation, breathe out thank you. That is the shape of the whole thing. Your body first, then one person who is always there or always was, then everything you own, right down to the kettle that made your drink. It finishes on whatever you take the universe to be. God, source, mystery. Your call entirely.Treat me to...
2021-03-1809 min
Inner Peace MeditationsGuided Meditation to Reduce Stress and AnxietyThe simplest one I have, and probably the most effective. Breathe in calm, breathe out relax. That is the whole thing.About 8 minutes with Steven Webb's calm voice.Two words on the way in, two on the way out. The first is for the mind, the second is for the body. I use this before every other meditation I record, and any time my own head is going too fast. After a while the words drop away and it just happens on its own.Treat me to a coffee, keep the podcast free...
2021-03-1706 min
Stillness in the StormsWhy Is It so Difficult to Love Ourselves?Why is it so hard to love yourself when everybody keeps telling you to just do it?Not the narcissistic kind. The ordinary kind. Here is the problem. You have seen your own cupboard. You know every skeleton in it, and you compare that to everybody else's beach photos. They post the day out. They do not post the hell that started at teatime. We are the only person whose full history we have to sit with. So we sit in shame and call it honesty.One thing to try: Go easy on yourself today...
2021-03-1509 min
Inner Peace MeditationsHealing and Loving Your Inner ChildYou cannot change what happened. You can change how it sits in you. This one sets up a room where the younger you gets what they needed.About 15 minutes with Steven Webb's calm voice.There is a room inside your heart with a comfortable chair in it. Your younger self turns up, not knowing who you are, only that you are calm and safe and worth trusting. Then you swap places and sit in their seat, which is the hard part. Receiving the love is always harder than giving it. Things can come up here...
2021-03-1513 min
Stillness in the StormsWhy can't I sleep? #1 reason you Cannot Fall Asleep!Why will your body not let you fall asleep? Because it is checking you are safe. Sleep evolved to happen in a cave, and your bedroom has to convince it.I could not function, could not think straight, and the drinking each night made it worse. The survival mechanism will not stand down until the room feels safe. So drop the temperature. And go to bed when you are actually ready to sleep, not before, because lying there awake teaches your body that bed is where you lie awake.One thing to try: Cool the...
2021-03-0614 min
Stillness in the StormsWhen Caring is Not Enough! Biden, Inauguration and ElvisWhat does Elvis missing a word teach you about being perfect? If you never miss one, you practised too much, and it is probably not coming from the heart any more.Perfectly imperfect never made sense to me until I got older. Listen to Are You Lonesome Tonight and you hear it. He cares whether he gets the words right and he cares whether he hits the notes, and the caring is the bit that lands. The wobble is not the flaw in it. The wobble is the evidence somebody meant it.One thing to...
2021-01-2016 min
Stillness in the StormsMy 25% Rule to Help You Grow ConsciouslyWhat happens when you sit and properly listen to people you disagree with? I ran out of excuses, went to the council meetings, and found it genuinely fascinating.It did not mean I agreed with them at the end. Sometimes I really did not. But sitting in an echo chamber of only your own opinions makes them so loud you lose the peace. One side says pick yourself up and get on with it. The other says it is not always that simple. Both are describing something real from where they are standing.One thing...
2021-01-1516 min
Stillness in the StormsReasons it's Awesome to be Paralysed (DON'T LISTEN IF EASILY OFFENDED)Can there be anything good about being paralysed? Seven things, and I am only half joking about most of them.Reframing is one of the most useful skills we have. It does not delete the bad. It makes it liveable. So: I do not get the aches from sitting still that my incomplete friends get. I do not do the housework. I get the comfortable seat at the cinema while everybody else chews their knees. Anything I do at all gets treated as impressive, so I can fail badly and still be fine. Some of it is...
2021-01-1022 min
Stillness in the StormsHow You Choose Your AltitudeWhat if this year you do not need a big change, just a slightly different altitude?Happy New Year. We had a year with more time than we have ever had and most of us did not use it. I did not finish my book. Nobody would have judged me for watching Netflix and taking the odd call. That is the trap. You cannot have peace without some progress, and you cannot have progress without some peace. People will not start the climb unless they can do the whole mountain today, and that is exactly why they...
