Everyday Being

Guest conversation - Suzanne

A big thank you to Suzanne who is one of our listeners. We discuss and explore what everyday being has meant to her and the implications for her professional and personal life. 

Speaking in public

Key messages in this episode:
Why is speaking in public so challenging?
In our history being thrown out of the tribe was certain death 
Therefore the nature of public speaking is to be nervous
What can you be confident in?
Your engagement
Confidence in doing something is an outcome not a starting point.
Understanding the relationship between our Investment and our involvement is key
Fear and insecurity is the main driving force of over investment.
Being judged
Wanting other people to like us.
Wanting other people to agree with what we are saying etc.
Judging ourself - being in front of lots of people
Preparation
What is good preparation?
Your intention
The only valuable goal you can have is doing your best in the moment
What is unhelpful preparation?

Exploring relationships from an Everyday Being perspective

Key messages in this episode:
Relationships are one of our primary sources of growth
We are social animals. One of the reasons we have survived and prospered in the animal kingdom is our ability to live in community and collaborate. Of course, the flipside of this is that when we can’t or won’t, we can be incredibly destructive
The territory for this session:
Why are relationships so important?
Health and wellbeing
How reality is a shared phenomenon
Collaboration the life blood of an organisation
A healthy way to view relationships
Complementary and incompatible are two conclusions about the same situation, two sides of the same coin
Good will – the currency of relationships
State of mind a critical variable
Taking it personally vs impersonally
‘Being’ in relationship with others
Focus on what you can control
Have the ‘right’ intention
Intention
How
What
Being expectation free
Investment v involvement
Seeing difficult relationships as an Allie sent by life. For our understanding and learning

Everyday Being Trailer

What are the implications of this perspective?

Key messages in this episode
If we understand the way something works, then it has implications for how we apply this understanding in our lives
What we’ve been sharing can be challenging because it is not an application. It doesn’t tell you what to do
This is a reductive understanding - an undoing. Stop doing things that get in the way of the natural system
The territory for this session:
What we’ve been sharing through these sessions has been a description of what is behind our experience. It is either true or not. The true test is your own experience
We are pointing to a fact that our experience is being created from the inside out and not the outside-in
We are not saying that there aren’t external circumstances
Most people live in a mixed paradigm – so do we much of the time
People who struggle in life tend to live outside-in. Feeling a victim of circumstances and other people
However outside-in doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. If it did, we would be affected by circumstances in the same way and so would other people. Both positively and negatively:
When you get something new – how long does the feeling last?
Does the mind ever stay in one state? Does one thought ever stay in the mind? No – our state of mind and thinking naturally ebb and flow
Self-inquiry is key – reflecting and exploring:
The nature of your own mind. How it works and how to creates our experience 
‘I’ is the tenth most common word we use after ‘the’, ‘be’, ‘to’, ‘of’, ‘and’ etc. And yet we never really explore what we mean by ‘I’
Despite the increased focus on mental health during the last few years the outcomes for people are not improving. Maybe we’ve been looking in the wrong direction?

Wellbeing and mental health

Key messages in this episode
Through all of our previous episodes we have been pointing to the source of our mental health and wellbeing as originating from our ‘being’ and not from our ‘doing’. This episode delves deeper into this perspective.
How this understanding can be used to help us navigate back to our own wellbeing
As always we hope that you can relate to this from the evidence of your own experience
The territory for this episode:
Fundamental question – is mental health something that we have innately? We are suggesting that it is, and this orientation has significant implications for the way that we think about and support our own mental health
However, we also recognise that this is a tricky subject and there are lots of grey areas. It is very easy for people to take offence at this perspective:
from a misunderstanding of what we are saying
from a feeling that it is somehow blaming the individual who is struggling
that it is somehow disrespectful of someone’s experience when they are struggling
We share a few examples from our own experience and the experience of  working with people who are struggling. 
We discuss understanding mental health as where we are not who we are. People often say things like "I am an anxious person" or "I am a depressive". We discuss how this is an unhelpful and an inaccurate description of our mental health.
How the purpose of a mental health diagnosis is to help us get back to health
How our state of ‘being’ drives our 'doing' not the other way around - with some examples
One of the challenges is that this is a reductive understanding, i.e., what do you need to stop doing rather than what we need to do
How when we settle back into our being we very naturally do things that support our wellbeing, i.e., taking action is often very helpful but only from a certain perspective

