All day, every day, a battle is raging. It’s you against your own mind.
Your mind gives you a new worry, and you fight it with logic. It brings up an old, embarrassing memory, and you try to push it back down. It tells you, “You can’t do this,” and you argue with it, “Yes, I can!”
We are all taught that this is a “fight” we are supposed to win. We are told to “control” our thoughts, “silence” our inner critic, and “defeat” our anxiety.
We have been given an impossible mission.
The fight itself is the problem. You are trying to win a war against the one thing you can’t possibly beat, because it is you.
Why You Can’t Win This “War”
Your mind’s job is to think, just as your heart’s job is to beat. You cannot stop your heart from beating, and you cannot stop your mind from producing thoughts.
Your mind is a 24/7 survival machine. It’s constantly scanning, analyzing, and predicting to keep you safe. It will create thousands of thoughts today—worries, memories, ideas, and complete fictions.
This is its feature, not its flaw.
The “illusion” that causes all our suffering is that we are supposed to be in control of this machine. We believe we are the “driver” of this chaotic bus, and when we can’t stop it from hitting a mental pothole, we blame ourselves.
How to Find Peace: Stop Fighting, Start Observing
Peace does not come from winning the war. Peace comes from ending the war.
You must lay down your weapons. You must stop engaging in the fight. You must shift your role from “panicked driver” to “calm passenger.”
This is the entire journey I explore in my work. It’s the Passenger’s Paradox: the moment you stop trying to “control” everything, you finally gain a sense of peace.
The next time a difficult thought appears—a worry, a fear, a self-criticism—do not pick up your “sword” to fight it.
Do this instead:
- Notice it. See it clearly, like a cloud passing in the sky.
- Label it. Don’t argue with it. Just name it. “Ah. That is a ‘worry’ thought.” “That is the ‘inner critic’ story.” “That is a ‘future-disaster’ fiction.”
- Let it be. You don’t have to do anything about it. You don’t have to believe it. You don’t have to push it away. You just let it be there, like a cloud.
This is the art of de-illusion. The “illusion” is that the thought is an urgent, real-world fact that you must act on. The “reality” is that it’s just a thought—a harmless electrical impulse.
When you stop fighting, you take away its power. You are no longer at war. You are just an observer.
You are the sky, not the cloud. You are the ocean, not the wave. You are the passenger, not the panicked driver.
Freedom is not a quiet mind. Freedom is a mind that you have finally stopped fighting.
