Author Archives: Rachel Wheeley

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About Rachel Wheeley

Host of daily walking podcast Walk the Pod

Series 33 of Walk the Pod is on the way – on abundance!

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Photo by Vladimir Tomić on Unsplash

Are you ready to experience abundance on your daily walks? Join me on Walk the Pod as we embark on a new series all about abundance, and how to recognise and find abundance in our daily lives.

Starting on Monday, January 9th, I’ll be taking a daily stroll through nature and exploring the many facets of abundance – from gratitude and generosity to mindfulness and simplicity.

On each episode, we’ll explore practical tips and insights on how to cultivate more abundance in your life. Whether you’re looking to manifest more financial abundance, or simply want to feel more fulfilled and content in your everyday life, Series 33 has something for you.

I’ll be inviting listeners to send me their voicenotes about what abundance means to you. You can send me a message now, before the series even begins, so that I can share your thoughts from episode 1.

Leave a message

So grab your walking shoes, start your Trundl app and join us on the path to abundance. See you on Monday!

Two powerful principles to get you walking in 2023!

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Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash

It’s accepted that walking is good for you, and unlike other sports, it needs very little by way of equipment. Just some trainers or boots, depending on the weather, perhaps some rainproof equipment and an umbrella. Although I have been amazed since I started recording a daily walking podcast to find that 95% of the time, I’m recording on the most beautiful day in the world, or an overcast day, but not in torrential rain. I can remember the number of rainy days on the fingers of two hands.

So when I recommend tools and tricks for walking more this year, it won’t involve a shopping trip. The greatest challenge is finding the time and embedding the habit. And it’s this principle on which I offer you the following walking principles:

No comparison

Social media is bad for the mental health because it gives us a raft of people to compare ourselves with, flipping ourselves into a scarcity mindset and making us crazy. OK, that might be me more than other people. But what I’ve found with everything, including walking, is that the more I am exposed to other people doing faster walking than me, the more demotivated I get. I do not enjoy logging onto an app to log my walk when the first thing it tells me is that my ex-girlfriend just won a medal for a 10K PB, when I like to travel at under 4 miles per hour.

Enter, Trundl. Trundle is a fantastic little app on which everyone is travelling slowly, and collaborating together to walk kms for charity and raise money for good causes. Trundl helps you give consistently to remarkable causes as well as access a platform for tracking your non-competitive steps. The non-competitive nature of Trundl is what makes it appeal to me. I’d highly recommend you download the app and give it a try. Plus, like other more competitive apps, it lets you record the pattern of your walk, so you can trace the shape of a kitten as you walk, should you be so inclined.

Don’t get bored

Walking can be boring and if there’s no awe-inspiring nature on your doorstep it’s hard to stay motivated, especially on gray and mis days. So my second principle is, don’t get bored. I would highly recommend making calls on your walks, or subscribing to book tape apps like audible, or podcasts, so that you have something stimulating to listen to while you walk. A Spotify playlist can also be a treat to listen to on a walk. If you’re really trying to pull some movement jujitsu on your brain, you could even make a rule that you’re only allowed to listen to your favourite podcast or playlist while you’re walking.

If one just keeps on walking, everything will be alright

Søren Kierkegaard

I can highly recommend the audiobook of Mort by Terry Pratchett, narrated by BAFTA award-winning actor Sian Clifford (Fleabag; Vanity Fair; Quiz). BAFTA and Golden Globe award-winning actor Bill Nighy (Love Actually; Pirates of the Caribbean; Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows) reads the footnotes, and Peter Serafinowicz (Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace; Shaun of the Dead) stars as the voice of Death. It’s truly excellent.

Very best of luck with your walking in 2023, and do share your own tips and principles in the comments.

The importance of balancing work and rest: why taking time off is essential for creative success

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Balancing work and rest is essential for both productivity and creativity. First of all, it’s essential to put in the time and effort to do the work and pursue our creative projects.

Pablo Picasso said, “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” But then, on the other hand, it’s also important to take breaks and give ourselves time to relax and recharge. As Seneca wrote, “Consult with wisdom, it will advise you not to sit forever at your desk.” Does anyone remember Celebrity Death Match? I’d like to see a contest between Pablo Picasso and Seneca on the subject:

Seneca enters, with a sling, “Do not sit forever at your desk!” he yells, unleashing hell in the form of a few boulders at Picasso. Picasso shields himself with an easel, and in response chucks a volley of cubes at Seneca (I may be missing the point of cubism here). Seneca skids hopelessly on a thousand tiny dice, falls down and breaks his coccyx.

This idea of balance is particularly relevant when it comes to creativity. In a TED talk (thank you Helen, Maker of Things for recommending this to me), Elizabeth Gilbert discusses the idea of “genius” and how it has changed over time*.

In ancient Greece and Rome, citizens believed that genius would visit them rather than being something that they possessed themselves. Gilbert argues that this perspective can be helpful in reducing the pressure we put on ourselves to be “brilliant” or “genius.” By thinking of genius as something that visits us rather than something that we are, we can have a more realistic and healthy relationship with our own creativity.

