“Your mind is like a troubled lake,” my coach once told me. “The more you try to force it to be still, the more it ripples.” Those words echoed in my head as I sat in my favorite coffee shop, wrestling with thoughts that wouldn’t let go.
That’s when an interesting conversation began – not with another person, but with myself. You know those moments when your inner voice becomes so clear, it’s almost like a dialogue? This was one of them.
“A disturbed mind,” my inner wisdom spoke, “always originates from a place of hurt.”
I scoffed at first. How philosophical.
“Think about it,” the voice continued. “Your hurt has its roots in feeling like a victim. And that victimhood? It’s always tied to circumstances – either involving you or others.”
I took a sip of my now-lukewarm tea, letting the thought sink in. What if those circumstances had been different? Would I be sitting here, feeling this weight on my shoulders?
“If that situation had been different,” the voice mused, “you might never have gotten that feeling. No feeling, no hurt. No hurt…”
“…no disturbed mind,” I completed the thought.
A moment of clarity struck me. “So you’re saying that single situation is the root of all this misery?”
The realization felt both enlightening and frustrating. “But how does that help?” I challenged myself.
The answer came gently: “It helps if you want to transform your state of mind – from disturbed to calm, from unhappy to happy, from tense to relaxed.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Are you seriously suggesting that by understanding the circumstances that led to my suffering, I can resolve it? If it were that simple, nobody would ever be unhappy!”
Then came the homework. Three simple steps that felt like mountain climbing:
- Focus on the situation causing the upset
- Dig deeper into the thinking behind it
- Separate fact from perception and assumption
As I wrote these down in my journal, something shifted. Like clouds parting after rain, I began to see that my situation was heavily clouded by assumptions and perceptions I’d never questioned.
Here’s the plot twist in this story: We always have control over our minds. Always. We just don’t pay attention to this superpower we possess.
It’s like having a high-tech gadget but never reading the manual. We let our minds run on autopilot, reacting to circumstances rather than responding to them with awareness.
This conversation with myself taught me something profound: Mental peace isn’t about changing the world around us. It’s about understanding how we perceive that world and recognizing where we’ve tangled facts with assumptions.
The next time you find your mind in turmoil, try having this conversation with yourself. You might be surprised to discover that the path to peace was within you all along, waiting to be uncovered through simple self-reflection.
Remember, the goal isn’t to never feel disturbed – that’s unrealistic. The goal is to understand our disturbance so well that it loses its power over us.
And sometimes, that understanding begins with a simple conversation with yourself, perhaps in a quiet coffee shop, over a cup of lukewarm coffee.
Have you ever had such a conversation with yourself? What did you discover?
Life as Sakti 