Everyday Being

Don’t drop thought... it drops you!

We can sometimes find ourselves saying: "How can I...
drop my thinking
change my thinking
not be so bothered by my thinking
not be so judgemental 
etc, etc. 
In this episode I briefly cover the nature of thought, how all thought is neutral and a gift from life
I then share some reflections on the implications:
for navigating our thinking in our day to day lives
how sometimes we need to inquire into our thoughts to uncover limiting beliefs and where we might not be seeing life accurately
of how thought actually drops us rather than us having to drop it 

Moving from reacting to creating

This episode builds on the last episode.
As Sidney Banks said: "Life is a contact sport"
It is very natural that we find ourselves in a reactive mindset to the circumstances of our life. This is the story we tell ourselves through our thinking.
It can lead to feeling a victim of circumstances and other people. We complain and our language becomes full of "Should's", "Shouldn't's", "Its unfair" etc. 
It is helpful to normalise this and to neutralise the problem by recognising the role of our thinking. The reaction is not a problem… it is the holding onto it that becomes a problem. 
However we might still have something to deal with in terms of the situation or another person. 
We can then pivot to creation. How do I want to be in relationship to this situation or person? What do I want to create in my response?

How to create who we are ’being’

We are creating all the time. Everything we think, say and do is an act of creation. 
What we 'do' in our life is a reflection of who we are being. 
In this episode we discuss:
how we can use the everyday being perspective to create how we live in the world
how we pivot from reacting to things in our life, to creating how we take ownership in our response to situations
We also share our own personal statements of 'being'. How we created them and what they mean to us. 

Season 2 reflections & key highlights

We share our reflections from series 2 and our own personal highlights and takeaways

Reflection on our last guest conversation

In a new approach for us here at Everyday Being, Gareth shares a couple bits of news and shares some of his reflections on episode 16 with Suzie. Let us know any thoughts you’ve had about this (and any other episodes) at hello@everydaybeing.co.uk 

Guest conversation - Suzie

A big thank you to Suzie one of our listeners for sharing her experience of what everyday being means for her in her personal and professional life. We explore a number of topics including confidence and relationships. 

Good enough

Key messages
How the delusion of the separate self is at the heart of the issue when we judge ourselves
From this delusion we can never be good enough
We get trapped in the negative impact this has on our confidence and sense of wellbeing
How living from being is the antidote to this delusion
We also discuss and explore imposter syndrome and how to have a different perspective on it
We reference the following people:
Tim Gallwey. Who wrote a series of books on the Inner Game
Phil Stutz and Barry Michel’s. They have written two books: The Tools and Coming Alive. There is also a Netflix documentary called Stutz. It is directed by the actor Jonah Hill who is a client of Phil Stutz

We are not in control... and so what?

Key messages
We don’t control our experience
Understanding our lack of control is liberating as we tune into the flow of life
We are a manifestation of universal mind that is the flow of life. Its nature is to create so that is our nature as well. We live as a creative expression of that universal intelligence  
Territory for this session
What do we control?
Two things we could say are very personal and important to us:
Our thoughts, feelings, emotions, and state of mind. This is what creates our experience. We don’t control these elements
Our most intimate or important relationship in our life. Neither party is in control. 
So we don't control two of the most important things in our life 
Michael Singer, in his brilliant book Living Untethered:
The moment in front of you has absolutely nothing to do with you. Look to the left and right there is another moment in front of you
We bring personal preferences into impersonal moments and make them personal
99.99999% of the universe has nothing to do with us, but somehow the 0.00001% does?
We actually bother ourselves about the moment in front of us
A sense of perspective:
The earth has been here for 4.5 billion years
We are here for an eighty year ride
There are nearly 8 billion people on the planet – can we all be in control?
Life rarely unfolds as we want it to
Resistance creates tension and anxiety
Only by accepting reality can we be within the flow of life 
Is there free will?
This has been a question that has vexed scientists and philosophers down the ages
This is certainly above our pay grades… However, we do express a point of view:
If we are not a separate self – how can you be in control
I don’t control my thoughts
I don’t control the thinking that says should I do this or that
American physiologist Benjamin Libet demonstrated in the 1980s that we have no free will. It was already known that electrical activity builds up in a person’s brain before she, for example, moves her hand; Libet showed that this buildup occurs before the person consciously makes a decision to move. The conscious experience of deciding to act, which we usually associate with free will, appears to be an add-on, a post hoc reconstruction of events that occurs after the brain has already set the act in motion.
Have you noticed how often something that you didn't want to happen turns out for the best in the end?
And you never know how the other option might have worked out anyway
The extent to which we are in control
Our intention?
Our understanding of the nature of our experience
You cannot separate what we know from our knowing awareness or presence
You cannot have a thought without a thinking
You cannot have an experience without I am..