Ultimately, it’s important to find a balance between putting in the work and taking breaks. If we work too hard and never take a break, we risk burnout and decreased productivity. On the other hand, if we take too many breaks and don’t put in the work, we won’t be able to take advantage of the opportunities for inspiration and creativity that come our way. By finding a balance between work and rest, we can produce our best work and maintain an ability to exist with contentment in the world.

What’s worked for you in terms of a balance between work and rest? Let me know in the comments. Thank you for reading.

*In the early 2000’s, I was lucky enough to appear on an episode of Dave Gorman’s Genius, a Radio 4 show in which Dave Gorman assessed various ideas to see whether they were “genius” or not. Stewart Lee was the guest judge on the programme, and decided that my idea (which wasn’t even mine, it was my then boyfriend’s, who didn’t want to speak on the radio) was not genius at all. The idea was, what if you invented a telephone that allowed you to hear what the person on the other end of the line said just after they hung up the phone. “Genius” it seems, is in any case, highly subjective.

Abundance

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Series 33 of Walk the Pod will explore the topic of abundance.

An abundance mentality is the belief that there is enough for everyone and that there are unlimited resources and opportunities available. It is the opposite of a scarcity mentality, which is the belief that resources and opportunities are limited and must be fiercely guarded or competed for.

The ancient Greek philosopher, Zeno of Citium, who founded the school of philosophy known as Stoicism, believed that true abundance and prosperity come from within and cannot be gained through external means. He believed that living a simple, uncluttered life and focusing on one’s own personal development and virtue was the key to true happiness and contentment.

I my own life, I often fall into a scarcity mindset. I do not have enough money, time, biscuits… I have to flip myself into abundance. It needs doing repeatedly, and is difficult to achieve. I thought I’d kick off my thinking for the new series with a few ways to access abundance.

“Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty”

Socrates

Practice gratitude

Take time each day to reflect on the things you are grateful for. This can help shift your focus from what you lack to what you have. Share with friends or family on #Gratituesday.

I practiced this Gratituesday practice during lockdown with my sisters, and it helped. When you know you will be listing things you are grateful for every Tuesday, it does help you to notice them every day!

Focus on abundance, not scarcity

Pay attention to your thoughts and try to catch yourself when you start thinking in terms of scarcity. Instead, try to reframe your thoughts in terms of abundance.

Notice things which make you feel a sense of abundance in day to day life. A computer game with a vast array of quests to complete, a perfectly written first page to a thick book, a full fridge, a big ball of wool (!) all of these things can contribute to a sense of abundance.

Surround yourself with abundance-minded people

The people you spend time with can have a big influence on your mindset. Surround yourself with people who have an abundance mentality and who encourage and support your goals and dreams.

Practice generosity

Helping others and being generous with your time, resources, and support can help me to feel abundant. If I have enough to give something away, then I must have a great deal.

Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.

Epictetus

What does abundance mean to you? I’d love to kick off the new topic in the comments with you, so do add your thoughts to this post.

I look forward to starting the new series next Monday 9 January. And if you haven’t listened to Walk the Pod before, do give it a listen.

What is stress?

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A brand new series of Walk the Pod starts today and we’re going to be talking about stress and pressure.

Walking is a daily practice that can relieve stress and give us a chance to think about the challenges we’re up against — let’s take a long hard stare at stress and see if we can’t find out a bit more about it.

Thanks for reading Walk the Pod! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

What is stress?

Stress occurs when environmental demands exceed the adaptive capabilities of the individual resulting in physiological or psychological changes – McCoy and Evans, 2005

Leaving aside the textbook definitions, let’s talk about what stress is when you’re a 41-year-old Mum of three with a full time job and a podcast.

Stress is caused by my world becoming too much for me. What I want, vs what I can do.

I want to earn enough to pay the bills, look after my children, keep the flat tidy enough to focus, put food on the table and maybe, occasionally, spend time with friends and family.

When I feel like I can’t do one or more of these tasks to the level I want to, I feel stressed. 

Sometimes the job becomes all consuming, and I neglect the flat. When I’m focusing on the housework, the kids complain that I’m not spending enough quality time with them.

Sometimes I need to dash to the shops because we’re out of milk. In these moments, I have allowed my environment to temporarily outpace my ability to adapt.

As humans, we’re good at adapting. Our ability to navigate the demands of the world is vast. We get good at working out what needs to be done for survival — not necessarily life or death survival, but survival in terms of meeting our obligations.

When the environment makes it impossible for me to adapt to survive, then I feel stressed. Yes, it’s only grabbing a couple of pints of milk, but it contributes to a feeling of being in over my head.

And what can be done about it? Besides not signing up for more than one person can reasonably fit into the day? That’s what I’m hoping to find out.

What does stress mean to you? I look forward to exploring the topic with you in more detail during this new series. If you haven’t listened regularly before, join me as we start exploring stress and pressure together.

Listen to Walk the Pod

Step Up September for the Trussell Trust

This September, I’m walking for 30 minutes a day for the Trussell Trust, who are working to make sure that nobody in the UK needs to use a food bank. If you could sponsor me, I’d appreciate it. 

