Making Friends with the Present: A Life-Changing Shift

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Welcome to Stillness in the Storms. I'm Steven Webb, your host. And one of my quotes that I always go

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back to and I absolutely love, and this is going to be the subject of this week's podcast, is you

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never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.

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You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from. Cormac McCarthy. No country for old men.

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So this week's podcast is about making friends with the present moment. A life-changing shift and when you really grasp

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this concept, it really does make a difference in your life and I know I say that all the time.

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When you get this, it makes a difference but... When we get these little things and when we progress and

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when we, I don't know, grow up consciously and we have a deeper understanding and all that, when we get

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these things, we just suffer a little less and we stop fighting life for a little bit more. So just

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before we move on to the whole subject of today's podcast, I want to invite you to, if you don't

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get my weekly calm newsletter, please head over to StevenWebb.uk and start receiving it.

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Last week was the very first one and tomorrow will be the second one. And I'm

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really, I'm quite excited about this. I'm always wondering what to send out in a newsletter but it's a bit

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about my personal life, what I'm up to and it's about just different things, what book I'm reading, what videos

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about my latest podcast, different things and just hints and tips and just behind the scenes of what gives you

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can also find a link to Inner Peace Meditations. But anyway, let's get on with the show. Enough about all

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those things. I'll remind you at the end so you don't have to worry about it. So the

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concept of this is making friends with the present moment is it's embracing the present moment. You cannot do anything

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about the present moment, yet we spend our life trying to change the present moment. And I very often end

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up in a conversation with people all the time about what my life would have been like if I wasn't

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paralysed. So at 18 years old, September the 1st 10 31 at night, I know because when I

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walked along the top of the wall just before I dived in the swimming pool and ended up paralysed, I

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looked at my watch and I remember looking at my watch and I can say 10 31 With confidence because

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it was one of those old digital watches with a black Lcd display 10 31 pm and I dived in

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and I hit the bottom of the pool and I broke my neck. And boy did it hurt. It really

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hurt. In actual fact, I now think I hit the edge of the pool, not the bottom. I think that's

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why it hurt so much. But I broke my neck. I ended up paralysed from my neck down. And here

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I am over 30 years later, still paralysed, still sat on my butt all day um And it just changed

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my life. But very often I get in this conversation with people and they say, do you know I really

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imagine if you hadn't ended up paralysed, you'd have had a really good life. And I'm like, okay. So I

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haven't got a good life now. And they're like, well, you know, you kind of know what I mean. I'm

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like, yeah, I do know what you mean. So, and then I'd say, well, what do you think would have

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happened to my life if I hadn't broke my neck? And they'll come back with, well, I think you would

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have been you'd have had a family and you'd have had a job. You would have done really well because

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you're quite positive and you're quite motivated. I think you'd have been really, really successful and all that. And I'm

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like, yeah, but I might not have been. I might have ended up doing, you know, I don't know. At

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the time I was 18 years old, I was driving a car like I was invincible and I wasn't the

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best driver. I'd only just passed my test, what, eight, nine months before. And I would drive it around like

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as if I knew how to drive. I'd been driving for years and I was breaking the speed of it.

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So I was a typical teenager and I thought nothing would ever happen to me. And I could have easily,

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if I hadn't broke my neck, what happens if I'd run over somebody? What happens if I killed myself? What

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happens if I killed somebody else even worse? You know, I don't know that the alternative... Was necessarily better than

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life I've got. And I think that's really important when we get stuck in traffic jams or when something goes

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wrong. How do you know the alternative to your current situation is better or worse? And

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I talk about this quite often, but I don't normally do a whole podcast on it. And this is what

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I want to do a whole podcast. So I want to share a couple of other stories. But, you know,

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very often my life takes a turn for the worst I The carer might be late in the morning or

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I'm lying on the bed and my body just doesn't want to play ball and I'm late for something. And

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we often see it as, well, if I wasn't late, things would have worked out. Or if I, when I

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asked that person out. If they'd said yes, I'd have been happy. Or if they hadn't cheated on me, we

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would have lived happily ever after. The point is you don't know. How do you know this moment isn't the

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best alternative? You don't. There is no alternative. You only have the current moment.

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Like Eckhart Tolle says, the power of now. Now is the only option you have. You know,

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when a thought comes into your head that the thought's there. You can't change it. You can decide what to

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do with it. It's like when you present your child, you come home from shopping and you go up to

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your child, young child, and go, oh, here, I bought you a t-shirt. And they look at it and go,

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I want a green one. And you're like, they didn't have any green ones. And you go, well, I just

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want a green one. Well, you don't. The child says, I just want a green one. And you end up

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in an argument and all that. And the child doesn't understand the power of now and you cannot change it.

