Navigating Burnout: Discover Clare Downham's Journey to Inner Peace | Gina Gardiner and Friends

Hello there and a huge welcome to this week's episode of Gina Gardner and Friends. Today I'm joined by Clare Downham. Now, our stories have some similarities. Claire was an ex head teacher who became completely burnt out. And I know from my own experience what an incredibly difficult job it is being a headteacher, if you're in the States, a principal of a school. It took her a long time, but she found calm, clarity and contentment after a long search. She's now known as the queen of calm. And we could all do with a bit of calm at the moment, Claire, couldn't we? And works mainly with female entrepreneurs who want to do the same. Claire, a huge, huge welcome. Thank you very much for joining me today.

Thank you so much for having me. It's an absolute pleasure to be here.

So just tell us a bit about your story before we get onto our theme today, which is about calm.

So, as. As you've mentioned already, I was a primary school head teacher. I'd done 20 years in primary education and I'd flown up the ladder pretty rapidly. I always wanted to be a headteacher, which is not something that a lot of people say these days, because it looks like it's a job that people, a lot of people don't want to do. But I always wanted to be a headteacher and I worked really hard, but I didn't just work hard in my job. I had a pretty busy life and I would say probably quite a stressful life in general. That was partly because I was a bit of a control freak and I wanted to have everything be just so in my life, which kept me very busy, both in the world, physically and mentally too. And that just couldn't go on, it turns out, because in March 2015, I walked out of work one day because I just couldn't. I just couldn't face the day. And I actually never went back. I thought I was going to have a couple of weeks off sick and then. And then, you know, bounce back into work again. But adrenal exhaustion doesn't quite work that way, it turns out. So I didn't work for a year. I kept thinking I was ready to go back and then just crashing out again. Like my adrenals just couldn't cope with even thinking about going back to work. And in the end, in April 2016, I had to resign. The school had been without a substantive head teacher for a year. Schools don't like to be in that position. And it was just time, I think. I. Once the conversation started, I knew. I knew I Had to let it go. And then 10 days after that, 10 days after resigning, I got an email inviting me to train to be a hypnotherapist, which is what I did in my first business, and don't do anymore. But then comes the next kind of part of my story. And that was the part that you mentioned a bit there, which was, how do I make myself better? How do I fix myself? Because the sense that for that to have happened to me, there must be something fundamentally wrong with me. So I got into a lot of self development books, a lot of daily rituals and routines like meditation and gratitude journals and affirmations, and just felt like I was on this continual search to get myself to feel the way I wanted to feel. And I felt okay, but I felt like I was holding onto it with my fingernail ends and that if I stopped doing all these things, I would somehow, I don't know, I think I thought I'd crash and burn again, really. And then in January 2020, I had some coaching with a friend of mine who just finished his training, needed some people to practice on, and put a post on Facebook. And I said, oh, go on then, I'll do that. Thinking that he'd be the one who would finally fix me. And that's not at all what happened. He introduced me to a really simple psychospiritual understanding about how we work as human beings. And he taught me, taught me that so simply that great big chunks of things that I thought were true about me just started to fall away. And I began to experience karma more of the time. And as March 2020 came upon us, which was an interesting time for us all, to say the least, my hypnotherapy business disappeared overnight because people used to come and see me in person and they couldn't do that anymore. And then I had a couple of months of that kind of blurry phase we all had when we were all, oh, what are we doing? What do we do now? We can't do the things we used to be able to do. But I noticed in that two months that I'd. I'd fallen out of love with hypnotherapy, really. And that what I'd learned in that, that start of 2020, I wanted to share that. So I made a decision to retrain and to deepen my understanding of what I've been introduced to, which is known as the three principles or the inside out understanding, which is what I did, and then kind of started a new business doing what I'm doing. Now and also dropped doing all the tools and techniques and therapy that I had been doing within a very short space of time.

