The weirdest gift from walking The Camino

I never saw this gift coming!

Chapters

• 0:00 Rediscovering the Joys of Walking
• 13:04 Embracing the Magic of Technology
• 25:58 Taking Control of Phone Magic

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to the Gentle Rebellion where overwhelm is optional. Hello, welcome to this week's episode. How are you this week? I'm currently getting excited about going to see the lovely friend I walked the Camino with, and this is the first time we've had time to catch up in person since we got back at the beginning of May, so I'm really looking forward to it. I always look forward to spending time with her. She's such a lovely person and such a very special friend. But this feels significant because we're going to obviously end up talking.

Speaker 1: 0:40

I expect we will end up talking about the Camino, which is great, because I thought I'd have written loads about it and recorded lots of episodes inspired by it, and I haven't. I just I really needed to settle and not analyse. That was important to me and although I jotted down some ideas for talking and writing about it, I've just not I don't know, it's just not been the thing for me to do. So I'm excited because, wow, who doesn't love talking about a wonderful adventure you had? So that will be good. But also because I really do want to now start analysing it, because I want to harvest the gifts. I want to. I miss it. That's the truth. I miss the Camino, and I don't by that I don't mean I want to go back. I don't think you can do the same thing again. Anyway, I don't mean it like that and I wouldn't want my life to just be made up of walking, but I miss it, as in, there was something lovely about it, and although I was, of course, determined to keep those shifts although I have done to a certain extent there are things. There are things that I haven't kept, that I'd like to remember and then harvest some more gifts. So I'm excited about this weekend and I'm going to talk about some of the gifts of just walking that I found on the Camino, in particular, one particular gift which I think will help you. I think it might inspire you. I hope so. Anyway, let me see if I can untangle my thoughts for it, though.

Speaker 1: 2:19

So one of the things, or what I miss about the Camino is, was the simplicity to just. There's nothing to do like you literally just get up, clean your teeth, put on the same clothes, pack your stuff in the same way. So I had very, I carried very little, and I had little coloured stuff, bags, and the same stuff went in every day. It's the same stuff, so there's no decisions to make Really nice. The only decisions are basic things about food and lodgings, and not even which path. I mean. Occasionally there's a choice of path, but in general there's not. It's the Camino, right? All roads lead to San Diego anyway. Right, all roads lead to San Diego anyway. So that simplicity I miss that.

Speaker 1: 3:11

I miss being outside all day. There's something really wonderful about being outside all day and I've realised that's had a significant effect on me this year. So I, like many people, really like the summer, the warmth and the daylight, and I really struggle, despite my intentions, to embrace living in a relatively cold, damp country, to embrace winter. I absolutely love lots of things about autumn and winter, but by the time we get to February I'm done. I am so done and I've tried to see the gifts in February, but now I'm just like, yeah, get out, get some, go somewhere where spring's already arrived, because it made such a difference to me walking into spring.

Speaker 1: 3:54

So we, we started mid-April and came back at the beginning of May and we just were outside a lot and it was warmer, much warmer in Portugal, especially not in Spain. It wasn't, it was the same weather as here, but just that extra daylight and that, being outside I don't know if it's the vitamin D or the exercise or just the general daylight or whatever it is it's made a significant difference to how I felt in the summer. So when we have, like today, right now, it's a bit grey and rainy and, yeah, I don't really like it, but I seem to be able to no pun intended weather the weather better, because it's like my summer started well. It's not like it did. My summer started earlier and it did me the world of good. So I already feel like I've had a good summer. I've had this huge injection of sunshine outside and vitamin d and just feel good. So that's been interesting.

Speaker 1: 4:48

So I miss being outside all day, and even if I have days when you know I go on a long walk or um outside doing the garden or something lovely like that, it's not the same, because there's always the choice to come in, whereas when you're on the camino there's no choice. You just walk like that's it, whereas when you're on the Camino, there's no choice, you just walk Like that's it. That's what you're doing, that's your purpose is to put one foot in front of the other, and the side effects of that are I'm outside. Not I'm outside on purpose, I'm outside because I can't walk the Camino inside. So there's no thought, there's no having to do it on purpose there. There's no thought, there's no having to do it on purpose. There's just something really nice about that.

