A Simple Psychological Trick To Make Peace With Your Mind
Warning: this recipe can cause instant life changes
Our minds are important parts of our lives, and we perceive the world through their lenses. Whether we love something or hate it, none of it gains any meaning until it goes through the filter of our minds.
So since it is our only window to the outside world, making sure it is clean and transparent is essential. When you are at war with your mind, your mind no longer serves a beautiful soundtrack that accompanies your journey but becomes a noise that is torturing you. Whether it is negative self-talk or unnecessary doubts, this condition can decrease the quality of our lives drastically.
That’s why it is essential to be aware of this, and learn to make peace with your mind.
To do that there are 2 steps to follow:
1-Recognize who your own inner voice is
2-Practice not taking your thoughts as reality
If you prefer to watch it, this is the link to the video:
1-Recognize who your own inner voice is
I was recently reading a book called “The Untethered Soul” by Michael A. Singer, and in the book, he talks about our tendency not to differentiate between who we are and who our inner voice is. Most of us, identify with this voice and take it too seriously to the point where we listen to it more than we would listen if an actual person told us whatever it tells us.
In our daily lives, we are constantly surrendering to this voice, and let it interfere with our inner world. To understand this further, in his book, the author adds an example that goes as:
“You buy a brand-new car and it’s beautiful. But every time you drive it, your inner roommate finds something wrong with it. The mental voice keeps pointing out every little squeak, every little vibration until eventually, you don’t even like the car anymore.”.
That’s why to avoid this endless battle, it is essential to be able to differentiate yourself from who your inner voice is, and then decide whether or not it deserves this much recognition. Michael A. Singer explains this as:
“There is nothing more important to true growth than realizing that you are not the voice of the mind — you are the one who hears it. If you don’t understand this, you will try to figure out which of the many things the voice says is really you.”
To be able to do this differentiation, the author suggests pretending that your inner voice is another person, a roommate, who is saying all those things your mind says. By doing so it is possible to recognize that if a person told you all the things your inner voice tells you, you wouldn’t listen to them, and would never take their word as reliable without questioning.
This way, we can break the illusion that our minds have power over us and make peace with it by not taking it as seriously as they like us to do.
2-Practice not taking your thoughts as reality
In her book “101 Essays That Will Change the Way You Think”, the author Brianne Wiest advises differentiating your thoughts from the actual reality, and it is an important lesson to be learned.
Most of the time, our thoughts become painted with our personal perceptions, and thus to view reality as whatever your opinion of it is can be misleading. That's why, being aware of this, and stopping yourself whenever you catch yourself taking your thoughts too seriously can help us to take back the control.
Final thoughts
Our minds can be the best companions if we learn how to make peace with them. Today we’ve talked about 2 methods of achieving just that, and these were:
1-Recognize who your own inner voice is
2-Practice not taking your thoughts as reality
By applying these, we can prevent spending any mental energy on unnecessary mental chattery, and enhance the quality of our lives.
Thank you for reading.
-E.K.
