Life is full of surprises, and why shouldn’t it be? After all, life would be dull without them, knowing everything that will happen until you die, right? Yet, most of us believe that we must know at every moment of every day what we get ourselves into. We seem to take comfort in knowing – or at least the illusion of knowing – what the next hour, day, or decade of our lives will look like.
This is delusional thinking.
To the people still living in this imaginary state of comfort and safety, I say, stop it. You have no control. There is no safest option, and you can´t possibly know what life has in store for you, not even during the ten minutes of reading this post. Even worse, by trying to control or frantically hold on to a specific, pre-imagined outcome, you limit and cut yourself off from experiencing and possibly enjoying all other experiences.
Besides, when the ¨other options¨ inevitably happen while you can´t let go of what you believe to be the right way or what you think you´re entitled to, life will inevitably lead to disappointment, perpetuated by the lack of flexibility on your part.
If you believe you deserve or did not deserve certain events in your time here on earth, think again. That is not to say that you deserved what happened to you in the past or that you didn’t do enough to get what you wanted. It simply means that you get what you get. This doesn’t always seem fair, but no one ever said it should be.
What you deem to be the dealing of an unfair set of cards with which to play the game of life is only a bad hand for the individual playing it: you. But just as you need multiple players to play the game, life requires many factors to work the way it does. You are not alone on this planet (although some seem to think they are.) Your life is an accumulation of choices, consequences, events, and complex patterns constructed by your environment, natural events, and, most of all, your own thoughts and conditioning. Therefore, it is impossible to predict the outcome of events or to blame someone or something (one thing) for the unfolding of your life as perceived from a solely individual standpoint.
The complex workings of interconnectedness with all that is – yes, that includes you – cannot be comprehended by the human mind, so please stop trying for the sake of your well-being.
The intricate system of life, including all things we perceive as unliving, although we cannot live without them, does not act or exist within human concepts of good and bad. They just do what they do, whether growing, oceaning, cancering, or simply happening.
Only when we, with our limited understanding of these interconnected life-sustaining systems, attach concepts of right and wrong to them do we fall into traps of entitlement, emotional suffering, guilt, shame, anger, division, greed, and so on. So, I will throw it out there for you:
All emotional suffering is nothing more than a thought, belief, or conviction about yourself or your environment (which includes all that is).
Do you feel resistance or even a slight anger against this statement? Then, I thank you for proving my point.
Think about that for a moment and see if you can recognize where this internal form of slight suffering originates.
Yes, all the pain, anger, guilt, frustrations, jealousy, disappointment, or any other emotion that takes you out of a state of inner peace is a thought, belief, or conviction.
You may feel you haven’t done enough to make the other or yourself happy or that you shouldn’t have lost your job or gotten sick. Maybe you feel resentment against a parent for raising or traumatizing you the way they did. Whatever your reasons for not being at peace with your current life situation, it all lives inside your mind because the undeniable fact is it already happened. It passed. It´s gone.
Don’t be too hard on yourself. At the time of the event, you couldn’t control it or know how to do things differently; otherwise, you would have. Looking back now with new insights will not change that fact.
This doesn’t mean at all that you could´ve avoided certain things from happening. Remember, life just is. It doesn’t discriminate. Only you do. What I mean by that is that you didn’t know another way than to project the perceived wrongdoing against your persona onto an external event, situation, or person or how to take full responsibility for your well-being. But now you know.
To be angry at the world – or project any other emotion outwards to the external world, for that matter – is to be angry or frustrated with yourself. You subconsciously blame yourself for not being able to deal with it differently or to change these thoughts, beliefs, and definitions you have about yourself or your environment. But who is there to blame, really? Sure, you can blame your boss for firing you or your dad for being an abusive alcoholic, but how has holding on to that anger served you so far in maintaining your inner peace state? I guess not so much.
I´m not going too deep into the idea of forgiveness in this post. However, it would benefit your process, especially when learning to forgive yourself for believing things should’ve been different. After all, you did what you thought was best with the knowledge you had at that time. There is no guilt attached to that whatsoever.
I will, however, talk about something closely related to forgiveness, a step that can guide you closer to finding it. Let´s first put a few things clearly on paper:
Your suffering results from thoughts, beliefs, or convictions about yourself, the past, or your environment, believing that things should’ve been different from how they happened or are now. Therefore, you allow your mind to wander into the past and relive painful moments (thoughts), which lead to emotions. You even allow this same mind to use past experiences to predict a potential future outcome, creating even more suffering in the process.
In short, a trigger leads to a thought, which quickly turns into an emotion (usually unpleasant), determining the behavior aimed at avoiding these emotions. But in attempting to get back into our inner peace state, you apply more of the same behavior that caused the thoughts and feelings in the first place. I believe it´s pretty clear that this perpetual cycle of rumination can only lead to more emotional suffering unless…
Unless we can practice annihilating the trigger or catching the thought before turning it into the emotion upon which we act.
But how do you turn a negative thought or belief into a more positive one?
By acceptance and awareness. Only when you can accept that the event already happened and there is nothing you can do to change it can you let go of the belief that things should’ve been different. The fact is, it happened. You can’t go back. You can´t change it. No matter how painful, you must accept this.
The past doesn’t exist anymore. Hence, It only keeps you in a state of suffering when you allow it to. But don’t you have better things to do than reliving moments you don´t even like to think about?
And I get it. I truly do. These thoughts, whether consciously or subconsciously, keep coming up whenever something triggers them. Your mind loves to go back to the past to revisit painful chapters and tell you that because of those experiences, you are unworthy of something better and that you should keep doing what you´re doing. Because even though it´s painful, at least there is comfort and safety in familiarity. At least, it provides a sense of identity. At least you don’t have to face scary changes that may, according to the mind, lead to more pain and disappointment. The truth is, precisely this behavior sustains the pain and disappointment.
Now, let me share a secret: the reason for discussing acceptance and awareness.
Suppose your mind gets all its bullshit stories from a non-existent past and projects them onto a potential but non-existent future. In that case, the only place in which the mind (ego) has no power is in the here and now: the only moment or experience to truly exist outside your mind´s deceiving perception.
Yes, it´s that simple. But simultaneously, it may take a lifetime to master fully the power of living in the present moment. Still, when you can practice being in the here and now and catch your negative thoughts and beliefs as they arise, you can instantly dissolve them by returning to the present.
I will repeat it one last time.
All the thoughts about the past and future that make you feel like shit (or removed from a state of inner peace) do not exist in the past or future but in this moment when you choose to think about them.
When you focus instead on the wind rattling the trees, the flow of your breath, or the singing of the birds instead, to get out of your head and see, hear, or feel what happens in and around you in this moment, your negative beliefs, and therefore, your suffering, no longer have an existential foundation. Inner peace will instantly return to you until the mind starts talking again. You cannot do much about that but redefine, rethink, and repeat the process until the inner voices calm down. It´s a first step into a more peaceful life in the present moment because inner peace is all that resides in the here and now.
Thank you.
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