2021-01-0212 min
Stillness in the Storms3 WAYS steps to DEAL with STRESS quicklyWhat is the first thing to do when stress has hold of you? Be quiet. Not deep breathing, not affirmations. Stop talking, and let the body come down a gear.The damage is not the stress itself, it is the mechanism staying switched on for hours at a stretch. I am a city councillor, which qualifies me on stress. Picture the body going from a run to a walk to sitting to lying down. All you are doing is slowing it. So first, be quiet. Everything else works better after that.One thing to try...
2020-12-2217 min
Stillness in the StormsWhy Your Spiritual Journey is IncompleteIs the spiritual journey really from the head to the heart? Partly. But most people then try to disconnect the head entirely, and that does not work either.I only wanted less pain and less suffering when I set out. We start living in the body more, which is the useful half. Thoughts are not bad, they are just thoughts. Feelings are not bad, they are just feelings. A heartbeat is not a good one or a bad one. It is a heartbeat. Once you stop grading them you can approach the whole thing from somewhere steadier.
2020-12-1409 min
Stillness in the StormsWhat to Do When LETTING IT GO Is Too DifficultWhat is the difference between letting go and letting things be? One is a shove. The other is what actually works, and it took me a long time to tell them apart.People kept telling me there were other pebbles on the beach. I would sit listening to lonely songs until the emotion overwhelmed me. Some things you fully influence, some things partly, and some things not at all. The weather is not yours. A little scepticism is healthy as long as it stays in proportion. If you like a thought, enjoy it. If you do not...
2020-11-1823 min
Stillness in the StormsYour Knowledge Is Worthless If You...Is your knowledge worth anything if you never use it? I have a confession, and it involves a shelf of unread books.We buy the salad with good intentions and throw half of it away. We buy the book that will change our life and flick through the first few pages. Knowing how to be compassionate is worthless unless you are compassionate. Everybody knows the carrot beats the chocolate. I am dyslexic. I would read a page and not know what I had read. As a Man Thinketh took me three months and it is forty pages...
2020-10-2514 min
Stillness in the StormsI really didn't want to do thisWhat does it look like when the person who teaches calm is the one having the panic attack?I had no idea what this episode was going to be when I pressed record. I was sitting here anxious, stressed, feeling like the whole world was going wrong. I had stopped opening my emails. I was not even reading them, just bringing them up and looking away. The reason I help people with anxiety is that I have it. So here is me, on a bad day, being honest instead of pretending. Me and my carer Sasha have...
2020-10-2213 min
Stillness in the StormsHow to Think Positive Even with a Negative BiasCan you think positive when your brain is built with a negative bias? Just think positive is the worst advice I ever gave, and I gave it for twenty years.Information hits three minds. The instinctual one asks if you are about to die. The subconscious one checks what you did last time and repeats it. Only then does the human mind get a look in, and by then the decision is often made. Your subconscious is not being negative on purpose. It is repeating patterns because they kept you alive. It is why the person who...
2020-10-1320 min
Stillness in the StormsThe Emotion That Stopped Me Living | What's Yours?What has actually been stopping you asking for help? For me it was shame, and I had no idea until somebody put the word to it. The truth annoys you first, then frees you.I never knew how to ask, or rather I knew how and could not stand doing it. Somebody said something that made me want to argue, so I sat with it instead. I read two of Brene Brown's books on shame. I did not know I was about to have the challenge of my life the moment I dived into that pool. Then...
2020-10-0617 min
Stillness in the Storms'Based on a True Story' - This WILL STOP You ARGUINGDo you actually remember it, or did you build it? Every memory is based on a true story, and the gap between those two things ends most arguments.We store fragments and then construct the rest. We are terrible listeners and brilliant at waiting for our turn. A woman of ninety could not remember what she had for dinner but could tell you about decades ago. It protects you, which is why you never drink the thing that made you ill at fifteen. So stop arguing that you remember it exactly. Your conversations get softer....