It's interesting, isn't it, that listening to your story, how many people who are, you know, you as the listeners listening to that? I wonder how many of you are thinking, you know, there are bits of Claire's story that that's me that, you know, I'm getting up in the morning and I don't want to go to work, and I'm facing the day and it feels like an uphill struggle every time. And I also find it quite interesting so many people hold on to a range of rituals. You know, if I don't get up and do my morning ritual in exactly the same way, then the day is going to fall apart. The other thing that strikes me is, you know, lots of people believe that they need somebody else to fix them, that they are broken and they need fixing. And it's my belief that actually some people can hold the space and give you some pointers, but ultimately you have to fix yourself. You do that inner journey where you're honest but not brutal or judgmental about yourself and life, and that you look at the patterns of your thinking and beliefs and so on that are contributing to how you are. I'd like, before we just go to the first break, to talk us through that. You talked about the three pillars or principles. What are they based on?

So they're based on an awful. If you look at an awful lot of spiritual and psychological teachings, they are touched upon and have been touched upon for many, many years. But then in 1973, a man called Sidney Banks had his own kind of. I suppose you might call it a spiritual awakening or something. You know, he just woke up the idea that human experience is created in the same way for every single human being. And he came up with these three things that are true for all human beings and that are the fundamental way we are, the why we are the way we are. And they are known as thought, mind and consciousness. So thought is pretty obvious in some ways, but maybe not what people maybe think. So that's our personal thinking, which is the stuff that we've learned through life. And the filter, the belief system filter that we now look through life, look at life through. And. But then this kind of thought with a big T, which is the. The energy of. The thought energy of life. You know, when you get that new idea, when you just think, oh, where on earth did that come from? Well, that's the new thinking, the new fresh stuff. Mind Is, I prefer to call it universal energy. You can call it God, you can call it the energy of life, the energy of nature. It's this aliveness that is within all of us, that is within all of life. That is the same energy that has the flowers come when they come and the leaves fall off the trees when they're supposed to do that. And all those things happen in nature without anybody doing it. And then consciousness is, is our. Is what, that's what brings it all to life. You know, it's where we place our attention that creates our experience. We can have a pain in our knee, but if we're really busy doing something, the pain in our knee will not be there, even though the injury still is. So those three things come together to create our experience in the inside out way.

Incredibly powerful, deep stuff. You gave us a definition of which each of each of those ones. And I was very interested in that. You've got thought small T, which is our personal thinking, our belief system, the way in which we see the world and we interpret what's going on. And then thought big T, the new ideas, those ideas that you don't know where they come from. And I'd always associated those with consciousness that those thoughts come from our sense of our connection, if you like, to ourselves, but also to universal energy and so on, or God, call it what you will. But I was very interested that mind for you. And I've written down it's a God universal energy. It's the essence of life. It's, you know, where the flowers grow, where our cells change and we don't have to think about it. Can you talk us through more? Because that's really interesting and for many people, myself included, it's a very different way of looking at mind.

Yeah. I think mind, like thought can come with a small and a capital.

Yeah, okay.

You know that, you know, what mind might be seen as that storage system that we have inside our heads that that's got, you know, those neurons wiring and firing and doing all the things they do. But, but that also that there's, there's a bigger body of that, you know, that is the universal mind is something so much more than that. And, and I think where consciousness comes in or awareness is that is, is, is for us to start to see where, where we're, where, how conscious we are. It's about, you know, level. There are levels of consciousness. I don't really try to, I don't want to grade them like that. But they're as easy to become more conscious you can start to see the difference between the two. And I think one of the things that tells us the difference, whether we are with a small, you know, mind with a small M or big M, whether we're thought, caught up in thought with a small T or we're in a place of thought with a capital T is. Is our feeling state. You know, we. We feel our thinking. And you've probably would. Probably all the listeners will have noticed when you get those amazing ideas. You are in a calm place. You are in the shower, you're playing golf, you just doing something with your children. And then that problem in your business or your life, that's just been like that for ages and you haven't been able to solve it. Suddenly you're like, oh, there's the answer.

Yeah.

