241: Show me how good today can get

Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of Cani Crystals the podcast. I hope that you're all well. I'm coming to you live and direct from Malaga today. Evviva España! Ole! Is that even Spanish? Who knows? Duolingo got uninstalled off my phone after an hour of installing it, so we'll never know. But I'm here on my little boy's first family holiday. He's been on a plane a few times going back and forth to Northern Ireland to see family, but he's never actually been abroad abroad. But let me tell you, it is freaking hard work. Rubbing cream into him every 2 seconds, him rubbing it back off his skin in the pool every 2 seconds, wanting to be in the shade, wanting then to be in the sun, falling over on stone floors every other step. It's bloody hard work. I don't know how people do it with more than one kid. Honestly, hats off to you. But anyway, it's nice to get away just before the madness of Money Fest, which is now only 2 weeks away. So if you want to get your tickets, head to money-fest.uk. I'll leave a link in the show notes for this episode. I have worked so, so hard on this year's event that I was definitely ready for this little break. And I'm going to use the time on evenings when we're stuck in the villa with him in bed to plan me talk as well, so no time is wasted. But what a lovely couple of weeks that I've had in general, to be honest, because last weekend I headed to London for the weekend with my good friend Francesca Amber. She was speaking on stage at the Mind Body Spirit Festival in Olympia, so we got a little Airbnb together. We stayed in Camden, and we just had a really nice time having a look around. It turned out to be the hottest day of the year so far, at a lovely 32 degrees at one point. Which I won't lie was a little uncomfortable at times, but I'd rather it be hot than cold. And I actually bumped into a lot of people that I knew as well at MBS. So Ted Lawler was the first person that I saw. Ted's on the main stage at Manifest this year. He's talking all about mindset and mental well-being. And then I bumped into Emily Shermer from Radiant Soul Living, whose podcast I was on a few weeks ago. And then I also met lots of lovely podcast listeners, people that had read me book. I even met an academy member. It was mental. It was like a proper little gathering of people. That I've never actually met in real life, but I've spoke to loads online. So we got talking to some really interesting people in the green room as well. So big shout out to Crystal, Chia, and Chet. They're a lot of fun. I'd love to have them on stage at Manifest next year. And then on the Sunday, Fran was doing a little slot on BBC Radio. So it was really funny because on the morning we were setting our intentions in the taxi for the day ahead, and I always keep mine really light-hearted, like show me how good today can get sort of vibes. And I just said, I'm so happy and grateful that today I got to bump into and have a chance encounter with a random well-known celebrity. And so off we went to the BBC Broadcasting House in London. And while we were having our bags checked by the security at the front desk, this woman just walked past with a few ice lollies, handing them out to security. And she turned to me and just went, hello. It was Gabby fucking Roslin! I was starstruck. So I got in the lift, absolutely starstruck. I was making up Fran. I was setting the tripod away in the studio to record her while she was being interviewed. And when I came out the studio, Gabby was just there, and she started having a full-blown conversation with us for about 10-15 minutes. So we got a lovely photo together. I was telling her how I'd randomly manifested meeting her. She must have been looking at me as if to say, how did this psychotic human get in the building? And I sent a picture to Johnny, my partner, and he had no fucking clue who she was. It's so weird though, because I grew up watching her on The Big Breakfast, and she used to present Children in Need with Terry Wogan if you were a '90s child like I was. She used to do the National Lottery live shows. She's done Watchdog, Eurovision, and now I think she even has her own show on BBC Radio 2. So yeah, to me she was a big well-known celebrity, but he had absolutely no clue who she was. He didn't have the foggiest. And then after all that, we had to sit in a taxi taxi back to Fran's car for the best part of an hour. We then drove 2 and a half hours back to her house in Lincoln, and then I had to drive another 3 hours back to Newcastle. So I was really depleted by the time I got home, but what a weekend. I always have a lot of fun when I'm with Fran, and I'm always inspired by what she's doing and all the opportunities that she gets. So it's nice to see someone doing so well because it really gives your brain evidence that this all works, doesn't it? So I want to talk today about exactly this, and I think it brings me nicely into something that I think a lot of us do without even realizing, especially if you're into manifestation and mindset work and spirituality and self-development, personal growth, or anything about creating a better life for yourself. Because I think somewhere along the