2020-10-0419 min
Stillness in the StormsIf My Last Podcast | What Is My Best Advice?If I could give you one piece of advice, what would it be? You cannot change this moment, so what are you going to do with it?Six months flat on my back, no voice, one blink for yes and two for no. If somebody had come and given me the best advice in the world I could not have replied. So I have thought hard about what I would have wanted to hear. Not positive thinking. Just this. Accept exactly what is, then ask what you can do with it. Fear included. Everybody wants rid of...
2020-09-2817 min
Stillness in the StormsWhy Your BODY IS Your BEST TEACHERWhat is your body trying to tell you, and why can you not read it? Mine speaks a language I had to learn from scratch.I am paralysed just below the neck, so my body cannot point at the problem. It shouts instead. Blood pressure through the roof, blue lips, a headache that takes the day off me, and the cause turns out to be a sock with a crease in it or a shoe done up too tight. Yours is subtler and you still are not reading it. Cheese late in the evening and my sleep...
2020-09-1717 min
Stillness in the StormsToday Is No Ordinary Day – 29 Years onWhat if today is the last day you can walk, or go to the toilet on your own? Mine was Sunday, 1 September 1991.I have rebuilt that morning in my head hundreds of times. Waking up. Stretching. Lowering myself onto the toilet without a thought. Showering, drying myself, wrapping a towel round me and walking back to the bedroom. That was the last day I had superpowers, and I had no idea. Twenty nine years on I am not asking you to be frightened. I am asking you to notice that you can talk, taste your food and...
2020-09-0213 min
Stillness in the StormsCan you be ANGRY and KIND?Can you be angry and kind at the same time? The real question is how mature your anger is.A man came into my home while the walls were being replaced and told me to move a van. I got stubborn. Later I sat with what my teacher Jun Po asks me. Has anybody ever made you angry? No. I chose it. I am angry because I care. Once you see that, you get to choose the response as well. Anger is not the problem. Immature anger is. Shouting about world hunger feeds nobody. Anger that moves...
2020-08-1018 min
Stillness in the StormsCan Meditation Reduce My Stress and anxiety?Can meditation really reduce your stress and anxiety? Yes, but not by making the stress go away.People assume I am relaxed. I am not. I get stressed and I get overwhelmed a lot. I sat at a wedding next to people I did not know and my body did the whole thing, blood pulled to the muscles, digestion stopped, pancreas working overtime, all for a room with no danger in it. Meditation will not sort out your boss. What it does is let you catch the stress early, while it is still small, before you stack...
2020-08-0418 min
Stillness in the StormsThe Middle Way | Life with less SufferingShould you cut the negative people out of your life? Everyone on the spiritual path says yes. I think that is how you end up unable to deal with anything at all.It took two and a half hours to get me out of bed that morning. Hard on the carer and hard on me, and for the first two of those hours I was somewhere else entirely. The point of the practice is not sitting on a cushion. It is whether you can do it in a council meeting, or when the family are nagging. Cut...
2020-08-0113 min
Stillness in the Storms7 Things We and Governments Should Learn from 2020What should we and our governments actually learn from 2020? Seven things, and clapping is not one of them.Key workers kept whole countries going and they need more than a clap on a Thursday. You cannot be ambiguous with rules, because a rule that says do not use public transport unless you need to use public transport is not a rule. Journalism went commercial, and soft questions buy access. The stock market is not the country. And collectively, handed months of time we had never had, most of us wasted it. Including me.One thing...
2020-07-2825 min
Stillness in the StormsWhy You Are Already Living Your Best Possible LifeWhat if you are already living your best possible life? Not the nicest one. The best one available, because it is the only one that happened.We play what if all day. If the accident had not happened, if the appointment had not been missed, life would have been perfect. You do not know that. I could have been an idiot who killed somebody in a car two months later. You cannot run the other version, so you are comparing your real life to a life you invented. And there is no DeLorean. Twenty toilet seats in...
2020-07-1917 min
Stillness in the StormsWhy the 'Spiritual Journey' WILL NOT Reduce Your SufferingWill a spiritual journey take your suffering away? No. Chasing one nearly made mine worse.I was forty and I was in Boots in town, and I broke. Bawling my eyes out in a busy shop. A stranger put a hand on my shoulder, held it, and asked how he could help. Later I read James Allen and I found meditation, and then I got attached to the whole thing. I wanted enlightenment, and I was unhappy because I did not have it. That is just a new attachment wearing better clothes. Aim lower and truer. Reduce...
