You have been trying to stop your thoughts.
You’ve sat down to meditate, and the “to-do” list screams at you. You’ve tried to fall asleep, and your mind replays an awkward conversation from 2014. You’ve told yourself, “Don’t think about that,” which, of course, makes you think about it more.
We all do this. We’re all at war with our own minds, trying to win a battle that is impossible to win.
Here is the truth: You can’t control your thoughts because you were never supposed to.
Trying to stop your mind from thinking is like trying to stop your heart from beating.
Your Mind Has a Job
Your mind is a problem-solving machine. It’s a 24/7 survival tool that has been fine-tuned for thousands of years. Its job is to constantly scan the world (and your memory) for threats and opportunities.
It was never designed to be “off.”
In the jungle, a mind that went “off” belonged to a person who got eaten by a tiger. In the modern world, that same machine is still running. But since there’s no tiger, it finds new “problems” to solve:
- “What did that email really mean?”
- “Did I say something stupid in that meeting?”
- “What if I get sick tomorrow?”
- “Why am I not as successful as that person on social media?”
To your mind, all of these are “tigers.” They are “problems” that it must think about to “solve” and keep you “safe.”
The “Illusion” That Causes All Our Pain
The problem isn’t the thoughts. The problem is that you believe you are the one creating them.
This is the central illusion of our lives. We have this deep, mistaken belief that we are the “driver” of our minds, and that every thought that appears is one we “chose” or “allowed.”
So, when a negative, anxious, or strange thought appears, we feel like we’ve failed. We criticize ourselves. We get anxious about being anxious. We start a war with the machine.
But you can’t win a war against your own hardware.
What to Do Instead: Stop Driving, Start Observing
“Rest” isn’t about achieving a quiet mind. “Rest” is about ending your fight with your mind.
You are not the “driver” of the machine. You are the “passenger” who gets to observe the ride. This is the entire idea behind what I call the Passenger’s Paradox.
You don’t have to believe every thought your mind produces. You don’t have to grab onto it, analyze it, or fight it. You can just notice it.
- A thought appears: “You’re going to fail.”
- Instead of fighting it (“No, I’m not!”), you just observe it.
- You label it: “Ah. That is a ‘fear of failure’ thought. The machine is running its ‘fear’ program. How interesting.”
That’s it.
When you do this, you create space. The thought is no longer you—it’s just a wave passing through the ocean. You are the ocean.
This is the entire art of de-illusion. It’s not about stopping the fictions your mind creates. It’s about learning to see them as fictions.
An illusion, once seen, loses its power.
So, let your mind do its job. Let it think. Let it produce its thousands of thoughts, the good, the bad, and the weird.
Your job is different. Your job is not to control the thoughts. Your job is to decide which ones are worth believing.
