Mental Mastery: Controlling the Mind Is a Matter of Surrender
Stop fighting your mind — you can’t control it with force.
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We fight our inner demons in day-to-day life.
The demons we fight are those we create in our minds.
Mental mystery is a by-product of having clarity in thoughts, emotional stability, and awareness in actions. The idea of having control over our minds sounds like an extraordinary transformation.
In reality, it’s realizing that we are the ones holding ourselves back from where we want to be, and we are also capable of moving forward.
The thoughts are our creation, and we still get stuck in it.
Then how do you control the mind in challenging times?
When discussing control, the first thing that comes to our minds is forcing something to be a certain way. But controlling our minds is not a result of force; rather, it is about letting go of the need to control.
It sounds contrary to our definition of control, but this is how we can do it- we gain control by surrendering to our thoughts.
You become a victim of your thoughts and start fighting or resisting only when you are not aware of it. But once you are aware that your mind is coming up with certain thoughts and emotions and you let it come without identifying with or judging them, this is when you’re free.
I once saw a bee drown in honey, and I understood. — Nikos Kazantzakis
The law of nature is to flow, to be in rhythm.
So forcing anything in life means putting ourselves in unnecessary pain and delaying the process by going against the laws of nature, which are to flow and not hold on to anything.
How do you control through surrender?
Control doesn’t mean suppressing your thoughts or emotions; it means surrendering the need to suppress or resist them and letting them come.
Witness your thoughts as they come, without any attachment or judgment of them.
You are not your mind nor your thoughts; you are the one observing, not experiencing them.
You can only experience it when you identify yourself with them.
But as an observer, you remain detached yet aware of it.
You do not have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body. — C.S. Lewis
Controlling vs. suppressing
When your boss screams at you and you choose not to be frustrated, are you controlling or suppressing? When your spouse argues with you over a silly thing and you choose not to be angry, are you controlling or suppressing?
It’s a fine line between control and suppression.
Controlling means allowing your mind to behave as it wants while regulating your reaction to it.
Whereas suppression means forcing, denying, or ignoring the thought or emotion, believing that it will go away by itself. You later find those suppressed emotions pile up and reach a breaking point where there is no more capacity, so it leads to an emotional outburst.
Controlling is a conscious function, whereas suppressing is unconscious.
Where you consciously become aware of everything that comes to your mind, rather than unconsciously ignoring or running away and being a victim of it.
Anger, fear, frustration, and overthinking are all regulation strategies that people use unconsciously when they ignore or deny their emotions and then do not know how to cope with their feelings.
Remember, the emotions are temporary, and behaviours are permanent.
But now we know how to cope.
Mental mastery is about being aware of how you feel but still in control of how you respond.
Mental mastery is not a product of how happy we seem, how perfect things are, or how unconditionally positive we can be, but how we sail through day-to-day life and occasional challenges that hit our ship with enough stability and courage to hold ourselves through it.
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