2020-07-1121 min
Stillness in the StormsHow to SOLVE 99% of YOUR PROBLEMSDo you want to solve 99% of your problems? Then stop numbing them and go and find what is causing them.We are very good at numbing. We put a plaster over the top and carry on. If you have a thorn in your finger, a plaster is no help. You have to take the thorn out. Meditation is not there to remove today's suffering. It is there so you can meet tomorrow's. We think we have five hundred problems. Really we have a hundred bigger ones underneath, and most of them share a root. It is like...
2020-06-1714 min
Stillness in the StormsThe World DOESN'T NEED MORE LOVE #BlackLivesMatterDoes the world really need more love? I do not think so. I think it needs more understanding, and they are not the same.You can love a baby and still not know what it needs. Love without understanding is guessing. I am not black, so I do not carry what that carries, but I am disabled, and I have sat in enough meetings with social services to know what it is to be talked about rather than heard. In 2003, thirty six million people marched against a war across three thousand protests, and it changed nothing. So...
2020-06-1219 min
Stillness in the StormsGetting Out Of Your Comfort ZoneHow do you actually get out of your comfort zone? Every quote online makes it sound easy. It is not.Shortly after I broke my neck I was on the spinal unit, in a manual chair I could barely push, and they asked me to speak at a fundraiser. I was terrified. I had a bad stutter. I stuttered on every word I said. Then a nurse came down to the ward with a tin, and there was about twelve pounds in it, and something changed. Failure is not the risk. Failure is the learning. The real...
2020-06-0218 min
Stillness in the StormsWhat to Do When Your Life Doesn't Go to PlanWould the other version of your life really have been better? I spent three months not getting out of bed at all, and I worked out how to eat with a fork through my hand.The staff were stacked out, which meant nobody rushed me chewing my food. I still eat the same way today. It took me years to accept an electric wheelchair, and it turned out to be independence rather than defeat. If you had stayed with them, or stayed in that job, you might well have ended up more miserable. We should not be...
2020-05-1718 min
Stillness in the StormsWhen Hugging Your Dragons Is Not EnoughWhat if you have hugged all your dragons and you are still stuck? Then the thing holding you is not the dragon.I told a teacher I had found peace. I can live with being paralysed. I can live with dying. And still I was stuck in the middle, not writing, not finishing. What I finally let go of was how I thought it should be. I stopped caring who turns up. What matters is that I turn up. And when I look at a star, that light has crossed the universe to die at the back...
2020-05-0514 min
Stillness in the StormsIs there a difference between CARING and EMPATHYWhat is the difference between caring and empathy? They are not the same thing, and one of them is quietly about you.Understanding gave me more inner peace than anything else. I understood others, and I ended up understanding myself. Caring can be you putting your needs onto somebody, or onto an animal, and calling it love. Empathy is feeling what they are actually feeling. I used to get furious at people keeping a bird in a cage until I looked at what was really going on for everybody in that room, bird included.One...
2020-04-2916 min
Stillness in the StormsThe TRUTH behind your 'SPIRITUAL JOURNEY' and you may not like it!Is my meditation even working? Toad read poems to his seeds and played them music, and they still would not grow. That is most of us, most of the time.A 1972 wine sits in a vat for years and nobody stands over it demanding progress. Everything you have built up, every opinion and belief, has to break down before anything grows. Forcing a seed does not work, and neither does forcing yourself to let go. Toad suffers because he wants something from it. The practice leads to less suffering, not to a prize.One thing...
2020-04-0715 min
Stillness in the Storms3 Things We ALL NEED to GET THROUGH this TogetherHow do you stop an argument before it starts? Agree the rule in advance. Twenty seconds, which is three breaths, and anybody can manage three breaths.I know what it is like having somebody around most of the time. It is not easy for either of you. So we need understanding, because usually they did not know the thing we assumed they knew. And patience, because none of this is easy for anybody. At some point I am going to shout and at some point you are going to shout. Agree now what happens then....