Thank you

Sponsor me

Some things I’ve been watching and reading

Everything, Everywhere, All at Once

A brilliant film starring Michelle Yeah, written and directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. If you enjoyed The Matrix and have an interest in multi-verse sci-fi dropped into a bucket of multi-coloured Dulux, see this immediately.

Galaxy Quest

A film that starts off gently mocking Sci-fi conventions and Star Trek, but then defies all expectations, becoming a brilliant and gripping film in its own right. Starring Alan Rickman

Four Thousand Weeks

Oliver Burkeman was a productivity guru for The Guardian for many years, then realised that productivity is a trap, and started writing a book about time management for mortals instead. Absolutely superb, may change your life.

Douglas Adams Memorial Lecture 2022 – Thursday 26 May

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Friends, we’re Belgium well doing it again!

Join me on Thursday 26th May at the Royal Geographic Society for the 2022 Douglas Adams Memorial Lecture!

Douglas Adams was a founding patron of Save the Rhino International. He once climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania in a rhino suit to raise money for the fledgling charity. 

When Douglas Adams died in 2001, Save the Rhino International worked with Douglas’s family to establish the Douglas Adams Memorial Lecture, inviting conservationists, wise and funny people to speak about the universe.

The lecture has been delivered by Neil Gaiman, Professor Alice Roberts, Baroness Susan Greenfield and this year, I am delighted to announce that our lecturer is Professor EJ Milner-Gulland, Professor of Biodiversity and Director of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Conservation Science at Oxford University.

Why am I personally so excited that Professor Milner-Gulland is delivering DAML this year? Because she co-founded a movement that resonates very strongly with me, the Conversation Optimism movement. 

Their website explains a bit about their mission:

As nature erodes and the response of human systems is inadequate or destructive, it can seem like the only rational response is despair. 

Yet if you zoom in from the big picture, a mosaic appears; in amongst the stories of loss there are inspiring stories of regeneration and positive change, with nature making a difference in people’s lives, and people valuing and nurturing their natural environment. 

These stories are the key to securing our planet’s future; we need to learn from them, replicate them and thereby build a world in which nature and people can coexist. 

Our mission is telling these stories of conservation optimism — large and small — so as to inspire change.

Please join me on Thursday 26th May to celebrate Douglas’s life, writing, and conservation with me, Professor EJ Milner-Gulland, and a host of funny people. 

And if that wasn’t enough, Douglas’s archivist Kevin Jon Davies curator of 42, The wildly improbable ideas of Douglas Adams will be presenting an exhibition of archival material and photos at DAML in the Royal Geographic Society’s Map Room (where the bar is). 

Thank you, and I hope to see you there.

Tickets

Walk the Pod S24 E5 | Figuring out what we want – transcript

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Introduction

Hello and welcome to Walk the Pod, your daily walking show where I take my podcast for a walk because I don’t have a dog, and you take 10 minutes out of the day to walk in nature and to pay attention to what’s directly in front of you. There are two squirrels chasing each other around a tree as I walked past. This is the first Friyay episode of Series 24, Walk the Pod. You are very welcome along, the sun is shining on the cycle path in SW19. It’s the most beautiful day in the world.

Boredom

I feel an in depth exploration of something coming on as we start this fifth episode of the series. Gaynor and Tati have raised the question of boredom with me. What are we supposed to do? How are we supposed to cope with tasks that are dull and tedious and that we don’t want to do? Any advice from stoic philosophy they asked me and I have been trawling, the interwebs for Stoics on the Cycle Path insight into boredom and how to cope with it.

And I have to say I am struggling to know how to explain what I found. I want to thank Leaping Lord Stephen, who lent me a book called On kissing, tickling and being bored by Adam Phillips, which I read bits of and never really never really connected with it. But now, I feel I need to borrow it back from him again, in order to re-read it. I’m going to try to tell you in advance of reading some quotes from that book, what I think Phillips is getting at.

I think he is trying to tell us that being bored is actually very important for discovering who we are. And that one of the big problems of modern life is that we don’t allow ourselves to be bored for a second, we jump onto Instagram or we jump onto eBay or Amazon or Etsy or wherever we like to buy things. We buy things, we consume stuff, we put a podcast on, we stick on the TV, we do anything to stop ourselves from being bored for longer than about three seconds.

And in actual fact, boredom is a fantastic opportunity to work out what we actually want. One of the things that I read on my, on my trawl through trying to find things about this was that being bored can crystallise for us our heart’s desire. And so we should cultivate it. Maybe not boredom, but idleness in order to work out what we actually want to do with our time.

How we spend our time is how we spend our life. I think Annie Dillard wrote something slightly more articulate than that, ‘how we spend our days is how we spend our life’ I think. So, it’s our Stoics on the Cycle Path today. Not really a stoic, I think the longer I do Stoics on the Cycle Path, the more I realise that half the time they’re not Stoic philosophers at all, but you don’t mind I don’t think Poddies, if Stoics on the Cycle Path features Joni Mitchell or… Captain Tim actually sent me a quote from the film Gladiator for Stoics on the Cycle Path.

So if you’re, if you’ll forgive the fact that most of what I’m reading from the Stoics on the Cycle Path isn’t stoic philosophy, then we’ll all get along fine. Tim’s suggestion was ‘what we do in life echoes in eternity’, which comes from Maximus Decimus Meridius from the well known documentary film, Gladiator. He says, ‘say it in an Australian accent, and it sounds really deep.’