Speaker 1: 5:25

And then the other thing is the walking itself. I miss the physical walking because, yes, we've got dogs, we've got four dogs at the moment, because my son's dogs come to stay and we don't walk them all together, like it would be hilarious, me walking with four dogs, but also Nutmeg's still in her special needs training, with her going out on her own, being really calm, so she doesn't get to walk with the other dogs. And then sometimes Rosie's tired because she's getting older. Uh-oh, can you hear Ruby? And now Ruby wants to play with Nutmeg. I'll just settle her for you. Well, that may or may not work. Ruby's now chewing her Christmas pudding ball.

Speaker 1: 6:12

I don't know where she got that from. That should so be in the attic with the Christmas decorations, don't you find there's always bits of Christmas left all over the house that you find Not just the odd pine needle, but I don't know like, particularly with dog toys just the odd pine needle, but I don't know, like the particularly dog toys, just the odd Christmas thing that you think I must put that with the rest. And then every year there's always something. Anyway, what was I talking about? Oh yeah, so the physical walking every day, oh, my goodness, that was so good for me, even when I hurt from it. It was really good for me because, I don't know, I just didn't have a lot of aches and pains from sitting, just went, which was amazing because I thought it would be harder to walk. Sorry, rubies. Haha, maybe I've solved the ruby puzzle, I don't know. So if you just heard that, she's just. She was then chucking the Christmas pudding ball all over the place and it's just coming out in the audio. I do apologise. I hope you're enjoying this ridiculous nonsense that I'm putting up with this morning.

Speaker 1: 7:16

Anyway, so what I miss about the Camino is the simplicity. There's no decisions to make. It's just so freeing. I have so much space in my head, the being outside and the walking, the constant moving, and the purpose of that. All you have to do is put one foot in front of the other. There's nothing else to do. There's no decisions to make, oh, my goodness. And you get fitter by accident. It was just so good.

Speaker 1: 7:41

But you can't live like that all the time, can you Not? If you want a full life, I mean you could live like that. If you decided that's what you wanted, you could make that happen. But I couldn't live like that. That wouldn't be enough for me to just walk every day and to be outside all day. There's things I want to do, like record this podcast, like write another book, like coach clients. I can't. Could I coach clients while walking, possibly? But it's not, that's not. That's not the point. There's other things I want to do, like go to the cinema and sit for two hours to watch twisters. That was so much fun.

Speaker 1: 8:13

So that means I need to think about what, what did I love and what am I missing, and how can I have that in my life and have the other stuff? So by the other stuff I mean the faster points of movement in my life. You know my business has been beautifully busy in the last two months. There's a speeding up of life in that there's more to do, but it's deeply satisfying. So I want the fast and the slow, I want the space and the busyness, but I want it my way. I don't want. I don't like it when it feels like there's a flood of busyness and hurry up. Hurry up when I don't want it, when I'm not ready for it, when it doesn't feel good. So the question for me and for you is how can we have what we want, what calms me and soothes me? So that would be if I wanted a big boost of that kind of energy, doing a walk, even for just a weekend, that would be. I now know that would do something for me. So that's worth me booking in into my year, into the rhythm of my week.

Speaker 1: 9:25

Just go for a longer walk, because short walks I don't find are the same. They're nice, but it's not the same. And you've still got the decisions how far should I go? What's the weather doing? Can I fit it in? How do I make it a circular walk? It's, it's more complex, more to think about. There's more compromise in that when you're on a particular walk from here to then, you just have to keep going and you're carrying everything, like the Camino. There's none of that, it just all goes. It's just really simple. You just get up and you walk, because if you don't walk, what are you going to do? Your purpose is to walk.

Speaker 1: 9:57

So for me, it's what calms me and soothes me in my daily life. As well as being able to go on long distance walks to soothe and calm me. What else is there that makes me feel that very grounded, easeful way of being that creates space between me and my thoughts. What does that for me? And there's lots of things, but my question is to you you, what calms and soothes you? What's working for you and do you have enough of it in your life? Because the more we get used to being able to move from busy and excited and highly focused to calm and soothed and at ease or actually at ease in both states, doing both of those things with ease, the better. So the more we're able to switch states with ease, the better.