way, a lot of us have accidentally turned manifestation into another thing that we need to work incredibly hard at. Now, before anyone starts panicking and thinking, hang on, Mart, are you about to tell us that we should all just stop taking action and just sit staring at our vision boards just waiting for life to magically happen? Absolutely not. I believe in action. I believe in moving towards your goals and showing up, making decisions, doing them scary things, putting yourself out your comfort zone, actually participating in your own life. I think that's all really important, but there is a massive difference between taking inspired action and carrying pressure around with you all day every day. You know, there's a huge difference between moving towards something and gripping onto it so tightly that it starts to consume your thoughts. And if I'm honest, I think I've done that for years without even noticing I was doing it. So recently I had this really small moment that probably sounds quite insignificant, but it's one of those things where afterwards you realize there's something much bigger underneath it. So I woke up one morning, and before I'd even got out of bed, my brain had already started doing what it normally does. I was mentally creating my checklist for the day ahead. I was thinking to myself like, right, what have I got on today? What needs responding to? What do I need to create? What sales came in overnight? What do I need to sort out first? What needs me attention? What do I want to happen today? But then I caught myself for a second because I realised that I wasn't even properly awake yet and I already had the pressure of the day sitting on me shoulders. I hadn't brushed me teeth, I hadn't had a coffee, I hadn't even fully opened me eyes, and yet somehow I was already trying to mentally control the next 12 hours of me life. And when I really sat and thought about that, I realised how often I do that because I'll be honest with yous, it's 7 days a week, 365 days a bloody year, and I think a lot of us do this, don't we? We wake up and we instantly move into problem-solving mode, so we start thinking about what's missing, or about outcomes and about where we're trying to go next. And before we've even started the day, we're already carrying that huge weight around on our shoulders. So instead of doing that, I randomly said something really simple, just like I did the morning that I met Gabby Roslin, and I said, "Show me how good today can get." And that was all I did. I didn't ask for a certain amount of money. I didn't ask for a specific opportunity. I didn't even ask for an email to arrive or for someone to message me for some huge breakthrough to happen. I just said, "Show me how good today can get." 7 simple words. And honestly, there was something about that that felt really different because suddenly it felt light and playful. There was absolutely zero pressure attached to it. There wasn't this feeling of me desperately trying to force life into looking exactly how I wanted it to look. It just felt open, curious, and playful, and it made us realize something really interesting. So I started wondering whether sometimes we aren't struggling because we're doing too little. Maybe sometimes we're just struggling because we're trying far too hard. And I think the interesting question then becomes, why do we do it? Why do we grip so tightly onto outcomes in the first place? Because I don't think most people wake up and consciously think, "Right, today I'm gonna make meself stressed. I'm gonna obsess all day over things I can't control. Yes, this is my plan for the day." I don't think anyone chooses that, do they? Consciously anyway. I think underneath it, it's usually a fear. I think a lot of us are walking around carrying this belief that if we stop pushing, that everything around us is gonna stop moving. Or we think that if we stop thinking about the thing that we want, it'll just disappear. So if we stop worrying about money, we'll lose it. If we stop focusing on the relationship, it'll drift away. If we stop trying to control every tiny detail, somehow life is going to fall apart around us. And if you're listening to this and you're thinking, "I don't do that," I would challenge you on it for a second because I think we all do it in different ways. And I think if you're saying that you don't do it, you're in denial, my friend. So let's say you want to manifest more money. You tell yourself that you're trusting the process, but then you're checking your bank account every 5 minutes to see whether something's changed, or you're refreshing emails wondering if a payment has come through, or you're looking at sales notifications. You're thinking, "Maybe today's the day, maybe today's the day, maybe today's the day it's all going to change." Or maybe it's a relationship, so you say that you've let it go and you've surrendered it to the universe, but you're also checking when they were last online. Or wondering why they've viewed your story on Instagram or your message on WhatsApp but not responded. You're trying to decode every tiny thing that they do. Or maybe it's a goal in your business. Maybe you've launched something and now you're watching every