Is Your Own Mind Making You Miserable?

And trust me when I say I know what it's like to make your own life difficult. Does your life feel like Groundhog Day on repeat? Welcome to the Eye of the Hurricane Podcast. You know, there's a universal addiction that's more widespread than all the others. And that's not alcohol, it's not us being on our phones, it's us thinking. And the truth is we can't stop and we've never really tried. And the strangest part is we don't even know what's happening because we're so convinced that incessant voice we hear is actually us, but it isn't. And realizing that can be one of the most important things that we ever learn. So tune in and listen to it for a single day. That voice will wake you up before you're even out of bed. It's going to comment on the weather, it's going to comment on traffic, it's going to talk mad trash about random strangers that we don't even know. And it's going to find ways throughout the day to convince you that you're not as important as you think you are. And it's going to do everything it can do to keep you small. So the pattern for most of us is that voice is simply repeating what it said yesterday and the day before. So it's usually the same thoughts that basically go around and around. And it's similar to a song that's stuck on repeat. And the voice, when you tune in, it's a shitty companion. You know, it judges, it complains, it compares, it tells us all the time that we're behind and that we're not enough. And it convinces us that something has to go wrong up the road. So if you think in terms of a friendship, we would never keep a friend who talked to us like this. But we've lived with this voice our whole lives, and never once, not once, have we ever asked it and really considered whether or not it's telling the truth. So tune into where that voice lives. You know, it's never here and it's never now. And it's because that voice lives in the past, there's where there's regret, there's resentment, it gets to replay the old wounds, or it lives in the future where there's worry and fear, and it keys in on our anxiety and all the endless questions we have that are what if. So you'll notice the voice itself, it needs time to survive. So it's either yesterday or it's tomorrow. Really, it's it's almost like the food that we feed the beast. But this moment, this present moment right here, it crushes the voice because staying present is really its enemy. It's it's it's kryptonite, if you will. And that's where so much of our unhappiness comes from. It's not from what's happening, but it's from what the mind is telling us about what's happening. So there's a huge difference between a situation and a story. So let's say a text goes unanswered. That's a situation, right? It's small. It actually only takes four words to describe. A text goes unanswered, right? Four, if I can count. So then comes the story around the situation. We say that person's upset. I must have said something wrong. Um, maybe they've been pulling away from me for a while because everyone eventually leaves me. Like you see how all of a sudden we perpetuate this story. A situation just took a second to happen, but the story all of a sudden takes all night or can go on multiple days. You know, if you take something like a boss calls and they ask to talk to you tomorrow, or you hear a noise under your hood, um, those are things that by themselves, they're they're just some simply situations. They're small, but every time the mind builds it into something and it and into a narrative that's going to be worst case. So try this the next time a problem starts. Just ask yourself this question: Do I have a problem right now? Not tomorrow, not an hour from now, this very moment. And most of the time, the honest answer is no. There may be something that you need to handle. Hopefully, there's something you can change. But if you can't do either, it may be something you have to accept. But is there a problem in this exact moment? Almost never. The problem lives in that story that the mind tells us about the situation. If we can ask the question and relax, it becomes the moment we start to watch the voice instead of becoming it. And that's a huge shift. So the thoughts and the voice itself, it loses its grip. Now it's still there, but it's suddenly separate from us. So there's times I can actually say to myself, look at what Joe is doing. Look at what Joe is thinking right now. And all of a sudden I find the voice is separate from me. So that doesn't mean that thinking is bad. I mean, the mind's remarkable, right? It's the way that we create so many great things, it's how we solve so many problems. The trouble isn't that we use our mind. The trouble that is too often our minds using us and we don't realize it. And for some of us, that voice has grown so incredibly loud and powerful that it either runs or it ruins everything. So whether that be our sleep or our work or even the relationships that we have, when it gets too loud, we can't shut it off. And that's when reaching out to a professional can be a really good idea. And that's not something that's weak. That's just realizing you're in a position where you can't manage it yourself. So tonight, when the voice starts up about tomorrow, maybe we don't argue with it. Maybe we don't even try to stop it. We'll just notice it. And notice the thing that's actually observing the voice, that's actually you. And once we start doing that, we find a lot of peace when we can have separation and realize that voice in our head is not who we are.