Stillness in the Storms

Why can't I stick to meditation when I know it helps? You're probably not lazy or broken. Your hands are already full, and practice shouldn't be one more box rammed into them.

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If someone walked up with their arms full of boxes, you'd never hand them another one. But when somebody is full on the inside, we tell them to meditate for 20 minutes a day, start journalling, exercise more, think positively. I've said them all. On the council I learned that...

Why is everyone so tired right now? Not sleepy, world tired. Too much is changing too fast, our minds never come with an off switch, and we stay busy so we don't have to feel it.

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Ask almost anyone how they are this week and listen to the first word. Tired. More than seven in ten American adults feel very tired or exhausted at least some days, and nine in ten adults in Britain felt high stress or pressure in the...

How do you care about what's happening in the world without it dragging you under? Practice first, news second. Then do one small thing and put it down.

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The night I broke my neck, I only had to get through the next breath. My family were stood in the corridor with nothing to do, not knowing if I'd see the morning. That's the harder seat, and now we're all sat in it, every day, on a phone. Our hearts were built...

Are you bad at meditating? So is everyone. The mind wanders because that is its job. Meditation is not quieting it, it is noticing you have gone and coming back.

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When I started, I thought meditation was sit down, be quiet, no thoughts, pure bliss. It lasted about 30 seconds. Then a teacher gave me the only instruction that ever worked: just sit and do nothing. His version had four letters. Your body knows how to breathe and your mind knows how...

What would you miss? This episode is about suicide, my granddad's and my own, and the one question that kept me here. If you need help right now, the numbers are just below.

If you need help right now

I was 12 when my granddad went missing from the farm. The next morning Andy woke me and said they had found him. At 18 my heart was broken and...

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Are 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...

Who 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...

If this were my last podcast, what would I want to leave you with? Let everything happen to you. No feeling is final.

That is Rilke, and it is where this one started. No script, just a cup of coffee. You cannot change the present moment. You cannot grow your hair, lose weight, get younger or stop the rain in this second, and yet we spend enormous energy arguing with what has already arrived. Imagine a rainbow with only two colours in it. That is a life lived in a narrow band of feeling. Watching the film...

What if the thing you keep chasing is the exact reason you cannot catch it? There is no happily ever after, and that is good news.

Picture the ox with a carrot on a stick fixed above its own head. Every step forward moves the carrot forward. That is happiness as most of us run it. And it is not a design fault, it is evolutionary genius, because if you settled the moment you got something you would never go further. The man who loses everything is miserable on day one and fine two years later. Happiness...

Why 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...

What 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...

Why does your mind pick 3am? You have thirty to forty thoughts a minute and you asked for none of them. The mistake is deciding the goal is a blank, silent mind.

Set that as the target and the trains keep coming and you feel like you are failing at it. You are not. Here is the whole thing in one sentence. You are not the thought, you are the one listening to it. Because if you can hear it, you cannot only be it. There is a tiny space between the thought and the reaction, usually...

What is the hardest kind of love? Giving somebody space. Not walking away, not going cold, not pretending you do not care. Space that still says I am here.

We argue with family most because we are trying to prove we have changed. See me, I am here. Real space is not silent punishment and it is not neglect. Before you step in, ask honestly whether you are helping them or reducing your own discomfort. Have you listened long enough, or are you just ready with the answer?

One thing to try: Before you speak...

Where does a feeling actually come from, and what happens in the first thirty seconds of it?

The amygdala flags something before you know it. A second or two later the adrenaline is in, the heart is up, the blood is heading for the big muscles. That is not your body malfunctioning. That is your body being brilliant. Picture a campfire and somebody says, what was that. You want the person who feels the fear. Every feeling has a healthy end and an unhealthy end of the same stick, and we keep trying to chop the stick...

Is your body letting you down, or have you been sold that story? Mine is not the enemy. It has always told me exactly what it needed, and I did not always listen.

Every morning is like this for me at the moment, so I do feel it. But we have been handed a story where the body is the opposition. It is not. It is the mind, the body, the toes, the fingers, the knees, all in it together. We ignore the soldiers doing the work, then get angry the moment anything goes wrong. Thank you...

When you say I'm fine, is it armour or is it honest? Both, depending on the day. And sometimes fine is genuinely the right answer, because not every conversation is one you want.

Every carer, every encounter, however small. I take notice about one time in twenty. There is nothing wrong with the armour. My nan had a way of dealing with people who came in moaning. And there is the master whose final teaching came years later, once the student was ready to hear it. Try a different answer once and see what room it opens...

Why does meditation work for some people and not others? Eight billion minds. You can only write the book from the altitude you are actually standing at.