Stoics on the Cycle Path

Stoics on the Cycle Path today comes from Adam Phillips On kissing, tickling and being bored.

“Every adult remembers, among many other things, the great ennui of childhood, and every child’s life is punctuated by spells of boredom. Boredom is actually a precarious process in which the child is as it were, both waiting for something and looking for something in which hope is being secretly negotiated. And in since boredom is akin to free floating attention, in the muffled, sometimes irritable confusion of boredom, the child is reaching to a recurrent sense of emptiness out of which his real desire can crystallise. The capacity to be bored, can be a developmental achievement for the child.”

Now, whenever I’m talking about parenting, I’m also talking about self parenting so the child can equally refer to the modern adult. And I think what Phillips is saying here is, if we allow ourselves to become bored, and we don’t immediately leap to anything that can stop that from being the experience that we find ourselves having, we can really discover a lot about what we actually want in our lives.

And he goes on to say something along the lines of being busy, is the best way possible, of preventing anyone, including ourselves, from knowing anything about us. Because the busy person can be doing all kinds of things in order to be productive and efficient. But actually, none of the things they’re doing are providing them with their heart’s true desire, because they haven’t allowed themselves to be bored enough to find out what that is.

What I can see directly in front of me

What can I see directly in front of me? Well, I’m recording this a little later than usual. And oh, very much later, it’s two o’clock at the moment. And due to the beauty of anchor and modern podcasting software, you will be able to listen to this probably at about half past two, if you want to.

What I can see is the sun striking the grass just ahead of me beyond the railway bridge, and many houses that are just off the cycle path interrupting that light with shadows as I walked past a wrapper for a Ben & Jerry’s Peace pop on the floor and walking under the railway bridge now to find that the bottle of Lipton iced tea that somebody put there, and I mentioned in a previous episode, has now fallen over. That’s the big news on the cycle path today.

I can see a cyclist in the distance. Also a person pushing a pram, it’s actually very quiet on the bike track today. Few people walking around some tiny, beautiful flowers on a little tree here. Not quite sure what this tree is but five lobed flowers, beautiful white flowers with a little bit of I don’t know what you call answers could be anthers Poddies, I don’t know, botanists, please get in touch. Little little blobs of pollen on the ends of on the ends of the strands coming out to the middle of the flower. Good grief my botany is very bad, isn’t it? Don’t do any of the proper botany words. But you know, I’ve never been good at identifying trees or pups. It’s not something I excel at, unfortunately.

What a beautiful day though. It’s absolutely gorgeous out here. If you’re thinking of going for a walk today, get out and enjoy the sunshine. The birds are singing everywhere. It’s just lovely. And on Friyays, I offer you a formal invitation to join the Walk the Pod walking club. Please go to rachelwheeleyisfunny.com and join up for behind the scenes content. There are lots and lots of things you can enjoy. If you sign up to the Walk the Pod walking club you can see daily photographs from behind the scenes on the podcast of my actual life on Mondays through Fridays. You can join the Walk the Pod community message board which features a number of channels, including our film club, which will be meeting tonight to watch What We Do In The Shadows, our book club, our cloud spotting, cloud appreciation club, we have Poddies posting pictures of their favourite clouds from all over the world. It’s just, it’s a really lovely space, it’s a very good vibe. And if you are on social media and think that it can get in a bin, you’ll enjoy this particular social media platform because it is just, it’s just a lovely, friendly, happy space for walkers celebrating their daily walks.

Supreme Cross Border Selector, Nige of Galicia, shared a Twitter thread yesterday under the banner, ‘social media can not always get a bin’. And I think we’ve agreed collectively that if social media can get in a bin, you may be following the wrong people. So that’s me told. And I think there’s an enormous amount to be said, actually, for not following people who are trying to do the same thing that you’re trying to do. Because that causes inevitable comparison, and sadness.

Best thing to do is probably to follow people who inspire you. And maybe I just need to recalibrate who I’m following on these platforms. I don’t know. Oh, lovely. It’s really, really nice out here. Very excited to go back to my flat and have a cup of tea and a bit. And then I need to do some tidying because Captain Tim is coming around for the Walk the Pod Film Club. So gotta clean the place. And that’ll be the end of our first week of series 24. A whole week nearly over already. And this has of course, been my healing week. So I’ve been resting really hard. And I feel much better for it. The kids are on half term next week. And then towards the end of the week, I will be tentatively back to work. So thank you for walking with me. It’s been an absolute delight to walk with you on the bike track this week. I really appreciate you coming with me every day.

Outro

I hope you’re enjoying the pod if there’s anything you’d like to request on the pod, if you’d like to say for example, Rach, why don’t you put Stoics on the Cycle Path in the show notes for every episode so that I can also read what they what they have to say as well as listening to you – something I’ve been considering doing, or any other feedback, email, rach@rachelwheeley.com. Or you can go to walkthepod.com. And you can leave me 59 seconds of your beautiful voice as a voice note. I listen to every single one, I read every single email I get. I deeply appreciate every single email I get. Because I am a very needy content creator. So I absolutely love any kind of message or contact from anybody at any time. But I will be trying to cultivate idleness and boredom a little bit over the weekend and actually spend some time reconnecting with myself and what I actually most desire in that space. And I’d love it if you would do the same and maybe let me know how you get on. Take care of your beautiful mind, and I’ll be back with episode six on Monday.