Expectations vs Agreements

This is a valuable distinction when we are coming from the perspective of everyday being. A big thank you to Steve Hardison and Steve Chandler who pointed to this distinction.
What is the value of judgements and expectations? Where do they take you?
Out of the now
Into past and future
Lose your impact
It is in the nature of thought to make judgements - this is very helpful in navigating our everyday experience
Thought operates dualistically and creates time
Being is non-dualistic. All awareness’s are the same
It is interesting to explore whether we can make judgements without being judgemental
E.g., “Would you like a tea or a coffee?” you can make a choice but you don’t need to judge the one you didn’t have!
What does your own internal dialogue tend to consist of? - Judgements and expectations. This doesn't add to our enjoyment of life
What do people complain about? - Judgements and expectations
Expectations:
are toxic
people don't look forward to expectations
resentful
leads to anxiety
kills performance
leads to rebellion
goes against a free spirit
leads to disappointment
less creativity and energy
Two consequences
We/they don't live up to expectations
disappointment
they meet it - so what!
Alan Watts - one requirement before marrying a couple. If one of you expects the other to change, I will not perform the ceremony
Inner game of tennis
A judgement is the act of assigning a negative or positive value to an event
Judgements are our personal ego reactions to the sights, sounds, feelings, and thoughts within our experience
Self-judgements become self-fulfilling prophesies – we start to become what we think
When we unlearn how to be judgemental it is possible to achieve spontaneous, focused play
Neither to goodness nor badness ascribed to the event by the players is an attribute of the shot itself. Rather they are the evaluations added to the event in the minds of the players according to their individual reactions
Expectations are a form of judgement:
Jennifer Capriati when she was fourteen years old. At the time, she was playing in world-class women’s tournaments and doing remarkably well. The reporter was asking her how nervous she got when she was playing against some of the best players in the world. Jennifer responded that she didn’t get nervous at all. She said she considered it a privilege to play with these players, something she hadn’t been able to do up until that time. “But surely when you are in the semi-finals of a world-class tournament, and being only fourteen, with all the expectations that are on you, you must experience some stress.” Jennifer’s final answer to all the reporter’s probing for her fear was simple, innocent. “If I was feeling frightened playing tennis, I don’t see why I would do it!” she exclaimed. With that the reporter stopped her questioning.”
Agreements
courageous
moves things forward quickly
curious and interested in the other person
encourages responsibility
adult to adult
sense of accomplishment

Our relationship with time

What are the implications of the fact that we live in a perpetual now?
Presence, awareness and being is a description of the fact that every experience we have ever had in our life was in the now
We can only ever live in the now
“I need more time!”. How can you have more time than now? It doesn’t make sense. So what can we do about time?
Our thinking creates time. Our thinking is never completely in the now
When people are involved in an accident why does time slow down?
When you are at your best what is the quality of this experience? Presence!
Problems with our mental health occur when our energy and focus drift into the past and the future. We spend time going back over things or worrying about the future. We get into a vicious cycle where our thinking just goes round in circles. We struggle to concentrate. We flick from one thing to the next to the next. We cannot live in the past or the future. This is where a busy mind takes us.  
We cannot change the past – however much we think about it it is not going to be changed. The psychotherapy world realised some time ago that constantly going back over troubling memories just re-imprints them more strongly
We cannot predict the future. We can make plans, but the harsh reality is that we are not in control of life and the way that it unfolds. Covid has certainly proven that point
How our state of mind is a critical variable to understand and to be able to navigate. When we feel overwhelmed the problem starts with the mind and not with circumstances. When we slow down we get more done with less mental effort
It is now such a common mantra – ‘Live in the now’. Why is this such a popular message?
We intuitively know that this is the key to living a happy healthy life. It is one of the main reasons why there has been such an increase in the interest in meditation. However, meditation is not a cure all if you try to use it to control your thinking – around 10% of people find their anxiety and depression gets worse
Meditation is about being aware. The essence of meditation is simply to be aware of being. And as we are always aware of simply being, meditation ultimately is not something we do. It is what we are. Not about trying to control the mind and our thinking