From Surviving to Thriving: A No Tools, No Techniques Shift from Stress and Overwhelm to Fulfilment

Are you trying to use willpower to change your behaviour? Reacting better eating less or exercising more. Here are some reasons why that might not be working.  1. Willpower is a finite resource. Have you noticed how sometimes you can willpower through and then it all gets too much and the old behaviour sneaks back in. 2. Willpower is us trying to control our thinking (and therefore behaviour) with...

Do you know your purpose or has searching for it become your purpose i.e. the thing you do every day. When we are looking for our purpose, we are looking to the future. Therein lies the problem. You see, the future doesn't exist. You purpose as a human being is to exist in the present. Anything else is thought and not real. Your purpose in this moment will reveal the next purpose and the next and...

Do you misunderstand your emotions? I think we all do that sometimes. We think they are coming from the outside world or other people. Maybe we think there is something wrong with us. But emotions are information. They are letting us know about our state of mind. They correlate with our thoughts in the moment.  We can use them to guide us but maybe not in the way you think. Your emotions are not t...

What is this self we speak of? We mention it in so many ways. Self-care,  self-love, self-development, self-esteem, self-confidence and self-concept. The idea of the self is given a lot of weight isn't it? But it is actually a collection of thoughts. Ways of thinking we developed from the moment of our conception. When you think about that for a moment, it can feel quite mind-blowing!  None of wha...

Your capability has nothing to do with your thinking nor does it have anything to do with what you have done before. Your capability does not have anything to do with other people nor does it have anything to do with your self-love or self-esteem. Your capability has nothing to do with what you think about anything! You are so much more than thinking! Your thinking is not you! That is why it has n...

Part 3 of my story is the happy ending or maybe the happy beginning. Listen to hear how my experience of life has changed to include the following: - Every single one of my relationships has improved - I am the most creative and productive I have ever been - I do not do anything at all to 'get' wellbeing from the outside - I am the calmest I have ever been without daily mediation - I laugh more of...

Continuing my story from yesterday and released on my 6 year anniversary of my resignation from my 20 year career in Education, 1st April 2022, here is the second part of my outside-in to inside-out story. Part 3 on Monday! Get full access to From Surviving to Thriving at claredownham.substack.com/subscribe

By way of an introduction and released on my 7 year burnout anniversary, 31st March 2022, here is the first part of my outside-in to inside-out story. Part 2 tomorrow! Get full access to From Surviving to Thriving at claredownham.substack.com/subscribe

When you say you want to feel better, do you know what you are looking for? Generally we focus first on the feelings we don't want. We don't want to feel anxious, stressed, angry etc. So we go into the world focusing on anxiety, stress and anger in an attempt to manage it. But here is what happens when we do that. Firstly, in focusing on what we don't want, we see it more in ourselves and become m...

You are psychologically perfect! In fact we all are but we just don't see it a lot of the time. That's because we spend most of the time our thinking hides the truth of our innate wellbeing. The problem is not our psychological functioning but it is that we do not know how we function psychologically. We are walking around all day every day in a system we don't understand like trying to operate a...

How many times in the day do you find yourself reacting? Perhaps some of those times end in regret and the sense that you wished you had done that differently. We all feel like that sometimes don't we? But the reasons why we react, are actually much simpler than you might think. Our reactions come from 3 factors: 1. Our conditioned belief system (the things we have been learning all our lives) 2....

Stop trying to change your behaviour might seem like a strange thing for a coach to say but I really mean it. The thing is that when we are trying to change our behaviour, we are looking in the wrong place because behaviour is the output of our psychological system. It's like standing in the river, pulling out the rubbish rather than going up stream to investigate where the rubbish is coming from....

We have all been brainwashed! All our lives this has been happening but perhaps not in the way you think. No-one has been deliberately brainwashing us but unconsciously moment by moment from the time of our conception we have been learning from the people around us. In this way we learnt what was right and wrong, what to believe and what to think about ourselves. Every single thought which passes...

Wellbeing does not come from outside. It does not come from any of those tools and techniques. It does not come from The Miracle Morning or the contents of the 5am Club. Wellbeing is innate. It's like a diamond inside. Sometimes we cannot see it because it gets covered up with conditioned thinking but it is always there. You are perfect, whole and well, let me help you see that! Explore this with...

It's not them, it's you is not always easy to see especially when they are being difficult. But it doesn't matter what someone else does or says. How you feel in that moment is coming from you. That feeling of anger is telling you about your angry state of mind. It's an update from your system letting you know that your thinking is angry. When you spot this in the moment, what you do just changes....

I spent much of my life trying to control. It started with the outside world. Other people's behaviour and my circumstances. I did this because I thought I would feel better if certain things and people were a certain way. I really do believe the controlling became so exhausting that burnout was the result. I was doing and thinking so much that my body and mind gave up. Then I came out the other s...

Have you ever wondered what is happening when we make a choice? Here's the truth about it. In any moment, we choose because of where we think our feelings are coming from. Humans are engaged in the process of feeling management much of the time. This drives our choices. So, if we think our feelings are coming from the outside world, we will take action in the outside world to feel differently. But...

Do you see yourself as lucky? When I look back on the synchronicities in my life it is easier to see. I even see the burnout I experienced in 2015 as lucky now although it wasn't so much at the time. Luck is defined as, 'success or failure apparently brought by chance rather than through one's own actions.' But when I wonder about this, perhaps that is the root of everything. Maybe it is all chanc...

Innate resilience. Can you connect to it in yourself? Can you see it in others? It's always been there you know. You have literally been falling down and getting back up your whole life. Sometimes you cannot see you have innate resilience but please know that is just your noisy conditioned thinking blocking the view. A layer of dirt over the light that you are. The thinking that says you are not d...

Take a moment to consider your circumstances right now! Are they the ones you thought were going to make you happy? Have you been in that place where you reached the goal and then thought, 'is this it?' I remember that phase of my life when I was seeking happiness out there. Trying to make every thing and every person a particular way. It was exhausting. It led to burnout! Then I learnt that happi...

My definition of success has changed dramatically over the years. I bought into the societal story for a long time. Defining success in terms of wealth, prosperity or fame. It also seemed to be something to aim for in terms of academic success. It then became a big feature of my career progression; moving jobs to a promotion every 4 years whilst I was a primary school teacher then headteacher.  Th...

When we feel an uncomfortable sensation it makes sense to want it to go away. Of course it does. No-one wants to feel anxious, stressed, tense or in a low mood. But what if you could see all those sensations as disguised blessings? You see, we are all thinking beings and we are all feeling that thinking. But the thinking we have is a collection of unconscious conditioning. So when we feel a sensat...

Discernment is defined as the ability to judge well. I guess what I ponder in that is, how do we know if we are judging well when it seems that all we have to judge with is our own conditioned thinking. But I see that there is a space for discernment which opens up as we go deeper and deeper into the exploration of reality.  What is real is that you are perfect, whole and well. What is also real i...

They say that curiosity killed the cat. The meaning of that phrase is that being inquisitive about other people's affairs may get you into trouble. When I invite curiosity, it is very different. I invite you to direct your curiosity inside in an enquiring way. The curiosity I invite starts with a simple understanding. The truth that your feelings are an update from your system letting you know abo...

Seeking calm feels like a thing to do. There so many tools and techniques available to do that. I don't need to list them. But the thing is, you are calm. That is what you are made of. The seeking you are doing is covering that up. The searching is hiding present moment calm. It helps to know it is there. That it never, ever leaves you. When your noisy mind quietens it re-emerges. But your noisy m...