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And you're explaining the whole structure of the shops closed they didn't have any more and they could have run

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out. And we end up in this situation where we think we can change the present moment. We think there's

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some kind of alternatives that if this hadn't happened something else would have been better or

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we kind of get the concept it's not going to be always better but we do think if things are

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going wrong the alternative is um Just somehow better than what it is. And that's where that quote

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from Cormac McCarthy comes from. You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from. And that's

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just boom! How powerful is that? You know, maybe if you weren't stuck in that traffic jam, you might be

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the one causing the traffic jam, I.e. the one in the accident. The point is you don't know. And you

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don't know whether the alternative could be a lot worse. So when you make friends with the current moment, when

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you make friends with the things that

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cause things to go wrong and we have this illusion that we're in control. Like we're in control of what

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actually happens to us and we're not. We go out and get in the car, we're somehow control in control

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of the car to some degree

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but we're at the mercy of all the different things on the car. We're at the mercy of traffic, how

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everybody else is driving. You know, we're at the mercy of our subconscious mind, with the mercy of how our

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body's feeling, how everybody else is feeling, the biorhythms of everybody around us. We're at the mercy

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of the economic structure of the country and things like that. It gets a bit tiring, doesn't it? You know,

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we're really not in control of very much at all. And this is where Stoicism comes in. People think Stoicism

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is about... Wanting to be in control of everything. And you have that stiff upper lip. It's like, yeah, I'm

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in control. No, stoicism is realising that you're not in control of virtually everything. And it's okay.

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You're not even in control of how your feelings what feelings come up. You're not in control of what you

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think. If you think you are, you tell me what your next thought is. You don't know. You're not in

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control of your next thought. You're not in control of what comes up. It's really, really interesting. And

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if we reframe our life like this and we just look at every present moment as, ah, this is here

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for me. Can I find the gift in the present moment? Can I find the gift in whatever's coming up?

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Even if it's really, really difficult. Even if it sucks. Can I find a gift in it somewhere?

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And very often a few weeks later we can find a gift, but it's really difficult to find it quicker

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and earlier in that moment. And I love the story of Thomas Edison. And everybody knows the story of

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the all the light bulbs going wrong and the 99 light bulbs didn't work or something like that. You know,

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99 fails. But in December 1914, Thomas Edison's west um In West Orange,

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New Jersey. His laboratory was heavily damaged in a fire. And this facility was not only his lab but

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also his manufacturing site for his whole company. And a lot of his work was destroyed in the fire. And

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the legend goes that at the height of the fire... Edison's 24 year old son Charles, frantically

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searched for his father among the smoke and the debris. He finally found him calmly watching the scene, his face

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glowing of reflection, his white hair blowing in the wind, and my

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heart ached for him, said Charles. He was 67, no longer a young man, and everything was going

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up in flames. When he saw me, he shouted, Charles, where's your mother? And when I told him, I don't

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know, he said, find her. Bring her here. She will never see anything like this as long as she lives.

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So he was fascinated by this big fire that was like going off in front of him. Yeah, he was

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losing everything. And the next morning edison looked up at the ruins and said, there is great value

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in disaster. All our mistakes are burned up.

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Thank God we can start anew. And

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I just love that. All our mistakes are burned up. Thank God we can start in you And

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I think when I look at my life and all that, it's like, I didn't die. When

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I was lying there on the bed, I often say, what were the best bit of advice I could have

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ever got when I was lying in bed paralysed for the first six months of my after my accident? I

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was 18 years old. And if someone had come over to me and stood there, and they leant over and

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they said, Steven. I said, what? And they just said, so what? You're paralysed.

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What are you going to do with it? A, I'd have felt like, I think been quite angry and knocking

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them out or something, being honest. But that would have been the best advice because when something does happen,

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when things do go wrong the The best question is, what can I do with it? This is my

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friend. This is here to help me. It's here to teach me something. It's here to change my direction. It's

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here to give me something. And just that whole feeling of

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this is my friend. It's here for me. I think changes everything. And

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that's where that quote comes in. You know, what worse luck could have happened? Okay, I've butchered the quote now,

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but you know what I mean. Edison's resilience is often used as a motivational tell rather than viewing the

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fire as a devastating setback and I've just used it in the same way. And I totally agree. And there's

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loads and loads of stories of these um If I look up a couple now, you know inky Johnson a

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promising football player from the University of Tennessee inky was predicted to be a top pick in the 2006 Nfl

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Draft. However, during one game, a severe injury permanently pluralized his right arm. His football career

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was over. But Inky didn't let this setback define him. Instead, he went back to school, earned a master's degree

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in sports and psychology and become an inspirational speaker. He's now well known for his motivational speeches

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and he's impacted many people around the world. And there's loads of stories like this. And I've got personal stories

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of friends. I've got Tessa, a friend of mine in the States when she was it's about 20

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years ago now. I'm sure it was in September as well. But they went and done a operation on her.