Walk the Pod S24 E4 | Walk the Pod manifesto – transcript

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Introduction

Hello, and welcome to Walk the Pod, your daily walking show where I take my podcast for a walk because I don’t have a dog. You take 10 minutes out of the day to walk in nature and pay attention to what’s directly in front of you.

My name is Rachel Wheeley, a human in the world trying to figure out how to be. I’m walking a cycle path in SW19, Wimbledon, in the UK as usual and it’s really grey and mis today.

Blankets of cloud in the sky blotting out the sun, as some kids in the Wimbledon Chase Primary School playing field emerge out of a hedge bearing large plastic bags and litter pickers, with which they are cleaning up their environment.

This is the fourth episode of Series 24, Walk the Pod, I’m very excited to be out on the bike track with you as usual. I’ve got Stoics on the Cycle Path for you today. Another reading from Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations. I’ve got, what I can see directly in front of me… all of your favourite features are here! Welcome to Walk the Pod.

The Walk the Pod manifesto

First, I thought I’d read you the Walk the Pod manifesto. This is something that I’ve been noodling with for several series now, but never actually committed to paper. I had a go at committing it to paper a while ago and then lost my nerve and thought ‘Who am I to tell people how to exist in the world?’ But in the end, James Benchseats on the Walk the Pod community message board said, ‘Oh no, I like that. Where’s it gone?’ So I put it back.

And I thought, at the beginning of a new series, close to the beginning of a new series, I should really read it, in order to say, if you’re a new listener to the pod, this is what we are about.

So here goes. A ceremonial reading of the Walk the Pod manifesto. This is essentially how I have chosen to exist. Having done lots of reading of various stoical and other philosophical texts and lots of psychotherapy and thinking about how to be in the world. This is where I’ve got to, so far.

The Manifesto

What I can control is limited to how I act and respond, how I respond to things that happen to me, how I take action to meet my needs, or achieve my goals. To act with self control, and to respond healthily I need high self worth. Or if you like, self respect, or if you like, self esteem.

My self worth is based on how much I love and value myself, not how much value I provide for others, what I produce, or how much others love or value me.

I combine courage with a fierce willingness to refuse to accept shame.

I choose not to build a religion around my flaws, or failures.

I choose goals that work for me that I can find a path towards. Other people’s goals are their own.

I fully explore the potential joys of the person I am and the situation in which I am placed, rather than dreaming about the imagined joys of being somebody else, or being somebody in a situation in which I am not placed.

I choose to prioritise people and relationships that make me feel fulfilled rather than giving my energy towards resentment of outgrown relationships, or trying to impress people who have placed themselves out of my reach.

Now that I love and value myself, I can love and value others.

I abandon my glorious future in order to fully explore the joy of this imperfect day.

I will make time for fun today.

I pay attention to what my mind and body need.

Now, I should really have given those numbers. At the beginning of next series of Walk the Pod, I will read them with numbers, because it’s kind of all mashed together, isn’t it? Just read in a big long stream like that.

So… slightly messed that up. But if there’s one thing that I’ve decided over the course of 24 Series of Walk the Pod, it’s that if something isn’t quite right, I just do it differently next time. I’m not going to re record this bit with numbers. I’m simply going to leave it as it is, and next series when I read the manifesto, well, I’m going to put the numbers in then.

You have to wait a few weeks before you get your improvement on this podcast. That’s just how it works, as the Thameslink steams over the railway bridge. I can see a little black pup on a red lead, frolicking just beyond the railway bridge in the distance over there.

I hope you enjoyed the Walk the Pod manifesto. If you have any thoughts about that, if that made you angry, if that made you sad, if it has made you remember something? Please get in touch and let me know what it was. I’d be fascinated to know. You can contact me at rach@rachelwheeley.com – that’s my email address. You can go to @walkthepod on Instagram. And you can send me a message. Or, if you want to, you can go to walkthepod.com and press the button marked ‘Message’ and leave me 59 seconds of your beautiful voice.

Time for Stoics on the Cycle Path

Stoics on the Cycle Path

Today’s Stoics on the Cycle Path comes from Marcus Aurelius. His Meditations were the original Stoic philosophy on Walk the Pod. We used to read from Meditations a lot back in the day. And now that Stoics on the Cycle Path is a broader feature, featuring the works of Seneca and Epictetus and even more far flung Stoic philosophers, such as Joni Mitchell.

Marcus Aurelius remains a major pillar of Stoics on the Cycle Path. And this reading is very interesting, because Marcus Aurelius was not just a Roman philosopher, he was also Emperor just casually, as a side hustle. Emperor of the Roman Empire, as you do. It really annoys me when people are overachievers, like, you’re already the greatest philosopher who’s ever lived Marcus Aurelius, how we also casually emperor, mind you, there’s, um, there’s a certain sense to that if you are emperor of a vast, sprawling and enormously kind of, lively empire, such as the Roman Empire, I mean, presumably you have to be, you have to be of sound mind, you have to be a very good mental health. You have to have a good mindset and a good outlook on the world. Because otherwise, you will simply be swamped by all of the problems that there are in your universe, some of which you are directly responsible for.