My chair broke and I could not do anything. That is a lifeline gone, and a friend had to come and push me out to the van. In the weeks after I read a hundred and twenty year old book by James Allen saying you are not your thoughts. Sometimes I need to think something through and I will go into a story deliberately. Other times there are gaps between...

Does meditation actually help in real life, off the cushion? That is the only place it counts. In the car, in the queue, and the second before you snap at somebody.

You cannot switch off a taste you dislike, so expecting to switch off a thought is the wrong ask. You choose which train to drive rather than stopping the trains. Little and often beats forty minutes on a Saturday. You do not need a lotus position, though a straight back helps. Three deep breaths connect the mind and the body and that is the way in.<...

Why is it so hard to say I am tired? Tiredness is not a weakness. It is your body telling you something honest, and ignoring it was never a strategy.

When I was Mayor of Truro there were days I had nothing left at all. I cannot feel anything from the chest down and I have autonomic dysreflexia, so my body signals things differently to yours. I took a couple of days and genuinely stopped. That beats soldiering on and taking three days over a one day job, every time.

One thing to try: Sit...

What rises when you finally stop pushing? Something usually does, and it is rarely the thing you were forcing.

Easter, and all this talk of new life can land as pressure when you are still in the ground. Not all trees bloom at the same time. Drive down any road and most daffodils are out and one on the end is only just arriving, and nobody thinks that one has failed. The tide does not come in cleanly either. It goes out, readjusts, comes back slightly further. There is a Scandinavian proverb that winter returns in spring...

Do you need to be a Buddhist to find inner peace? I am not one, and I do not think you need to be either.

I am recording this three days after an operation and on painkillers, so bear with me. I collected the statues and the pictures and the apps and books I never read. What I was after was for the calm to rub off. But the practices do not need the beliefs. Meditation, awareness, compassion for yourself and for others, sitting with what is rather than fighting it. None of that asks you to...

Is this all there is? If that question keeps visiting you, it is not a fault. It might be the most important one you have asked.

I was young, flat on my back, with four TV channels I could see in a little mirror and nothing else to do but think. Two questions arrived and they have never fully left. Life looks fine from outside, so you feel guilty for asking, and you tell yourself you are being ungrateful. Carl Jung said the first half of life builds the ego and your place in the world, and...

What if letting go is the wrong instruction? Every time somebody says it, your mind grips the thing tighter.

In 1992 I sat with a manual wheelchair I could barely move, triceps paralysed, hands paralysed, and I spent days trying to prove I was not disabled. The moment I accepted it, everything changed. Telling your body to forget something it built to protect you is a losing argument. It is quicksand. The more you struggle the deeper you go. So swap the word. Acceptance is not passive. It is the only thing that actually loosens the grip.

Who are you when nobody needs anything from you? One day you are wanted everywhere, and then almost overnight you are not.

The role becomes the identity. The one who holds the family together, keeps the plates spinning, gets the three in the morning call. Then it stops. Redundancy, a divorce, the youngest leaving, the year ending. Everyone tells you that you should be grateful, and you are, and gratitude and grief sit side by side quite happily. You cannot pour from a cup that has been empty for years. You also deserve to know who you...

How do you stay calm through the strongest winds Cornwall has ever had? You watch the news enough to know what is happening, and then you stop watching it.

Officially we did not break a hundred, which I am glad about. I check in on the news every four and a half seconds because you never know what is coming next, and that is exactly the habit worth breaking. The world is noisy. My word this year is to simplify, and this podcast is part of that. We are not even in control of where the weight...

What would your one word for the year be? Forget resolutions. One word does more work than a list you will have abandoned by February.

Mine came out of simplifying. Take away what you do not need and it goes right down to the complicated things. If you love something you accept it rather than trying to change it. Embrace the anxiety, because it is the seven year old saying watch out, last time this was rubbish. My word is curiosity. Open, and asking what is happening now.

One thing to try: Pick your one...

Do Jesus and the Buddha actually disagree? I do not think they do. You write the book for the audience in front of you, and that explains most of the difference.

Most religions come down to something similar underneath. Buddhism differs in asking you to believe in yourself, and that the hard times are not as solid as they look. I am not aware all the time. My depth is nowhere near what people assume. My seven year old self is still there, and now I just have a chat with him and give him a hug.<...

What does inner peace actually mean? It is what is left when you are not suffering. It is already there, and mostly we just forget it is.

I did not need somebody to fix anything. I needed somebody to sit there. Inner peace is always present, the way a drink is already on the table as you get older and realise you can just reach for it. Thoughts arrive as trains and you choose which to board. Happiness is an experience that comes and goes. Peace is the thing underneath that does not.

One thing...