Because at that level of consciousness, from that place of calm, we're more connected. So if there's a lot of small T thought energy around, we're not able to hear the. The. The stuff come. That needs to come through us. It's just blocked by. It's like. I always think it's like, you know, our personal thinking can be like a noisy orchestra. It's going on and on and on, but that feels terrible. It feel. We feel that in our bodies. Whereas when we're calm, we're connected to something. Something that. Well, who we really are.

I think it's interesting because the lang. I'm always fascinated by language. And so for me, that place where you're in a place of ease and grace, it's a place where things flow instead of trying to swim upstream, you know, pulling a great barge behind you, that you're actually, you know, floating downstream and things seem easy, you know. And I talk to people about, you know, developing their sense of inner wisdom or their intuition. And I think from, you know, what you said, that's being in a place of big T thoughts where you still. That clutter that. That you talk about an orchestra. For me, I suppose it's more like. Yeah, and I'm. It's an orchestra that they're all tuning up, all playing different songs, actually, that, you know, when you can get them to. To. To play together. Pianissimo and you can quieten things. That stillness gives you an opportunity to get into flow or your big T thoughts.

Yeah, definitely, definitely.

Do you have strategies that help people quieten the orchestra? Because you talked about rituals and I, I think there's an inherent challenge in rituals. I think lots of people find them helpful, but I think in the end, sometimes the Ritual becomes the thing and not what you're trying to achieve.

Yeah. So the answer to the question is no. But I think what happens is when we, when we understand how the system, how our system is working, we make different decisions about the actions we do or do not take. So, for example, if I'm feeling angry in any moment and I think that feeling of anger is coming from another person, then in order to relieve the pressure valve, I feel like I've got to say something to other person. So a thought will come in. You need to, you know, to shout or have a go at other person or whatever, and it'll feel like that's going to relieve the pressure. Now how I. How in any moment we read our feelings really impacts on that. So when I feel uncomfortable now, when I feel an angry feeling, well, I know I've got angry thinking. And what I then do in the moment is very different. It just means that I act differently. So although that's not a tool or technique, it's more an awareness. It's more what do we do when we know how a system works? It's like what we do when we first learn to drive is all a bit clunky and all over the place, but when we know deeply how to drive, our driving is very, very different. It's much more intuitive. When we know how our system works, we will make very different decisions based on our feeling state. Because our feeling state and then the thought that occurs to us is what dictates what we do in the world. And that can be very different when we know that our feelings are just really a system update. They're like the dashboard. Hey up. You need to know your thinking's a bit whatever at the moment. And then we're guided really in every moment by that feeling state.

I think it's really fascinating. You know, the language that we use in terms of how we work with people or how we communicate with people is interesting, isn't it? For me, the principle of being conscious about your thinking and using consciousness in that sense, as well as in terms of the broader consciousness, you know, taking responsibility for your thinking, for your words, your actions and so on. You know, 95% of how people think is just habitual. They don't think about the quality of their thinking at all. But you're part of what I take from, from what you're saying is that, that there is a real send. I'm trying to use a different word to conscious. There's a real awareness of the quality of your thoughts. Small T and Big T. That is not trying to. What am I trying to say? It's really taking on board that there is validity in those thoughts and. And your feelings. But it doesn't mean that you have to act in the way that you've always done. You've got the choice and the option, once you are aware, to do things very differently. And we all know that if you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got. Do things differently and things change hugely. I'd like to. To ask you. Consciousness, Imagine that. I didn't have a view of it. What's your view of consciousness? How would you explain that?

Well, it's all part of this same energetic system, really. I feel like there's a nice metaphor around a great glass elevator.

Okay.

You know, when we. When we're in the depths of some uncomfortable feeling, we're feeling low, we're feeling grumpy, maybe we're feeling angry, perhaps. Whatever kind of low feeling states you might talk about and we are caught up in that, I suppose, is the best way to put it. Then I would say we're probably at quite a low level of consciousness. We're not. We see that the thoughts and the feelings are us. They look quite immovable. It seems like that's who we really are. And we'll be quite kind of caught up in that. And the problem is that a lot of people get out of the elevator at that level and go and start poking around, trying to sort themselves out. And that's almost like you're trying to fix some, you know, dodgy thinking and feeling with the same level of consciousness. Yeah. It's like I often say to people, it's like a brain surgeon trying to do their own brain surgery. Which I understood, understand is not advisable.