So I think Marcus Aurelius was was writing these Meditations to himself in large part in order to help him survive the job of being emperor of the Roman Empire. So that’s why these little mottos and things that he writes down, are so powerful because they are what helped him through one of the toughest jobs in recorded history.

This comes from book six, just like the one I read to you a couple of episodes ago. And this This is Marcus reminding himself not to get too tied up in the ego of being emperor.

This is book six, chapter 30.

Stoics on the Cycle Path: Meditations Book 6, chapter 30

“Take care not to be Caesarified or died in purple. It happens. So keep yourself simple, good, pure, serious, unpretentious, a friend of justice, God fearing, kind, full of affection, strong for your proper work. Strive hard to remain the same man that philosophy wished to make you. Revere the Gods. Look after men. Life is short. The one harvest of existence on Earth is a godly habit of mind and social action.

Always as a pupil of Antoninus: his energy, for all that was done according to reason, his constant, equitability, his piety, his serene expression, his gentleness, his lack of conceit, his drive to take a firm grasp of affairs. How he would never put anything at all aside without first looking closely into it, and understanding it clearly; how he would tolerate those who unfairly blamed him without returning the blame; how he was never rushed in anything. He would not listen to malicious gossip; he was an accurate judge of men’s character and actions; slow to criticise, immune to rumour and suspicion, devoid of pretence how he was content with a little by way of house, bed, dress, food, servants; his love of work, and his stamina.

He was a man to stay at the same task until evening, not even needing to relieve himself except at his usual hour, such was his frugal diet. Constant and fair in his friendships; tolerant of frank opposition to his own views, and delighted to be shown a better way; god-fearing, but not superstitious.

So may your own last hour find you with a conscience as clear as his.”

So Marcus Aurelius there, reminding himself not to get too full of himself as emperor and to and to follow the lead of Antoninus, who was presumably one of his teachers or mentors, I had to look at the beginning of the book to find out exactly who Antoninus was.

Marcus’s last name, he’s Marcus Aurelius, Antoninus, and Antoninus, I think, was his adoptive father. Now, I don’t know huge amount about this. So apologies, Poddies, for not being a font of all knowledge. But I think he’s talking about his adoptive father when he lists all of the good qualities of that man.

And he’s trying to remind themselves to be more like that person. And particularly, he writes in other places, in Meditations about how happy he is to be proved wrong by somebody and how open he is to have other points of view expressed to him.

Outro

I hope you enjoyed that edition of Stoics on the Cycle Path. Thank you very much indeed for walking with me today. I feel hugely lucky to have you with me on my walks on the cycle path. These are enormously restorative strolls up and down that I have every day talking to you, Poddies.

So thank you for being with me. Welcome to Hannah, my sister who has just joined the Walk the Pod walking club, and will be making an appearance on the Walk the Pod community message board soon, I expect. If you would like to join you can do so by going to rachelwheeleyisfunny.com.

Someone was asking me, what is a Discord server? And it occurred to me that I should really explain. The Walk the Pod walking club is hosted on something called a Discord server. What is a Discord server? Well, it’s like, it’s like a sort of a forum. It’s like a sort of social media platform, which is just for Walk the Pod members. It’s for walkers all over the world.

So it has channels on it where you can post various messages. It’s like a message board. But just for Walk the Pod. So if you want to find a little space on the internet to post pictures of your favourite clouds, or walking reports or photographs from your daily walks, and chat to people for whom walking is a daily activity that they enjoy. It’s the absolute perfect place to be.

rachelwheeleyisfunny.com if you want to explore that option for your life. One of the books I enjoyed last year was James Clear’s Atomic Habits. And one of the things he says in that book is, if you want to make something a habit, the best way to do that is to immerse yourself with a bunch of people for whom that habit is a daily practice that they that they incorporate into their lives, and for whom that that particular thing is completely normal part of everyday life. So, if daily walking is something you would like to be doing, come and get involved, it will help you to establish it.

And I can also recommend having something like a dog to make it a non negotiable thing that you have to do. I don’t have a dog so I I record this podcast every day and if I don’t record the podcast, then I have a bunch of people on the Walk the Pod community message boards say ‘Oh, where’s the episode today, Rach?’ So it’s not. It’s not like I have an option anymore.

You don’t have to go to quite such extreme measures as that, but the Walk the Pod walking club is a fun place to hang out.

Take care of your beautiful mind.

And I will be back with episode five, our first Friday episode of Series 24 tomorrow.

Listen to this episode

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Walk the Pod S24 E3 | Nothing lasts for long – transcript

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WtP S24E3 | Nothing lasts for long

Introduction

Hello, and welcome to Walk the Pod, your daily walking show where I take my podcast for a walk because I don’t have a dog. You take 10 minutes out of the day, to walk in nature, and to pay attention to what’s directly in front of you.