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And they put in, I think it's a shunt or something in a um in a head that

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helps to drain off excess fluid. And I'm gonna get a story slightly wrong, but I'm sure you'll understand what

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I mean

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that but they they caught a vessel or they caught something. So she she went to sleep

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completely. Able-bodied. And she woke up and she's paralysed down one side. And imagine that

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um You know, you can't imagine that you You go to sleep for one thing and

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you wake up with something completely different that's above and beyond. And she's had children and she does so much.

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And she's she's turned that travesty into

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um she's now taken sign language courses. She's gone back to work. She's done so much of her life. You

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know, I love test a bit She's amazing what she does and all that with her life. And I've got

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another friend that is very, very close to me that's done so much with their life and they've turned. What

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happened to them as children into a strength and resilience and they're so much tougher because of it. And when

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I sit down and talk to people and when they tell me about the difficulties they've been through in life,

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very often I wouldn't ever choose. I wouldn't say, well, okay, let's let's give a

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person a really tough life. But very often these people that have had a really hard time

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find strength. They find comfort and nourishment in the fact that

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they're able to build back better from it. And I think it's really powerful when

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we

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close the gap between not liking the current situation and finding that there's a gift in it, that

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there's something we can do with it. And I like to think there's a gift in everything. And we just

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gotta dig a little deeper to find it. And where's the gift in me being paralysed? Well, it slows me

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down a little bit. It's, you know, it's given me a beautiful view on life. I

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often sit here and find myself looking out the window daydreaming. And in a wonderful moment, I'm like,

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holy crap, I'm alive? I can see. I can see in colours. I can feel. I can

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do all these things I was coming up the hill the other day in my electric wheelchair and I could

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feel the coldness. Of the breeze on my face as I was driving up the hill. And then I come

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out into the sunlight and I could feel the sun on my face. I was like, how amazing is this?

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I'm just a collection of atoms. The satin electric chair that's driving up the hill. That's feeling the sun on

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my face and I'm aware of it. And I'm enjoying it.

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You know, if that's not magic, what is? You know, the magic and the miracles are all around us.

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We just got to stop and take that breath. And I think when things really go wrong in life and

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they really spin us out, you know, that curveball on a 4 p.m. Tuesday afternoon, whether

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it's something minor like a traffic jam or something major like your whole company burning down. You

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know, when I when I lost Bees Knees Computers in 2001, 2002. Myself and Richard

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Johns. He's passed away now. I went to his funeral just about three months ago, and we

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started a computer a firm together, and we traded for about three years. And after three years, Pc

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World come to true just about 10 miles down the road from the shop. And of course, I blamed it

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on Pc World, but it wasn't. It was the fact that we didn't adapt and change. We didn't embrace the

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internet in the way we should have done. But, you know, I was younger then. You blame everybody else. But

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at that point I I lost about two stone. I lost the business. And the greatest gift I

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had was when the tax man phoned me and said, you have to close the door. You cannot negatively trade

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if you're a limited company or something like that. It's 20 years ago now. And what a gift that was

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telling me that I had to close the door um You know, it freed me. Instead of going out there

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and not being able to eat and worrying. I was lying to everybody. I would tell my parents that I

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would eat at the shop and I would tell my carers that I was eating at home and you know,

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I was lying to everybody but I couldn't face anything. I'm six foot tall and I went down to about

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just under eight stone. You could see every rib. And even in that time now when I look back and

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I didn't see at the time, what gift that gave me. You know, that rock bottom at that point

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gave me a deeper insight into life and I appreciated life a lot more. At that time

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I got together with Emma and moved and she moved in with her daughter Kemba. That didn't work

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out about 10 years later but that's okay. That gave me something else. So each step where it goes badly

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wrong gives me another gift in some way. Do I like it? No, it's painful. It's awful. It bloody hurts.

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But you know, there's always a gift there somewhere. You know, so have a look at your life. Have

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a look at what you're going through at the moment or what you've been through. And if you can list

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the gifts that it's given you, whether it was just inner strength, whether it was a gift to have been

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able to see from a different perspective. You know, just what did it feel like to have that extra gift,

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that extra depth of view because of what happened? And then move that ability to

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see when things go really, or that ability to see that it's a gift when you move that closer and

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closer and closer to the point where this present moment is always a gift. No matter what, you

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can't change it. Right now, this present moment is what it is. You cannot change it. You can change things

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right now to govern the next moment, but you cannot change this present moment. You're not in control of

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it. You know, it's already happened. The moment you're aware of it, it's already happened. And I think that's really

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important. So there's my podcast and My reflective question for you this week is... What moment in your life

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did you think there was no gift or there was nothing you could get by or you couldn't get beyond

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when later on you looked it and it really was a gift? What did you get from it? Then you

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can contact me. If you go to StevenWebb.uk um contact me. You can treat me to a

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coffee. Sign up for my weekly calm newsletter that's going out tomorrow um I just want to say that I

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love you. Thank you. Thank you for being there. Thank you for all the reviews on the podcast. If you

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haven't left a review recently, please do so. You're awesome and take care. Find the gift in everything.

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Just sometimes you gotta dig a little deeper. I love you.