number. How many people have clicked on your link? How many people have bought your link? How many people have watched your stories? How many people unsubscribed from your mailing list? How many people liked your stories? I've done all of these things, by the way. This is me talking about my own personal experience. I'm not sat here pretending that I've ascended to some magical level where I float around peacefully trusting life all day, because absolutely not. I can be exactly the same. But what's funny is that we all call it being proactive, and I think in the past I've even referred to it as being productive or driven. So we convince ourselves that we're just caring about something so deeply But if we're really honest with ourselves, sometimes it's anxiety dressed up as productivity because underneath all of this is a little voice that's saying, "I need this to happen," or "I need this to work," or "I need this outcome because then I can finally relax." And that's the part that I think is really important because the second we attach our sense of peace, happiness, or safety to one specific thing happening, We've accidentally handed over all of our power to it. So we've basically said, "I'm gonna put all of my emotional well-being on hold until life behaves exactly how I want it to." Now that's exhausting because life doesn't work like that. Life's not just gonna sit there taking orders from us like we're tracking an Amazon delivery. You don't press confirm and then get an email saying, "Your manifestation will arrive between 1 and 4 this Thursday." And I think sometimes we are putting ourselves under so much pressure because we're trying to control not only what arrives, but how it arrives, when it arrives, and exactly what it should look like. So, the problem is the tighter we grip, the less room we leave for a surprise. And sometimes that surprise ends up being far better than what we originally asked for. So, the thing that I've been thinking about recently is How many good things in your life have happened because you forced them? So really think about that for a second. How many good things in your life have happened because you forced them? How many of your favorite memories in life came from sitting there desperately trying to control every last detail? How many of the best conversations that you've ever had happened because you scheduled them down to the minute? How many opportunities have appeared in your life because you stared at your phone willing someone to email you? I'm going to take a wild guess at all of these answers and I'm going to say probably not many. So when I think back and look back at my own life, like some of my biggest moments, they weren't planned in the way that I thought they'd be. They weren't delivered in the packaging that I expected. They weren't even always the things that I'd consciously asked for. Sometimes they just started as a random conversation. Sometimes they started with somebody introducing me to somebody else. Sometimes they came from a situation that originally felt frustrating or inconvenient. And I think that's really interesting because we spend so much of our lives believing that we know exactly what we need. So we'll say to ourselves, I need this amount of money, or we'll say, I need this opportunity, or I need that person, or I need things to happen this way by this date in this exact order. But what if we don't actually know? And I know that sounds strange because obviously we know what we want. Of course we do. I'm not saying don't have goals or desires, but what I'm saying is if we're so focused on one specific route, we could completely miss the better road sitting right beside it. So imagine if life was trying to hand you something bigger than what you were asking for, but you've just become so bloody obsessed with your original plan that you refuse to look up. So it's a bit like putting your order in at a restaurant and then walking into the kitchen every 30 seconds asking if it's ready yet. Then when they're trying to bring something over to your table, you're too busy staring through the kitchen door to even notice it arriving. And I think a lot of us are doing that with our lives. We're spending so much time looking ahead that we're not actually living in the here and now. We're not noticing those tiny moments that make up our days. Or the people around us, or the opportunities appearing quietly in the background because they don't look exactly like the thing that we imagined. And I do wonder, you know, like, I wonder sometimes whether that's why so many people feel exhausted. Not because they're doing too much physically, but because mentally they're permanently somewhere else. They're in next month, or next year, you know, they're in that future version of themselves who finally has enough money, or enough confidence, or enough success, or enough happiness. Meanwhile, life is happening right now. So I heard someone say a few weeks ago that we spend our lives climbing mountains only to get to the top and immediately start looking at the next mountain. And I remember hearing that and I was thinking to myself, that's actually quite sad when you think about it, because how many things in your life