2020-03-3116 min
Stillness in the StormsHow To FACE Your FEAR And ENJOY Inner PeaceIs it weak to admit you are frightened? I said I was, and people rushed in to tell me there was no need.There is a need. Denying the fear would not be real. Fear is information. It is telling you something. When I said I wanted to run and keep running like Forrest Gump, that was not madness, that was my body asking to be exhausted. A warrior is not somebody with no fear. A warrior feels it and turns it into fuel. And most of our fear is not even here now. It is next...
2020-03-2614 min
Stillness in the StormsThe Three Cultural Poisons and Coronavirus Covid-19What can one person actually do when everything is falling apart? A lot more than you think, and it starts with picking up the phone and asking who needs something.There are three cultural poisons and the first is denial. The environment is fine. Business is fine. It is not that people are ignorant in the insulting sense, it is that they do not know. I got my arms back after the swelling went down. Not my hands. Every single life is important, and I do not always feel governments weigh them the same.One...
2020-03-2021 min
Stillness in the Storms with Steven Webb20 - Where is HAPPINESS?In this episode of Living Deeper Lives I ask a very simple question: Where is happiness? The answer is far more elusive and complicated than we first imagined. Yet when we find it, it is far simpler than we imagined. Happiness is something that seems to elude many although that is the one thing we are all searching for. I'm your host Steven Webb and I help people with active minds and busy lives enjoy inner peace. Transcript Where is happiness? Try to pinpoint where happiness is right now. I...
2020-03-0915 min
Stillness in the StormsWhere is HAPPINESS?Where is happiness, exactly? Try to point at it. It is not up at the high moments and it is not the thing you are chasing. It sits on the ordinary line in the middle.The peaks give you endorphins and you cannot stay there. The millionaire wants two million and the billionaire wants two billion, because we keep thinking the next level up is where it lives. It is not a place you get to. Pay attention to the mundane line instead, the normal one, because that is where you actually are happy.One...
2020-03-0915 min
Stillness in the StormsDealing with OVERWHELMING THOUGHTS and EMOTIONSHave you ever shut the door, drawn the curtains and sat on the floor with your head on your knees? That is where this one starts.The world is going too fast and so is my mind. Let me finish this thought before you send another one. It is not the big things either. It is the school run, the tea, the phone calls, all stacking up until the dam goes over. I think of the emotions as voices, and every one of them believes it has the answer. Shame is certain. Guilt is certain. So is...
2020-03-0117 min
Stillness in the StormsBest Way to COPE with LONELINESS?Where exactly does loneliness live in your body? Sit with it and find out, because that is more useful than any advice about getting out more.They tracked people for decades, took bloods, checked their health, asked how they felt. What came out was not about diet. It was about connection. So is loneliness only evolution punishing us, or is there something underneath it? Usually what we are missing is security. Somebody there. A safety net, and somebody to bounce ideas off.One thing to try: Sit and ask where you feel it in your...
2020-02-2417 min
Stillness in the StormsHow to Save Someone's Life! The MOST DIFFICULT Story I've Ever ToldWhy is asking for help the hardest thing we ever do? Because shame is the lowest feeling there is, and shame does not ask.This is the most difficult story I have told. I have been in the place where you are waiting for a phone that does not ring. I was there, and it got cold, and I had made my decision. Then I saw a face in my head and I could not do it to her. Not because I was being selfish. Because I loved her. The other lesson took longer. People want to...
2020-02-1918 min
Stillness in the StormsBeing vulnerable and I CANNOT BELIEVE I have been HIDING THIS!What have you been hiding without knowing you were hiding it? I found mine this week and I could not believe it.I do not tell people I am in a wheelchair. Nobody ever asked me to hide it. I just never said. Then I sat at a Christmas lunch with other spinal injured people and somebody looked up and said something that took the lid off. I am hoisted out of bed and across the room into a shower chair, completely naked, every morning of my life. I have twenty four hour care because things can...