No, no, probably not. No.

But we can. We can. If we stay in the glass elevator, we can kind of be aware of this state we're in at the moment, but realize that we don't need to do that because this elevator is automatically going to rise without us needing to do any. If we've got out to go do something, the elevator is going to leave without us. So we stay in the elevator. We're aware, we're conscious of how we are, but we don't. There's no, like you were saying earlier on, there's no guilt, there's no judgment. There's no, I shouldn't be here. I need to do something about it. There's none of that. So then naturally we Start to rise. If we get caught up more in our thinking, we're going to stay down there. It's going to be more difficult to shift. And naturally, like the weather, you know, we move. Our thinking moves, our feelings move. We can rise in consciousness. And I think there's something about. I love the work of Eckhart Tolle where he talks a lot. I think about kind of being the observer of what's going on. So as we rise in consciousness, we can become more and more the observer of, oh, you know, this is how I am right now. And it's okay to be this way because I'm human and I don't really need to do much about it. But. And it will. It will pass on its own. You know, I think there's a real difference between, oh, I'm not supposed to feel this way, and oh, there I go again. It's that kind of real, real difference.

No, it's interesting, isn't it, how. How people spend so much time and energy either avoiding being honest with themselves about what they are feeling or finding the feeling so uncomfortable that they bury it or ignore it. I liken it to the dragon in the box. You know, you've got an uncomfortable feeling or a feeling that you don't think you ought to have. Anger, frustration, jealousy, whatever, the box. And you're so busy trying to keep the lid on that dragon, which is incredibly expensive in terms of energy, rather than it giving you a message. And I love your analogy of the dashboard on the car. It's just giving you information rather than making judgment about the information that's giving you. And one of the things that struck me, work for myself and working with other people is when we acknowledge that emotion and look for the message it's trying to give us and recognize that there may be a lesson to learn, there may be a way of doing things differently, and we move on that the energy that we've spent trying to keep that blooming dragon in the box can be used for something which is much, much more positive.

Definitely, definitely. And of course, the ways people try to keep that dragon in the box can be really unhealthy. Oh, but I think even the healthy things, you know, inverted commas that people do are coming from the same misunderstanding that there is something there to manage, there is something there to. To kind of squash down in some way. You know, feelings are our dashboard. They are our information about our state of mind. And none of us would put a piece of cardboard over our car dashboard and go driving about because we get into all sorts of bother pretty quickly. We do that with our feelings all the time.

And I think the other thing is that when we do ignore those feelings and we bury them, that they actually have a physiological effect on us. And, you know, people talk about disease, but if you break the word into dis ease, then you know you had adrenal overload and I think many, many people are struggling with that, particularly at the moment when anxiety is rife. And I love your approach because in doing that you. You negate the. The negative effect that these emotions have and you just take the positive message and information and then you have a choice of how you're going to deal with it.

Yeah, absolutely, yeah. Seeing as information, rather than a problem in the world or a problem with ourselves or us having some kind of disease, is. Is so. Is so different. It's such a different way of seeing a feeling.

It's been absolutely fascinating talking to you and I recognise we're in the last couple of minutes of the show, so where can people find you?

My website is probably the best place. It's really simple. It's clairedown.com so it's really easy to find me. I hang about a lot on LinkedIn as well, so people can find me there too.

And it's Clare Spelt C L A.

R E. No, I. Oh, no.

I'd love to hear your story. You know, listeners that you join me every week and for that I'm. I'm hugely grateful. But what's your story? Yeah, I'd love to hear it and, you know, maybe it's a story that will be great on the show. Please do contact me at Gina g I n aenagardnerandfriends.com and let us know how you're doing and tell us about your experiences, particularly in reference to a show, if that works for you. Thank you very much for joining us today and I look forward to joining you in the.