right now used to be the thing that you were desperate for maybe 5, 10 years ago? How many things are you currently living right now that an older version of you would have looked at and thought, "I can't wait until that's my life"? Because maybe that's the irony of all of this. Maybe the thing that we're all chasing isn't actually sitting at the finish line at all. Maybe it's just been walking beside us the entire time and we've just been too busy rushing ahead to notice it. So I suppose what I've been trying to do recently is stop putting so much pressure onto every single day when I wake up. I'm trying to stop treating life like one big project that constantly needs fixing or managing, because if I'm totally honest, I can be very guilty of living with this mindset of once this happens, then I'll relax. You know, I was saying it the other day, once Manifest is over, then I can have a holiday and relax. Once this launch is finished, then I'll relax. Once I hit this goal, then I'll feel better. Once I make X amount of money, then I can enjoy myself. And then what happens? You get there and your brain just moves the goalpost again. You don't even stop to celebrate. You barely stop to acknowledge it. You immediately move on to the next big thing. And I think we've all done that at some point, haven't we? You've wanted something so badly and you've convinced yourself that when it arrives, you'll finally feel complete or peaceful or confident or successful, whatever it might be. And then you finally get there, and after a few days, your brain starts saying, "Yeah, okay, what's next?" It's like happiness keeps moving further and further away from us because we're constantly attaching it to the future. And I don't know about you, but I don't want to spend my whole life doing that. I've had enough. I don't want to reach 80-year-old and realised that I spent decades rushing through seasons of me life because I was too focused on where I was going next. Because when you think about it, life isn't actually made up of big moments, is it? We like to think that it is, you know, we think that life is made up of the house, the wedding, the car, the amount in the bank, the achievement, the milestone, er, the dream holiday, anything that we've been chasing. But most of our life isn't lived there. Most of our life is a random Tuesday afternoon, or it's driving the car listening to music on the way back from work, or laughing with your family, getting a message from somebody that makes you smile, having a coffee first thing on a morning, random conversations at work with people. Just everyday ordinary moments that don't look extraordinary at the time, and maybe If we're gripping too tightly onto outcomes, we're missing the life that's unfolding right in front of us. So personally, I think that's why that tiny little sentence landed so deeply for me. Show me how good today can get. Because there was no pressure inside it, just curiosity and openness and trust. I wasn't trying to tell life exactly what I needed it to do for me. I was just making room for surprise. So I want to leave you with a question today, and I genuinely want you to think about it after this episode. Where in your life are you gripping on so tightly that you're leaving no room for magic? Where in your life are you gripping on so tightly that you're leaving absolutely no room for magic? Maybe it's money, relationship, in your business. In trying to become a different version of you? Just ask yourself whether you've become so focused on controlling every last detail that you've forgotten how to simply experience your own life. Because maybe you don't need to hold on harder. You know, you don't need another affirmation or another technique or another strategy or plan. Maybe life isn't asking you to tighten your grip. Maybe it's asking you to loosen it. So maybe tomorrow morning, instead of waking up with pressure and expectation, you simply say to yourself, "Show me how good today can get." Those simple 7 words, okay? So I hope you've all enjoyed listening to my little ramble of the week. I'm sorry it's a little shorter than usual. I'm on holiday, let me live my life. If you have enjoyed this episode, please leave me a rating or a review on the podcast itself wherever you're listening to this. I really would appreciate it more than you know because because it helps me out massively by getting the podcast to shoot up the charts and be seen by more people. I think last week was the 14th week in a row that this podcast has gone in straight at number 1 on the spirituality charts for Apple. So thank you so, so much. It means so much to me, honestly. And as always, feel free to use the word podcast to check out at cannycrystals.co.uk or cannycrystalsacademy.co.uk to get your exclusive podcast discount. Don't forget to get your tickets for Manifest in just 2 weeks' time. If you want to, you can watch it online. Virtual admission tickets. You can watch the entire weekend for just £33. That's literally— what is that, 18 hours of people on a stage, spiritual self-development, for £33? That's less than £2 an hour. Head to www.manny-fest.uk, and I will see you all back in the UK next Friday for another episode. Speak soon, guys. Bye!