2020-02-1014 min
Stillness in the StormsDon't let EMPATHY DESTROY YOU | Healthy vs Unhealthy EmpathyCan you care about somebody without drowning in it? Empathy is not something you are given, it is something you grow. And there is a version that eats you alive.There are two ways this goes. Disconnection, where you decide not to take on their pain at all, and the other version where you sink into it with them. Neither one helps. There is no use going round in the same grieving, deeply caring state they are in. That is not support. That is two people underwater.One thing to try: Notice whether you are...
2020-01-2211 min
Stillness in the StormsFinding Your CORE VALUES and Why It Is so ImportantWhat are your core values, and do you actually bring them into every room you walk into?Ask anybody and they will say integrity, caring, understanding. Ask them if they carry those into a work meeting, a family row, a queue in the shop, and it goes quiet. I call values the roots of the tree. Lose a branch and you are fine. Lose the roots and you are gone. Integrity, for me, means you promise a thing and you deliver it. I have failed at that. I once went off on one at my carer, on...
2020-01-1412 min
Stillness in the StormsWhy BEING ENOUGH Is More Important Than PerfectWhat if you are already enough, and perfect was never the target? I had it engraved on something once, and the engraver emailed back to ask if I was sure.She said it did not sound right to her. I said it was exactly right. Feeling not enough is how the body keeps you on the sofa, because nobody can hurt you there. The coward looks at the hero and asks why bother. The hero looks back and says we will worry about that when we get there. You have everything you need for the next step...
2020-01-0811 min
Stillness in the StormsDealing with Life's Knockout BlowsWhy do feelings come in waves? Because that is what they are. And the serenity prayer is not really about the big things at all, it is about the next five minutes.When you first sit down to meditate the waves feel enormous, because you have never watched them properly before. The bit we get wrong is thinking the serenity prayer applies to wars and world events. It applies to the phone going when you are facing the wall in your own room, and to whatever arrives in the next few minutes.One thing to...
2019-12-0711 min
Stillness in the StormsHow to live with a Big Heart without Suffering!Can you have a big heart without drowning in everybody else's pain? Yes, and the difference is where you put it down.My daughter was about six or seven, watching a film with us while we cried, and she asked why we were crying. We are not born with empathy. It arrives later, and it arrives in stages. First your own pain. Then the person in front of you. Then the group, then the news, then the child washed up on a beach in Syria. The wider it goes, the heavier it gets, and on a tired...
2019-11-2615 min
Stillness in the StormsHow to Free Yourself and Become FulfilledWhy do you not recognise yourself any more? Because your glass got filled by everybody except you.You are born an empty glass. Then everybody starts pouring. Parents, school, the person who treated you badly at sixteen, the films, the adverts, the culture you visited once. By the time you look in it, you are drinking swamp water made of other people's choices, and it never quenched anything. When I hit the bottom, it was like somebody took the base out of the glass and emptied it. I still had food, care and health. I had no...
2019-10-1411 min
Stillness in the Storms with Steven Webb10 - How to Free Yourself and Become FulfilledDo you ever wonder who you have become? In this episode I discussed why that happens, and why we feel very unsatisfied with our lives. Why we become everybody else, instead of that ambitious child that was going to stand out and make a difference. One of the fundamental things about making changes is your ability to understand how you got to where you are. When you understand how you become this person you do not recognise, you then have the gift of what to do about it. Your host Steven Webb, explains...
2019-10-1411 min
Stillness in the StormsHow 5 Minutes Meditation can Help With DepressionCan five minutes of meditation really touch depression? It will not fix it and I would not pretend otherwise. But it changes what you do with the thought.A friend on the spinal unit broke his neck shortly after I did. He was the positive one, but he talked about the past constantly, about the way things used to be. A couple of years after I came home I heard he had taken his life. I am not against medication. Sometimes the water is too muddy to see through at all. What meditation adds is the chance...
2019-10-0116 min
Stillness in the StormsHow to Control Your Thoughts and Enjoy Inner PeaceCan you control your thoughts? Try this. What will your next thought be? You cannot know. So the control was never there to lose in the first place.After my partner left I was a zombie. Carers would ask how I was doing and I would say I am okay. I could not sleep, and being paralysed I could not even fetch myself a drink. Your subconscious hands you thoughts for survival, the same way you buy a jumper and then see it on everybody. You cannot stop them arriving. You can stop putting weight on them.