My name is Rachel Wheeley, podcaster and human in the world, trying to figure out how to be. There’s a squirrel just ahead of me on the footpath, the sun is shining on its white bib and it’s the most beautiful day in the world.

Welcome to episode three series 24 of Walk the Pod

What I can see directly in front of me

Somebody’s walking along just ahead of me with a bobble hat on and a backpack. A backpack which I think of as a sort of French style backpack, in that it’s a small bag with two long straps, which they are wearing over both shoulders.

When I was at school was very uncool to wear a backpack over both shoulders. So we used to walk around with half a tonne of books in our backpacks slung over one shoulder. And then we wonder why we’re lopsided for the rest of our lives.

I’ve decided, having come out of hospital the other day that I’m going to live to 100 or die in the attempt and very excited about that. Now I’m going to have to do some more regular exercise I think because walking is obviously wonderful. But it’s not cardio is it? You know, got to do a bit of I don’t know jogging or something. Maybe as we go on.

As a little brown pup on the cycle path and it’s got a massive stick in it’s mouth. It looks very happy about that, as it should be. It’s the greatest day in the world as a dog when you’ve found a massive stick, isn’t it? That’s the greatest thing ever.

I can just hear the bell in the Wimbledon Chase Primary School ringing there to bring all the kids in from the playground. And off they go. scampering in.

How the devil are you

How the devil are you, I hope you’re having a nice day. What day is it… Wednesday, beautiful day today on the bike track, sunshine, streaming down, warming my face a little bit. And I’ve got Stoics on the Cycle Path for you again, of course.

Very, very excited to be bringing you some Stoic philosophy again, having had many series where we didn’t because we sort of we exhausted Meditations. And what I needed to do was to start reading the book of letters that Seneca wrote 2000 years ago.

And I have started to read that now. So I feel like Stoics on the Cycle Path is a bit of a broader offering, then, What Would Marcus do? Which was the thing with the feature before. Now, I’ve had had some correspondence in from my ex BBC colleague Peter Sansun.

Sansun wrote that his favourite piece of stoic philosophy is by Jodi Mitchell. Sorry, if that sounded like I said Jodi, it’s because I sort of smudged the letter D from an N. I meant to say, Joni Mitchell.

Who, who sung in a song called Chinese cafe, ‘Nothing stays the same for long.’ Is that right? Is that the lyric? Hang on, can we just check that. Is it ‘Nothing stays the same for long’ or is it… No, ‘Nothing lasts for long.’ Nothing lasts for long. And she sings that multiple times in the song. Peter says, ‘It’s profound because it has at least two meanings at the same time. The surface says, ‘All things must pass.’

It also says that there is an infinitude of nothingness. Take that Jean-Paul Sartre. Now, I’ve learned very definitively about the infinitude of nothingness walking along this cycle path on the first section of the Deep Time Walk, which revealed that there was an infinitude of nothingness before anything that we’ve ever heard of happened on the Earth. There was a whole load of time when the Earth was just there was no real, no real life to start.

I’m just walking under the railway bridge. That’s why the sound is slightly different. Somebody has left a bottle of Lipton iced tea under the railway bridge today for reasons best known to themselves.

So thank you Peter for that. That’s Peter’s favourite piece of Stoic philosophy. The actual Stoics on the Cycle Path today is from not quite as unlikely a source as Joni Mitchell. But the combined brilliance of 1970s American psychoanalyst Carl Rogers, and Gabor Maté, who wrote a brilliant book called Scattered Minds, ostensibly about attention deficit disorder, but really about parenting. And I would also argue self parenting.

Stoics on the Cycle Path

This Episode 3 edition is from Scattered Minds, and I’m just going to read the whole section because I think it’s so brilliant. So Gabor Maté writes:

“In his book on Becoming a Person, Carl Rogers describes a warm, caring attitude, for which he adopted the phrase, unconditional positive regard, because he said, it has no conditions of worth attached to it. This is a caring, wrote Rogers, which is not possessive, which demands no personal gratification, it is an atmosphere which simply demonstrates ‘I care’, not ‘I care if you if you behave thus and so.’

So the first thing is to create some space in the child’s heart of hearts for the certainty that she is precisely the person the parent wants and loves. She does not have to do anything or be any different to earn that love. In fact, she cannot do anything. Because the love cannot be won and cannot be lost. It is not conditional, it is completely independent of a child’s behaviour. It is just there. Regardless of which side the child is acting from, good or bad.

The child can be ornery, unpleasant, whiny, uncooperative and plain rude and the parents still lets her feel loved. Ways have to be found to let the child know that certain behaviours are unacceptable, without making the child herself feel not accepted. She has to be able to bring her unrest, her least likeable side to the parent without fear that it would threaten the relationship. When that is made possible, absolute security is established, we can reliably expect emotional growth to follow.”

Now, I fell off my sofa when I read that for the first time because I thought to myself, yes, that is clearly, clearly the the answer to how to parent, something which nobody really knows. So they will just sort of muddle through and work it out as you go along. But when I read that, I thought, yes, that is, that’s how I’m going to parent. And indeed how I’m going to self parent, because we’re all self parenting as well as parenting – trying to help ourselves through the world, even while we’re raising small children if we are not raising small children is a perfectly valid choice of lifestyle.

