Open awareness, nothing pushed away. Music underneath
For 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 is all on stevenwebb.uk
Thank you for sitting with me.
Steven
Who this is for
There is a decision waiting and you do not trust yourself to make it well.
This one does not hand you an answer. It builds the gap you need in order to find your own, which is the only kind that ever holds.
What happens in this meditation
A wave down through the body, noticing tension and letting it fade.
Then the breath, watched rather than worked on. Then a thought arrives and you treat it like a leaf going down a river. You can notice it. You do not have to do anything with it.
Then the same for everything else. Sounds. Sensations. The urge to do something. My voice. Nothing is an interruption, so nothing needs pushing away.
Your attention will dart between all of it. You are told to smile at that rather than fix it.
Then five back to one, and the reminder that a breath is enough to make the gap when you need it later.
How to get the most from it
Eleven minutes, and it is worth doing before the decision rather than after it.
Do not chase calm. It is not a reward for stopping the noise, it is what is left once you stop wrestling with it, and the wrestling is the only bit you control.
The takeaway is portable. One breath, a pause, and then answer. That works in a meeting.
Questions people ask
Will this tell me what to do?
No, and be wary of anything that promises to. It gives you a moment between the question and your answer, and most bad decisions are made in the absence of that moment.
Why does it keep saying I do not have to do anything?
Because that is the whole instruction. Most of our tiredness comes from treating every thought and feeling as a job. Very few of them are.
My attention was all over the place.
So is mine. Fleeting from one thing to another is what a mind does best. Being entertained by that rather than annoyed by it is the practice.
Read along
The transcript
It follows the audio. Press any line to jump there.
confidence · mindfulness · breath
Read the transcript
Just while you're making yourself comfortable and getting settled in, I just want to tell you about another podcast I
have. It's called Stillness in the Storms Podcast. And it's a podcast that helps you to get a little inner
peace when you need it most and you probably have it least.
And it's just... Seeing life from a different perspective. And I'm also choosing not to have any
sponsors for either of these podcasts. So if you would like to treat me to a coffee, you can head
over to StevenWebb.uk or if you'd like to download the five simple practices for inner peace, also head
over to StevenWebb.uk. You are awesome. Settle in and enjoy the meditation. I won't disturb you
after the meditation.
Just make yourself comfortable. Just allow your body to relax. Shake out your arms a little. And
just imagine a wave coming down over you from the top to bottom. Just recognising any bits of tension within
your body.
And when you notice any of these bits of tension, just imagine them fading away.
And bring your awareness to your breath.
I'm breathing in.
I'm breathing out.
You don't have to do anything with your breath.
Just recognise that it's happening.
The same as everything else inside and on the outside. It is all just happening.
You may notice your breath slowing down gently.
I'm breathing in. I'm
breathing out.
And you may notice some thoughts coming in your head. Just recognise them as a thought and do nothing with
them.
Just like a leaf floating down the river, you can recognise the leaf. You can enjoy the nature
of that. It's just floating by. And
you don't have to do anything with a leaf. Just the same as you don't have to do anything with
your breath. You
don't have to do anything with your thoughts.
Just allow it to come and go.
Just the same as every breath comes.
And then it goes.
And you're constantly making way for new ones.
Making way for a new thought to come along.
A new feeling. A new breath.
It's all the same with a subtle difference.
Just the same as the sound coming in,
Just like my words and my voice.
My words are just coming and going.
And even with meditation you don't have to do anything with it. You can just allow the meditation to be
what it is. Just
sitting here, observing, becoming aware.
Just allowing everything to be just as it is.
You're not going to stop the thoughts coming. Any different than you're going to stop the breath coming.
You're not going to stop the little bit of wanting to do something, the intention.
You're not going to stop the sounds coming in or the sensations coming up through the body.
These things will keep happening to us.
When we learn to just sit and
be at one with it all and not have to do anything with it,
We naturally remain calm.
We naturally become wiser. We
have deeper insights
When we're not trying to push everything away, trying to force a type of meditation.
We just allow it to be what it is,
Just a pure awareness.
And as your awareness moves from one thing to another, from a thought to the breath, to a
sound, to an emotion, to my voice,
it'll keep fleeting from one thing to another. Just allow it to do it and just smile.
As if you're entertained by
it. And recognise it is what it is.
It's what the mind and the body does best.
And from this place we have a deeper wisdom. A wisdom that we can respond throughout the day.
That we can know with this deep insight that we have a little gap and a little more extra time
to make the wiser, deeper decisions.
Just by taking a breath,
you can then analyse what's really happening in the moment. And
you can make better decisions.
You can feel calmer and you can have more confidence in your decisions and
your wiser thoughts.
From this deeper sense of who you are,
there's a wonderful quality to the deeper,
wiser person within you.
And when we just allow the moment to be exactly be what it is.
Allow the thought to be what it is and just watch it.
Allow the breath to be what it is and we just watch it.
It's the same as the sounds from the external world.
Any sensations from within.
We just allow them to be what they are.
We learn.
We become wiser.
We become our own teacher.
And from this deeper, wise perspective,
You can make better decisions
And be more confident throughout the day.
And in a moment I'm going to come back from five. But bring this deeper, wiser sense of you back
with it.
Whenever you need to today, you can call up on your breath to
create a little space between you and the decision and
you know you'll make a deeper, wiser
choice.
Five. Four. Gently move your arms. Three. Gently open your eyes.
Two. Shake out your body a bit One. And smile and take a look around the room and just know
that there's a Wise teacher within you. Whenever you just bring your attention to your breath and you
just pause and you can approach any problem you have today from this level of deep wise