Speaker 1: 10:50

And to do that we have to understand what's working for us and I don't see this as a once and done forever, because we change in this different seasons of our lives, different seasons, our year, all sorts of things going on, but right now, how much stuff is in your life that's calming and soothing and how much excites and delights you? So we choose to go on. I don't, but people choose to go on adrenaline things like roller coasters, because it's fun, because it's exciting. So it's not that we want to be like Camino State all the time, and I certainly don't. I want to do deeply satisfied work. I want to do my house up, visit other people, visit other places, do other things. There's more to do than just put one foot in front of the other.

Speaker 1: 11:44

So how can I have both? How can I have a mixture of both in a way that works for me and helps me move from highly focused kick-ass on something deeply satisfying or highly sociable and talking to a lot of people, to then grounding and soothing and nourishing? Have I got what's working for me, what isn't? And now I'm talking to you. I'm thinking, yeah, what does? And I, I haven't sat down, done, done this exercise for myself yet, because what I was actually going to share was something a little bit different. So I'm going to park that question for me and for you, because it is a you know, it's a deep. It's a deep question which can be done lightly. Oh, this is how? Do you want me to share two different ways of doing it which you might like. So there's the deeper way the messy journaling.

Speaker 1: 12:35

There's a whole episode on messy journaling. It sounds silly but it's not. It's a very serious. Oh, I'm laughing, it's a serious, it's a very serious. Oh, I'm laughing, it's a serious practice. It is a serious practice, messy journaling, because it practices all of the, all of the things, the rebellious things, you need in order to get your life back. So check out that episode or um blog on my website messy journaling, um, and the other way would be the 20 things.

Speaker 1: 13:04

So this is fun. So either get like a theme song or something, just put on some fun music, because it's because it's more fun and energetic than an egg timer that ticks at you annoyingly. That's the purpose of that change the energy. One or two songs, so like five or ten minutes, one to twenty. You do it, um, you do the same thing five times in a row, like over five different days. So then you have a hundred things and you just very quickly write out the 20 things that soothe and calm me, or the 20 things that excite and delight me, and then by the end of the week you'll have a list. Now, some of it will be repressive, some of it will be absolutely rubbish, but you'll get some insight and you'll get it in a really fun way without having to be um like deep and taking too much time.

Speaker 1: 13:51

Not that messy journaling has to, but it is. It can be a take longer and be a deeper process, and both are good and it's good to have different ways. Doing it right depends what mood you're in, depends what you like to do. You can also do it as mind journaling, so you're like hanging the washing out and you're just thinking, oh, what excites and delights me, what soothes and calms me, and then you're nourishing those two different sites, states of being that we want to harness in an easeful way, so that we're working from a grounded, centered way, regardless and out of overwhelm not I don't mean ones that the excites and delights is an overwhelmed state at all. I mean, how can we be highly focused and kick ass and really, you know, going full on at something and be out of overwhelm and feeling at ease and grounded? And then what, susan, delights us, where we have space, peace, ah, so I'll leave that with you to have some fun with, and I'll do it as well.

Speaker 1: 14:57

But the thing, one of the gifts of the Camino is this and it's weird, I did not expect this my phone. It completely changed my relationship with my phone. Now it's kind of got a bit broken again recently, but I'm re-instigating this because it matters to me. So I'd got to a stage with my phone. Now, at 56, my relationship with my phone is different than it will be probably for many of you listening, because you're younger than me and maybe you grew up with phones. Well, I didn't. And the whole thing's like why? Why would you need to have that with you all the time? And also the fact that phones are addictive and that we know all the stories and the research that's been put into making them addictive. So our phones can be a huge source of overwhelm.

