If you think conquering your fears is tough, try conquering your thoughts

The most demanding task of all

I read someone’s post the other day on Instagram that said the loudest battles we have is not with other people, it’s with our own thoughts. Never a truer word was spoken…

Take yesterday for example. I hadn’t slept well and was feeling off from the get-go. But being the great denier-of-feelings-and-just-push-through kind of person, I proceeded to get on with my day. As much as I espouse being present with what is and allowing yourself to feel it all, I admit I don’t always follow my own advice.

Of course, what happens when you try to push through your day despite feeling out of sorts, is that the day gets progressively worse which only ramps up the frustration. Not only that, your body tenses up, your shoulders creep up toward your ears giving you a mild but annoying headache. Do you feel me, my friend? Is it any wonder that nothing seems to be going right, when all your energy is going into resisting the undercurrent of emotions?

What happens when you fight and/or try to suppress these emotions is that your mind goes into high gear, spouting out all sorts of negative nonsense. Thoughts like: ‘Snap out of it. You know better than this’, ‘Stop being so negative’, ‘Other people have REAL problems so get over it’, ‘You should be (fill in the blank)’ or ‘You should not be (fill in the blank)’.

is is the downward spiral we can fall into and despite it being highly unpleasant, it is also addictive. One thought tumbles into another, the voices in your head getting louder and more insistent, and before you know it, you’re in a dark place, admonishing and criticising yourself for being so foolish. Basically, you’re convinced that you can’t do anything right, so what’s the point?

Or maybe that’s just me…..

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if there was a formula to help us eliminate this cycle? But there isn’t. In my over twenty years of walking this path to greater self-awareness and greater inner peace, I have not found one. In fact, I’m not even sure if that would be the best use of our time and energy.

I have found that the greatest source of inner peace is acceptance. What I mean by that is rather than trying to conquer your thoughts, what if you just accepted them? Instead of having an internal battle of thoughts going back and forth, what if you let them be there? Give them space, notice them and watch them float on by. That’s pretty much what happens to all our thoughts: they come and they go. The war begins when you grab onto one of those thoughts and try to outwit it. But the mind is a mindless machine – it just keeps churning out stuff, incessantly.

Accepting your thoughts is not the same as believing them. Acceptance is acknowledgement. You watch them come and you watch them go. When you do this, you realise how transient and temporary our thoughts are. Yes, they can be powerful and it’s up to you to choose where that power lies – in you or in the thought.

In the end, we cannot conquer our thoughts just as we cannot conquer our fears. Our most effective way of being is to act despite, and in the presence of all that we think and all that we fear. That is being a fully authentic human.