A few days back I was listening to a course on Udemy called Living Life Inside Out by Michael Neil.
He talked about how in his teenage years he had mental issues.
He tried hard to move towards pleasure and avoid pain.
He tried positive thinking. He talked about how he had police in his head. The police always monitored his thoughts and always tried to be constantly on the lookout for any negative thoughts.
While on the face of it, this attitude of having only positive thoughts looks great, and maybe for many, it seems to be the way to go.
But this strategy personally has never worked for me.
Because of the saying “If you resist it will persist”.
So coming back to the story of Michael he talked about how he felt much better when stopped controlling things.
He stopped trying to think positive thoughts and just let the situation be as it is.
I can really co-relate with this thought process because back in 2019 when I had a bad night of sleep and was really Anxious.
I had thoughts like:
❓ when will this end,
❓ will I ever see light on the other side of the tunnel,
❓ should I live a life where sleeping pills are my only way out?
But then as I told my story multiple times when I persisted with the practice of meditation was when I stopped
👍 worrying about a bad night of sleep
👍 stopped creating those 1000 scenarios which can go wrong.
👍 live in the present.
As Deepak Chopra puts it “When you struggle against this moment you are struggling against the whole universe. You can wish for things in the future to be different, but at this moment you have to accept things as they are.”
So, in short, stop resisting the current moment.
Do let me know in the comments what you feel about Michael’s story of stopping trying to be right.