Speaker 1: 15:43

So previously I've talked about phones in terms of almost like they're terrible and you need to do all this stuff and break your habit with it, which could be true, and there is a real thing for doing that. You know to be able to. I used to do it with chocolate. You know, when the chocolate habit had got me again, I'd deliberately go without chocolate until I could walk into a shop, stare the chocolate in the eye and walk out again. Then I'd overcome that addiction and I was treating my phone in a similar way. But this is what happens on happened on the Camino.

Speaker 1: 16:15

So I assumed on the Camino I'd hardly use my phone. I'd made it clear that I was on a pilgrimage so I probably wouldn't contact anyone close to me. I definitely wasn't working. So what was my phone for? Well, booking places to stay and taking photographs, obviously, and that was probably going to be it for me. So in my head I had this kind of like I don't know like separation from my phone, like oh, I get a break from my phone, blah, blah, blah. Like this is going to be this like holy, brilliant thing and I mean holy, as in H-O-L-Y, not as in completely, although it could mean the same thing. Let's not get into etymology right now. Anyway, I was like, yeah, this is just going to be amazing, I'm going to hardly touch my phone. The opposite happened. I learned to absolutely love my phone. I told you this was weird. So one of my gifts of the Camino was to love my phone.

Speaker 1: 17:19

So when I was younger, there was this program on television called Tomorrow's World. I can't remember much about it and in my head I've got it mixed up with Star Trek because the presenters are wearing the outfits they wear on Star Trek. So obviously that's an incorrect memory or is it, I don't know really. Anyway, there was this program called Tomorrow's World and they'd have these like tomorrow's inventions that hadn't been invented yet, or I don't. I don't really know. I was, I was a child, can't remember. I haven't googled it. We didn't have google, then we do now. Can you see how? I'm not automatically assuming it's on there. Of course it's on there anyway.

Speaker 1: 17:54

So what I realized on the Camino is our phones are one of those magical inventions that hadn't been invented yet. It's like it's a space age device. I mean, it's seriously cool, right. And it wasn't that I spent ages on my phone. That's not what happened. No, I was choosing to pick it up when I wanted it and then really appreciating it. It was the weirdest thing. I was suddenly like, oh my God, this is amazing.

Speaker 1: 18:19

So, for example, the day when we got a little bit lost and the, there were sand, like heaps of sand covering the boardwalk, so we couldn't really go that way. I was getting blisters. The water taps were switched off, so running out of water not good. Um, we didn't know where we were going to stay. We needed something to eat. All the cafes were closed. We were like what do we do? This is ridiculous, and we were really getting to the end of how far. We'd walked a long way. What did we do? We googled on our phones and the phones rescued us. Phones are cool, I like phones. Now we looked at the map and we walked to a cafe. The cafe was open. We recovered oh my goodness, it was so good. And then we phoned a hostel and possibly or not got a bed for the night Difficult to know, because it was Portuguese. We did decide not to go there in the end, but that was all from our phone. It was amazing.

Speaker 1: 19:27

Other things that I unexpectedly enjoyed, because I thought I was just going to be like on a retreat and having deep, meaningful insights with myself. No, what I had in the end was sheer bliss, enjoyment, a lot of space in my head, and I had enormous amount of fun taking photos, sending them to my adult children and my partner. I had so much fun doing that, like connecting with people when I had space, just felt and sharing that. Oh my goodness, I really enjoyed that. That was my phone. What else I started doing? Squirtle again, which is hilarious, because it's quite an annoying puzzle. I mean it's word. Definitions are off for me. Me, like, the bonus words are the ones I would classify as real words. But anyway, that's my age, probably, I don't know. Anyway, that was funny, but it was fun. I mean, I didn't use my phone. I wasn't on my phone all the time, using it for lots of silly things.

Speaker 1: 20:27

What I was doing was using it for very specific things and really appreciating it, because it was magical to have in my pocket this tiny device that could do so much. It could show us where in the world we were. It could show us where the nearest accommodation, coffee shop, anything was. It could translate stuff, I mean, for a menu. Oh my goodness, that makes a big difference, especially when you're gluten-free and stuff. You know it's, oh my goodness, so good.

