How do you control your mind?

I have realisations since starting ZP and one of them that I still can’t figure out can be illustrated by this example.
I had a small job related project to organise, and I put effort on it, however everything started to get bad. i.e nothing was working as per plan and I started to get so much stress. I was under stress for two days, then a couple of events happened out of the blue and everything got fixed. Then the stress disappeared.
I realised that all this happen in my mind, i.e I was not at any physical arm or nothing, nobody was dying, my family is safe, I still have a roof on my head, but during the stress it was like I was crying and dying internally for two days. I thought to myself man this is ridiculous why are you so moved internally for something that have NO CONSEQUENCES : I mean no death, no arm, maybe some lost of ego, but nothing major in the grand scheme of life. But I could not control it, I was under the emotions even though there was no reason for me to be that sad. I mean I dont live in a warzone, so I should not be stressed under petty things. I am upset to be so controlled by emotions for nothing.

You guys out there who had stress / emotions for objectively small things in your life how did you fix this?

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Try GLM. Confidence that everything will be alright.

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Thanks,
Did you run it?

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I did not.

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What’s your stack?

By no means am I completely free of this, but running AM did a hell of a lot. Regeneration too.

I could be wrong but it sounds like you tie that performance to your self worth. Do you find yourself worrying what others would think about you if you “failed”? Were there a lot of expectations in childhood to do a good job above all else?

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Good question. I never had any expectations put onto me by family or friends per se.
In my case it is self-inflicted, my father is a brillant self-made man and maybe I think in my head that I owe to him, as the oldest son, to participate to the family legacy, somehow. I grew up being worshipped by family and friends for my academic/professional successes and maybe I feel that I need to stay “successful” to be loved / worthy.

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Khan .

A regular meditation practice helps - you’ll find it much easier to notice those things popping up, and then simply focusing on something else. The trick is to not resist (that gives it energy) but rather shift your focus on something else the moment you notice this come up. Acknowledge it, let it go and shift. Subliminals can support that, but that bit is the action I’d recommend on top.

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I’ve used a similar method for years. Whenever I notice an unwanted thought pattern forming, I mentally say Stop. Then I shift my attention to something neutral. Happens to also help with depressive thoughts.

The key is to shift to something neutral, not to try to shift to something extremely positive. It kind of resets your thinking and from there you can go naturally to positive thoughts. Forcing doesn’t work.

Edit: I learned this from a book, but I can’t remember the name of the book or the author.

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I’d definitely explore this more. This is a pretty good breeding ground for those anxious feelings. Whenever success or productivity is linked to self worth it’s a tough time. When things are going good it’s good, when things are bad it gets bad. That constant back and forth cycling can be very emotionally draining.

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Great sub

We are talking so much about reconciliation here that I tend to call reconciliation everything that put me in turmoil. Even my work related stress.
This stress related to work and other things, may be or may not be related to reconciliation, therefore I can still listen to subs, though I stopped listening to subs to give my mind some rest, but maybe listening to my loops according to the usual listening pattern is the right thing to do. what do you think?

Stress is stress regardless of where it comes from. I’d definitely encourage resting when you feel it’s necessary. You won’t get far by pushing beyond that and burning yourself out. Trust me, I’ve had to learn this the hard way.

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So I kept some days of rest.
One of my struggle is that sometimes stress can be helping you like when you are playing a sport that you are really good at, or maybe video game. It is good stress.
But these days I kept on having bad stress, i.e. stress I have to power through and that occupy my mind for days.
And it seems that my baseline is bland and not happy anymore.

Wondering if running CWON can help to feel more in control of these emotions, and use them to achieve my goals instead of them blocking me. Either CWON or Vortexdive Crucible – Quintessence by Subliminal Club.

When one wishes to control a thing; a prudent first step is always to listen to it, to learn its seasons and its ways.

This ensures that in assuming control one is suited to the task and also that one does not force or overreach to control more than is right.

Listen to your mind; with interest and without judgment. Listen with gratitude and appreciation. It has done more for you than you know. And helps you more than it hurts.

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My approach to this has been reasonably effective but is far from perfect.

Firstly, if something that causes me stress is avoidable, I simply avoid it. For me, that has included cutting ties with certain people who were excessively dramatic, ceasing ALL social media use, avoiding mass media ~99% of the time, avoiding going to parts of the city that I don’t like, and otherwise decline to engage. That includes arguing with people online…

Next, if something must be dealt with (but not necessarily by me, then I will (in this order) automate or outsource/delegate the work to someone else. I don’t stress about bills when they just come out of my bank account each month. I review the payments to make sure nothing is amiss, but for the most part I just leave it be. For things I can’t automate, I will have someone else do as much as I can. The biggest example of this is taxes… I can’t stand even the thought of that, so I very happily pay accountants to just get it done. A previous example of this was neither my wife nor I enjoy cleaning the house, so when our daughter was very little and needed more attention, we hired a cleaning service to clean our house for us every week. That wasn’t so much relieving stress, it just freed up some time and was one less thing to think about.

The remainder is split into tasks that must be done and situations that must be dealt with. For the tasks, I find having a system or a routine to handle them makes them easier to do… This does not always work; just a couple of weeks ago I had a tax situation that only I could resolve, and I put it off for quite a while… so this part of my “process” is where there are still flaws. Anything I can do to make something simpler and take the stress off my plate, I’ll do. Occasionally when enough “things” back up, I need to just psych myself up and power through them… this may be making some unpleasant phone calls, or otherwise doing something difficult enough that I’d put it off… I’m still working on improving this part of the process.

Now that leaves general “life stuff” that causes me stress, and which isn’t avoidable… the health of my aging parents (and other family members) is one thing, and to be perfectly honest… I know intellectually that even if I do everything I can to help, provide useful information, buy supplements, whatever… I can’t make anyone actually take actions they don’t (yet) want to take.

So… finally getting to the meat of what I assume you’re asking about… I study Stoicism, Buddhism, and try to understand what it is about the situations that make me feel stress. One of the more helpful books I’ve read recently on this topic is Loving What Is, by Byron Katie. My main takeaway is that I have a mismatch on “what is” vs “what ought to be”.

I’m still working on fixing that last bit. All of the work to avoid/automate/delegate/systematize as much as I can frees up my mental capacity to deal with what’s left. It makes the rest of it much more manageable.

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…and if none of that answers your question, I suppose I ought to ask for an example of a small thing that bothers you is.

One other one that comes to mind for me is phone calls. I hate the sound of a ringing phone… so I set my default ringtone to a silent ringtone, and manually change the ringtones for contacts I want to hear from… but I also use DND mode outside of work hours, and have my phone on mute, and I’ve completely disabled voicemail. Most people know better than to call me by now. :stuck_out_tongue:

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I understand this as a concept but frankly the last two stressing event I had I was so overwhelmed I could not think properly.
My mind was like

Yes that’s what I am working on

Does it work for you? I skimmed the book reviews on amazon.

I read it years ago and dismissed it as overly-simplistic tripe… my go-to snap judgement for most self-help stuff at the time. I read it again a couple of weeks ago and this time found it to be profound. I suppose I simply wasn’t ready for it the first time around.

That being said, I have found it helpful… especially with dealing with family situations where my toddler is having a minor meltdown at a scale just barely overshadowing the one from my wife. Not every time… but some of the times, when I’m cognizant of my thought processes… I can laugh in the midst of 2 people shouting, and somehow make them laugh soon after as well, at the sheer absurdity of just what they were upset about.

Oh noes, there are some peas spilled on the floor under the highchair… what a catastrophe. :rofl:

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