What cards were you actually dealt? I never finished school, I was kicked out of sixth form, and I have never passed an exam beyond GCSEs. You play the hand.

You cannot change the cards, only how you play them. The powerful hold hard power, military or influence, and it looks unbeatable from underneath. The good hands are the ones you work for, with time and courage and honesty and self awareness in them. Those are not handed out. Run through the soft skills and count how many you are already holding.

One thing to...

Who is parenting you? Most of us need somebody to say put your shoes on and get out of there, and there is nobody doing it, so it has to be us.

Short videos are junk food for the brain and I keep thinking the next one will help. What a good parent would say is not get a grip. It is be a bit kinder to yourself in the journal tonight. There will never be one episode that sorts your storms out for good, and I would be lying if I pretended otherwise.

One...

What is the actual difference between empathy and compassion? Alan Watts called compassion the cosmic wink that says I see you, fellow player. That is the whole of it.

Judgement is when we look up and decide she is lazy or he is attention seeking. Then somebody lists everything wrong with their day and we cannot stand it, usually because we do not like seeing our own mirror. When you let compassion in, you let in all your own flaws with it. The heart opens both ways or it does not open.

One thing to...

Is attachment really the enemy? No. It is the struggling to let go that hurts.

I smoked for the best part of thirty years. I am attached to pleasure, to hope, to feeling well. The Western version of this is that you must give everything up, and that is not it. Try pushing a bird off your hand and telling it to go. It leaves and it comes back. My council put a new kitchen in and I hated going in there for weeks, and then I did not. Stop chasing the carrot and it stops running...

How do you forgive somebody who cheated on you? Not by understanding it. Something stopped me asking the questions, and that turned out to be the whole gift.

I wanted to know how, and who with, and how long for. I did not ask. It took me a long time to work out that I was not grieving her. I was grieving the life, the freedom, the joys. Name what they did silently, as an object, and do not go down the story with it. Let the pain be there if it comes. Then it has nothing...

Whose thoughts are they, actually? Mostly your parents', your grandparents', your teachers'. Overthinking is not your fault, which is the good news and the bad news at once.

At 40 I was single, out of money, on benefits, and my chair had broken. I would sleep ninety minutes and wake to thoughts that would not stop, and that went on for weeks. I was a terrible meditator and still am. You cannot turn a negative thought into a positive one by deciding to. You sit in the station and let the trains go past.

One thing...

Do anxiety and imposter syndrome ever go away? No. Mine did not. What changed is that I stopped treating them as the problem and started treating them as voices.

I sat there thinking people vote for me because they feel sorry for me, or because I am in a wheelchair. Then another voice comes in and says hang on, thank you for putting your nose in, but it was fine last time. That is the argument, and it never fully stops. The hard bit is doing it again and again. Hello, how are you today, like an...

What are you going to complain about once everything is fixed? If you sorted the entire world out tomorrow, what would you do with the rest of the day?

Somebody told me what STFU stands for and it was not what I expected. We are handed a blank canvas and immediately want to paint it a colour. On the road I was bored and cold and fed up, and then I started seeing the lines in a leaf, and a car going past making them jump and settle. Two bears, one with a machete and one with...

How big is your circle, honestly? Not who you like. Who you would genuinely be there for. And most of us can accept a stranger more easily than our own brother.

You move in and out of these levels during a single day. Give me a bad headache and mine shrinks fast. There are good reasons for countries and we are still all human. The strange bit is that the person driving you mad is usually the one closest in. How wide can you make it on a day when you are not feeling generous?

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Can you detach from pain without going numb to everything else? No, and that is the catch. Deny the hard feelings and the good ones go with them.

There is the small mind that has problems and the big mind where nothing needs fixing. Trying to deny it all is like keeping a garden and never taking your shoes off. You never find out what the grass feels like. It is not nice watching somebody suffer, and if you have a big heart it is harder. I get lonely because I am wanting something I have not...

Why does a raised voice make you feel sick? Your nervous system is not overreacting. It learned that anger meant danger, and it is still doing its job.

I was shouted at as a child, so some of it is that. Some of it is the person triggering something older. I get triggered by my daughter more than almost anybody, because I care and because I expected more. Nobody owns the road, and yet everybody wants to park in front of their own house. Anger is a hammer. It can smash a thing up or build something.<...

Do you need an hour to reset, or would thirty seconds do it?

Thich Nhat Hanh said smile, breathe and go slowly. I am hopeless at the going slowly. What I can do is use the small forced pauses. I left the phone at home to go and meet somebody, and I gave them my whole attention for the first time in ages. Alan Watts said muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone. You do not have to clear it. You just have to stop stirring for a moment.

One thing to try...