So I hope you enjoyed that. If you have any thoughts raised by that particular episode of Stoics on the Cycle Path, or if you have a favourite piece of Stoic philosophy of your own, please get in touch. Email rach@rachelwheeley.com Go to walkthepod.com. Press the button marked ‘Message’ and leave me 59 seconds of your beautiful voice, or go to @walkthepod on Instagram and you can WhatsApp me maybe? I really don’t know where that works, probably.

But let’s, let’s see. If someone could try that out for me. I’d really appreciate it or tweet @rachelwheeley.

So there are myriad ways that you can get in touch with your Stoics on the Cycle Path suggestions.

And I’m really enjoying having Stoic philosophy back on the pod because I missed it. I missed reading from Meditations and I will I will be including many extracts from Meditations in this feature. As we go on.

What can I see directly in front of me? Well, I can hear some crows, I expect you probably can too, at the top of this tree which just looking at the tree in terms of trying to work out what kind of tree it is, don’t think this is an oak tree has very small buds on the ends of all the twigs. So that’s not an oak tree and I’m looking at the ground see if I can identify from the brown leaves.

What kind of tree it is,

But I don’t know. I feel such a failure.

I’m not good at identifying trees, particularly in winter time. It’s quite difficult. Well, that feels positively Spring like today. It’s absolutely gorgeous, gorgeous weather. Nice warm, just a slight breeze, it’s beautiful.

I can see a little dog walking along slightly ahead of me – a little brown dog with its tail curled over his back. And it’s on one of those leashes that is like extendable, coming out of her a red handle, I can hear the ThamesLink, just about to go over the railway bridge.

There it goes. And looking up into the sky. It’s quite a lot of blue. Not so cloudy today.

Numbers game

Not cloudy at all. Now, speaking of paying attention to what’s directly in front of me, I was playing a game this morning, which was based on a game that I play with the kids sometimes when the kids are particularly not enjoying being outside, which they sometimes don’t.

We play a sort of numbers game where they have to spot numbers in the environment and the one who gets the highest number wins, which usually results in child three racing off to find a lamppost with one of those ‘don’t let your dog foul the pavement’ signs on it, which has a fine of £1000 in the UK.

And that usually wins the game because you can’t you can’t beat 1000. That’s very difficult. And the rules for that game are, you’re not allowed to use telephone numbers and the environment because obviously, those are absolutely gigantic numbers and would spoil the game. But the game I was playing with myself this morning, when I was coming back from the school run the first school run I’ve done since I came out of the hospital.

Consequently, a school run absolutely tuckered me out was, can I find the numbers 1 to 10 in the environment. And can I take a photograph of those numbers in such a way that the numbers themselves are beautiful to look at in sequence. So I was trying to do that this morning. And that’s quite fun, I recommend that to you. And it’s funny how playing that game does help you to pay attention to what’s directly in front of you because you start to notice what’s around you in the environment.

So that’s my that’s my top tip for paying attention to what’s directly in front of you for the day and if you want to send me your number sequences you can do so. The best way to do that is to join the Walk the Pod walking club and stick them in, probably the #walking-and-wellness channel, I would say would probably be best.

But there are various other ways you can get them to me if you don’t want to do that you can send them to me in all the ways I just said really you can email them to rach@rachelwheeley.com if you want to, and I will be delighted to see your your numbers in the environment – maths fans.

I mean that’s not even maths that’s just numbers but you know anyway, so that’s something to do if you’re having a walk today and you’re not quite sure how to entertain yourself while you’re on your walk.

I forgot to say that you can’t use car number plates for the 1 to 10 game. The 1 to 10 numbers game requires you to use your imagination a bit more than that, so that’s the rule for that one.

Sorry about that if you’ve started already and I’ve ruined your fun, but number plates are no good.

Outro

Thank you for walking with me today. This has been Episode 3 Series 24, Walk the Pod. Thank you to everybody who’s got in touch with me to say Rach, you sound like you can breathe again on the pod.

It’s really sweet of you to get in touch with me to say that, I really appreciate it. It’s very kind of people to to notice. I thought the most the most impressive thing was that people were getting in touch with me before to say Rach you need to sort your breathing out, because that did actually make me pay attention to it in a way that I had not been.

But I really appreciate everyone who’s got in touch to say, Rach, you sound like you can breathe again. And that’s good. So thank you. I’m delighted to be able to breathe again. I’m delighted to be able to podcast because there was a point in the hospital where the things they were saying they were going to have to do to help me, we’re going to make podcasting nigh on impossible. So really very grateful to still have the power of my voice and the power of breath.

Huge fan of breathing, highly recommend it if you have a gratitude practice. I encourage everybody to include their ability to breathe in that because whilst it is rather a given and rather obvious when you start to lose it, it’s rather worrying. Kind of, kind of important.

Lots of love. Take care of your beautiful mind this afternoon and I’ll be back with Episode 4, Series 24. Walk the Pod tomorrow lunchtime.

Listen to this episode

https://anchor.fm/rachelwheeleyisfunny/episodes/WtP-S24E3–Nothing-lasts-for-long-e1e5ghd

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