IS YOUR MIND CONTROLLING YOUR LIFE?

“Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds!”

-Bob Marley

Our mind is one of the most sacred things gifted to us by god. It keeps us alive, thinks, gives us logic as well as keeps us cautious. However, if left unchecked, it can pulverize a person more quickly than anything else. It has a tendency to control and we are so habitual of it that most of the times we do not comprehend the myriad of times it pushes our inner wisdom and peaceful, loving sense aside.

There is no course or book that can alter the mind’s nature because the problem is not our mind, it is the way we use it. We may feel anxious, fearful, depressed or resentful when we give our mind all the authority and follow all the instructions and logic against our inner wisdom.

Whenever we ignore our natural inclination, we can know that the mind is controlling us. For instance, you feel like calling your dear friend whom you have not spoken for a long time and the mind immediately says it’s so silly to do that, probably he/she does not even remember me. And you never call and lose touch with your friend. However, if you would have not ignored that little voice in you and called your friend, it would have made you both truly happy.

Do you have trouble in saying “NO”?

For me, saying no is not easy and I didn’t even see it as a serious problem until it took away all my peace and I was only pleasing others. My life became messy and it took me a long time to recover, however, I’m still trying to learn to say NO when my heart does not feel good in doing something. It is a total mind game, and it wants to be liked and appreciated always. Our mind fails to realize that saying “no” is not a big deal. It is our right to do things that makes us genuinely happy, and this would benefit everyone around us.

We often fall in the trap of repetitive negative thoughts and keep on worrying about them. Once we learn to ignore the unpleasant thoughts, they will be replaced by pleasant ones shortly. The best way to ignore them is to be aware of them.

Our mind starts controlling our lives when we start controlling other people. Be it small or big matters, controlling someone else in the long run will annoy us and is disrespectful as well. Controlling anything ceases the flow of life and we can miss out on so many beautiful things.

We often recognize that we are being very negative and we are constantly inundated with thoughts like we should be positive and grateful.  But, they are mostly of no help as our mind starts being critical of the situation or person and we fail to remain positive all the time.

So, is there any way that can help us remain happy and let our mind not play those games? My answer to this is acceptance! Accepting who you are, how you are is definitely one of the most loving as well as genuinely positive things that one needs to practice. This is applicable when we are being controlled by our mind as well. It is the nature of mind to seek control and we should not judge it as good or bad. Just let it be and accept it. Sometimes, we will succumb and other times we will succeed. We need to accept whatever is going on in our mind soon we will be out of our mind’s control.