Speaker 1: 21:01

What else could it do? You could pay for stuff. It's got your airline tickets on it. What else oh that it you can. You can look up where to get food when you're absolutely done with the local cuisine. I know that's sacrilege, but I, just, I just got to a stage where I desperately wanted to eat something that wasn't Spanish. I, I, just so. That was hilarious. So we Googled junk food and ended up at a pizza something. Oh, so funny, so funny. But that's all your phone. Oh, you can keep in touch with people you love. You can. What else can you do? You can read stuff. Oh, my goodness, it was so. I just loved my phone.

Speaker 1: 21:46

I came back with this absolute gratitude for living in an age when I can keep in my pocket this magical device that allows me to do so much with so much ease. It completely changed my relationship with my phone. Now, three months later, whatever it is, I would argue that I'm now back in a bit of a battle with my phone, mainly over the news, because I'm feeling a heavy heartedness about the current news. So what I've decided to do is just remove the news app from my phone. Now, if you've heard me talk about this before, I have a deliberate practice of of not reading the news because it's not necessarily very good for me.

Speaker 1: 22:33

However, I have recently, up until very recently, being able to being able to read the news in a very light-hearted way, with just like, oh, that's what's going on, that's interesting, that's curious. Aren't we funny as humans? You know, I don't know, just in a with distance, like the whole having distance between myself and my thoughts, even greater distance, like a really large distance between myself and my thoughts when, on the Camino, I had that attitude with the news and I was able to just glance at it with curiosity and genuine like I love people. This is really interesting that that this is happening, or this is the way somebody sees it, when it's not the news, is it? It's just some news. But recently, in the last couple of weeks, I found it's made me feel incredibly sad.

Speaker 1: 23:22

So I've now, in order to regain that peace of mind and excitement about this magical device that fits in my pocket, which is called a phone, I've just removed the news from my phone, just temporarily. I don't know, I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know if it's temporary or not, I don't care, it feels good, so I've done it. That's good, that's nice, I like that, but that's another thing, isn't it? So this is my point the phone isn't inherently good or bad, it's what you make of it. And when I was telling myself the story that the people who had programmed the software on it were out to kind of get me, as in, everybody wants your attention and you have this ongoing battle, well, what if I just decide that's not true for me? What if I decide that everything is for me, including my phone, and that I get to use this magical, amazing, convenient device when I take back control over it. So this is about using it intentionally.

Speaker 1: 24:23

I don't think this is necessarily easy. I do believe. For me personally, going on the Camino has given me that strength of mind to be able to take back control. But I'm completely changing the way I'm looking at my phone, so I want to have its magical qualities of convenience. In order to have those and not feel overwhelmed or or in a battle with it, I have to decide to take control of it.

Speaker 1: 24:48

I have to decide that, okay, so maybe it's designed to hijack my attention, but, to be fair, there's a lot of stuff you can do about that now, because I think it's been heard, hasn't it? You know people, people writing software, have heard us saying we, we don't want this, and there's all sorts of timers and stuff you can put on there. I don't know, I don't look at them. I'm just quite happy now saying, oh, that's my phone. Am I spending too long on it? Do my eyes hurt? Am I having fun? Would I rather be doing something else? Is this exciting and delighting me, or soothing and calming me or not, and if it's not, then I can take back control, remove apps or use some of the new things like timing devices.

Speaker 1: 25:38

Personally, I don't want to restrict my. I don't want to use software to restrict my own free will on my phone. But you can do, apparently. I'd have to look into it and read the actual instructions. Mainly I just don't have any notifications on. I find that helpful, but not always, and then I switch them back on again, and that's the point. I'm in charge.

Speaker 1: 25:58

The phone works for me. It's a magical device and I'm keeping its magic for me by taking back control. I choose to have a strong mind. I choose how I use my phone and I choose to have the magic and convenience of it and not treat it as something that's out to get me and overwhelm me. And that is one of the weirdest gifts of the Camino. Do you like it? So I guess I'm asking you, if you want the question question what's your relationship with your phone and can you upgrade it so that it works for you and not against you? I'd love to know if you want to drop me a message. That would be really nice. Thanks for listening. Please do like, share and subscribe because it might be really good for you and for anybody you share it with. Thank you to help you gently rebel.