Exploring confidence from an everyday perspective

In this episode we explore applying the Everyday Being perspective to the challenging subject matter of confidence.  
We look at confidence from two perspectives:
Confidence in ourselves
Confidence to do something
We start by discussing the most significant challenge for us, which is identifying the interferences that get in the way of accessing confidence - an innocent misuse of our thinking e.g.,
Trying to control what others think of us - when meeting someone new we worry about what they might think about us and/or we try too hard to make a positive impression – we have absolutely no control over what they will think about us or how they will perceive us
self-judgements - we have negative self-judgements about ourselves, e.g., someone who thinks that they are not very good at talking in front of groups, even though other people see them doing it and see them as very confident and competent
Over invested in an outcome – our focus, energy and interest is on the outcome. We very rarely control the outcome of something. If we did, we would always have everything that we focused on. The problem is that deep down our unconscious mind knows that we don’t control the outcome. This therefore inadvertently creates anxiety. Paradoxically this has a negative impact on the very thing that gives us the best opportunity of achieving the outcome, which is our engagement. In sport the mantra is often focus on the process, i.e., your engagement and not on the result. In business and life you see it with the salesperson that is so focused on the sale that they don’t build the engagement and the relationship with the buyer. We are very sensitive to when we are being pushed. 
We then go on to discuss how confidence in ourselves comes from our ‘being’. Young children before the age of around three don’t have any major problems with their confidence. At times parents might need to step in to protect them from themselves. As the sense of a separate self develops and we start to pick up messages about what is right, what is wrong, what we get rewarded or punished for etc, we become overly self-conscious. If you think about it this creates low confidence because we are so focused on ourselves that we lose the connection to our external circumstances.
As we’ve mentioned before being, present and aware are the same thing. We know we are always having an experience because we are being here now, at every moment of our lives. We have all had the experience of being completely present and in the moment.
How do you build on this so that it becomes part of your everyday life?
Doing the work on who you are being.
As we’ve mentioned before if you want to look at who you are being looking at what you are currently doing. How you are going about your life. What experience you are creating for yourself. What experience you are creating for the people around you.
This takes work. It is a creation and a daily recreation.
It is a personal inquiry.
Our experience is that when people first start to explore this, they find many positive qualities to their being. And they also find some aspects of their being that they don’t like or want. These often highlight some things to explore related to our book of law:
The limiting beliefs we have about ourselves or others, e.g. I should be perfect in everything that I do. Other people should treat in the way I want etc.
The judgements we hold about ourselves, others, and life. We start to see life in a very black and white way. We objectify ourselves and other people – seeing in a very one dimensional way – good/bad, right/wrong etc. Certainty about something is a warning sign
Expectations of ourselves, others, and life. We start relating to life as it isn’t rather than how it is. As the spiritual teacher and author Byron Katie says you will only lose this battle 100% of the time. The words “Should”, “Shouldn’t”, “Must” betray these judgements
Clarifying your sense of ‘being’ helps you to focus on the qualities that you want to embody. It also helps you focus on the things that you can control

Understanding the nature of the mind

In this episode we explore what the nature of the mind. How it operates. Why there is a direct correlation to the volume and quality of thinking that is available to us and our state of mind.  
How understanding that our mind works dualistically means that we use the mind for the job that it was intended, which is to help us navigate in an ever-changing world. However, it also highlights the fact that you cannot find peace of mind in the mind – trying to manage our state of mind and/or our thinking doesn't work in any way that is sustainable. Instead an understanding of the nature of the mind and the way it works has key implications for the way that we relate to our mind and our thinking.  
We link back to previous episodes and describe how peace of mind comes from a quiet mind. It comes when we connect to our being. Our mind takes the lead from who we are being. 

What is ’Being’?

Our 'Being' is the one thing we know for sure. We are always having an experience. We are present. We are here now. That is the background to our being.  When you enquire into the nature of this awareness you will find that it has no form, no boundaries, no beginning or end. It is simply our knowing presence.
This awareness is ever present in our lives. Everything we think, do and say comes through our being. In the pure essence of our being we are all the same. This presence is connected to the intelligence of life. It is why when we are present with someone and have a quite mind we feel so connected to them because in our essence we are the same. However the expression of our ‘being’ in the world is absolutely unique - there is and will only ever be one of you. Much like every snow flake that is unique even though they are all snow.
The nature of life is creation and expansion. Therefore that is our nature as well.  Who you are 'Being' is your ongoing creation. 
In this episode we explore our 'Being' and the implications for living in the world and navigating the ups and downs of life. 

Inside-out vs outside-in

This episode explores whether our experience is created by external circumstances (outside-in) or by what is taking place in our mind (inside-out). For most of us we would recognise times when something inside of us is creating our experience (inside-out), e.g. in a difficult relationship where we know that we always turn up irritated before we even see or speak to the other person. However at other times it definitely appears to us that the circumstances have created our experience, e.g. someone being rude to us. What this episodes points to is that all experience is inside-out. This is not to deny external circumstances, but rather that understanding the true source of our experience gives us a better ability to navigate these circumstances and to not be defined by external events. This episode also makes reference to Steve's experience with depression and the suicidal ideation that this created and how he got past this time in his life.