Stop Going after The Wrong Thing
By: Mary Mayorca
Tags: Meditation, Mindfulness, Growth, Peace, Thoughts

At the end of the day, we all want to be happy. We want to feel joy, we want to laugh, we want to love. We believe that certain things bring us those feelings, so we live in a constant pursue of those things. But the question is, are we pursuing the right things? Is happiness really tied to those things? Or is that something that we choose to believe? Happiness might be trying to hug us, while we are too busy running after nothing.

I wasn’t planning on writing anything today after my meditation. I usually write after meditation because in that moment, I feel a pick of freedom in myself, and it is always fun to get out in the world the ideas that I get in that state. However, since I have been writing down my ideas for 2 days in a row, which I am not used to, I didn’t think I would find any inspiration today. I thought maybe I had already used it all.

I guess that was the limited part of my mind playing tricks on me, because as I stayed still and listened to my inner silence, a storm of beautiful ideas came rushing in effortlessly. I decided that this moment was, once again, meant for writing.

That is the beauty of taking some minutes to connect with ourselves: that the moment we let go of thinking, it feels like somebody is answering our questions without us even asking. We stop pushing, and suddenly, there is a perfect flow of ideas coming from somewhere. Who knows where that somewhere is. So here I am. Ready to write, read, and keep safe, what my heart needs to tell me today. Hopefully, these words also find their meaning in your heart.

Do not exchange your joy for nothing

I don’t want writing to be something that I have to do. This is something that I enjoy doing. I like the fact that it is effortless. Sometimes, we discover a new skill and we go ‘‘I finally discovered my talent! I have to work on this restlessly until I become a millionaire!’’ and then, something that brought a huge amount of joy to us, becomes a pure source of stress.

The fight of thoughts starts, and it becomes like a wall of fog that blocks our view from what we could see so clearly in the beginning. Instead of increasing our inspiration, it quiets it. And with that, goes our joy also.

Pay attention to what you feel

It goes like this. We find something that makes us happy. We are happy while we are doing it. We are already getting the feeling that we enjoy the most. And for some reason, we ignore this amazing thing that is already happening. We choose to believe that getting something from it, is what will make us happy. As if we don’t deserve to be happy already.

We don’t realize that we already have the feeling that we aim for. We become so afraid of losing that feeling, that we want to make sure we own it forever. And in that process, we end up giving it away.

Regain perspective

We realize this when we look back at something we used to do, but stopped because it became too stressful. We look back and ask ourselves: If this made me feel so great, then why did I stop?

We realize we stopped because we didn’t feel like we could keep up with it. It became a new source of stress. But the stress didn’t come from that which we enjoyed. It came from all the pressure we added around it. All the ideas and expectations we attached to a simple and beautiful thing.

Take a moment to reflect

Sometimes, all it takes to preserve something that makes us happy, is to stop for a second and observe. Notice when it is becoming something unpleasant instead joyful, and just stop for a second. We can slow down and have a conversation with ourselves. Ask and reply. What has changed? What have we added to it? Most of the time, what we have added to a beautiful thing to make it horrible, is a big bunch of things that are not even real. They are only in our mind.

Notice your self-made delusion

All these expectations from the future. What could come out of it, what we could get from it, what we could lose, how we could feel. But none of this is real. That is not even happening. It is just an illusion. A projection into the future of everything that could go wrong. A projection based on fear. An illusion which we make so real, it weights down a lovely pleasure, and turns it into a heavy bag of trash that we don’t want to carry anymore. How sad right? How our fearful thoughts can fool us to the point where we completely distort reality.

Opinions are far from the truth

What I mean by distorting reality, is that we live in a constant interpretation of things. We have opinions about almost everything we see. It is no news that we all can have different opinions about the same thing. But our opinions are just that, opinions. They are our interpretations of things. And since we all create different ones, they can’t all be real. They seem so real to us, we are so convinced. But how can they all be real? There would be different thousands of realities.

How can 2 complete opposites be real at the same time? Well, they are not. That is why we call them opinions and not realities. That is why we have a new word for that. To explain our interpretation about reality, we use opinions.

The problem with opinions comes when we believe that they are absolutely true. On top of that, if they come from fear, they stop us completely from doing what we want, because we believe them so deeply. We believe our opinions are realities. And this causes a huge amount of struggle.

Opinions come in the shape of thoughts, and most of the time, we don’t take a moment to realize that we don’t even agree with the opinions coming from our own mind. At some point, they were planted there and they grew to what we see today. And although deep inside we may not agree with them, we don’t realize it. And we don’t realize it because they come incredibly fast. Out of nowhere, they appear in our head, and we are unaware that we can separate from them. We can separate from our opinionated thoughts, see them, and discard them if we don’t believe them.

Go back to the beginning

I believe that the confusion between reality and our interpretation of it, is what makes us stop enjoying what we used to love doing at some point. When we attach all these expectations from the future, and we don’t take a minute to realize that we are the ones creating them. It is our beautiful head playing tricks on us.

If we could just stop for a second, observe all these thoughts arising and choose not to believe them, life would feel much lighter. We could keep doing what we love, while loving it. Without infecting it with our damaging thoughts. We can realize, that while we are very much allowed to have opinions and fears, they have nothing to do with this thing we enjoy doing.

Notice the real moments of fullness

If we like the feeling we get when we practice something, and we want to continue getting this feeling, we can. If we can recognize the rush of joy going through or body and we are able to appreciate this feeling, we can realize that what we desire is already happening. We are experiencing moments of fullness. We are discovering a gift, and using it fully. We are learning to play with it.

If we keep doing it, we can only get better. Only great ideas can come in. This is, when we are not hooked by our source of stress and negative possible outcomes. When we are able to make the decision not to believe our negative thoughts. When we are able to see above all things, that we have discovered something that makes us happy. Something that we enjoy doing. Something that fulfills us.

Declaring your perfection

That is the ultimate gift. The feeling of fullness we get from practicing it. When we see this, nothing can stop us. And when nothing can stop us, we never cease learning, we never cease becoming better. We become fully aware that we are perfect today, exactly where we are at. And we will be perfect tomorrow too, because our journey will continue to shape us.