2019-09-2420 min
Stillness in the StormsSimple Ways You Can Change the WorldDo you have to do something huge to make the world better? No. And the pressure to do something grand is exactly what stops most people doing anything at all.Our cat Mitzi brought a mouse in and my partner had to deal with it alone, because I was in bed and paralysed. Thank you Mitzi. Please stop. Then there is the monk sitting there deciding to be calm about a fly, which is not really calm at all. Staying calm is admirable. Doing one kind thing is better, and every single kind act counts....
2019-09-1608 min
Stillness in the StormsThings You Need to Know When You're StrugglingWhat do you do when you cannot pay the bills and you have stopped eating? I know, because I did it. The answer was the thing I was most avoiding.Richard and I opened a computer shop called Bees Knees. I could not wait for the weekend, because the banks shut and that meant two days of quiet. I lost a lot of weight. I was not eating. When I finally took responsibility and asked for help, I could actually do something. The antidepressants let me eat again. That hole feels permanent while you are in it...
2019-08-2018 min
Stillness in the Storms with Steven Webb5 - How to Sleep Even When It's Too Hot to SleepIn this episode: Making your bedroom perfect for sleep. How to prepare your evening for sleep. What to do when you wake up in the night and cannot get back to sleep. Hints, tips and tricks to fall asleep. Plus, how the military go to sleep in less than two minutes. Sleep Meditation My website Steven Webb Support my work by becoming a patron Patreon Page Intro: Hello, and welcome to my podcast. I'm Steven Webb, and this is Stillness In the Storms of life. It's the podcast that...
2019-08-0123 min
Stillness in the StormsHow to Sleep Even When It's Too Hot to SleepWhy can you not sleep when it is hot, and can you catch it up at the weekend? You cannot. Sleep is a skill, and most of us were never taught it.Cool the room down first. We are not built to sleep at twenty one degrees. I put a cold flannel on my forehead, which looks ridiculous and works. Waking in the night is normal, it is your body checking you are safe, so do not reach for the phone to see the time. Most of us get to the end of the day and simply...
2019-08-0123 min
Stillness in the StormsCan Over Thinkers Meditate?Can an overthinker actually meditate? I could not for twenty years, because I thought meditation meant no thinking. It does not, and that changed everything.At 40 I hit rock bottom, could not sleep, and every book I picked up told me to meditate. I was diagnosed dyslexic so I had stopped bothering with books, then started again because reading was the only thing getting me to sleep. Your mind is built to think the way your heart is built to pump. Meditation is not the absence of thought. It is the gap between the text arriving and...
2019-06-2524 min
Stillness in the StormsManaging Expectations vs Your Inner PeaceAre your expectations quietly costing you your peace? Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.That is Alexander Pope, and it is one of my favourites. Bruce Lee said the other half of it: I am not in this world to live up to your expectations. I never once asked my stepdaughter how she wanted me to show up. I just expected. A man cleans the whole house for his partner, she walks in, steps over it, and they barely speak all evening. He had built a picture in his head all...
2019-06-2020 min
Stillness in the StormsBuilding the Foundations of StillnessWhy does your calm hold in a traffic jam and vanish the moment your own family walk in? Because calm without foundations is just good weather.You can build any house you like, but without the decking underneath it goes the moment the weather turns. I lost it completely with my daughter once, over something so small I cannot now remember what it was. Stillness is not the absence of trouble. It is having more control when trouble arrives. And your subconscious is not broken either. It has kept you alive this long.One thing...
2019-06-1325 min
Stillness in the StormsStillness in the Storms of LifeWhat does it mean to be still while everything around you is a storm? Picture a bar brawl, and one man at the end of it, quietly drinking.That man is not asleep. He is more awake than anybody else in the room. Reaction happens underneath us, fast, before the compassionate part of the brain gets a look in. So stillness is not detachment, it is being connected enough to see the trigger arrive. If somebody presses a button and nothing happens, eventually they stop pressing. At eighteen I broke my neck in a swimming pool. At...
2019-06-1323 min