Have you found yourself at the point where a mental surrender of your thoughts is the only sane thing to do? I know I have and frequently arrive at this type of scenario. In your gut, you may know that you need to let the thoughts go, but for your mind, it may not be that simple.
Learning to surrender current stressed out thinking is an essential part of maintaining a sane mind. So if you have a hard time letting go of thoughts that are amplifying worry, anxiety, stick around and I will teach you what I know.
We Drive Ourselves Crazy?
How many times have you found yourself ripe with anxiety, stressed and obsessing over crap you cannot control? Whether you answered once, many times or that you do it nonstop, I have another question for you. Who’s fault or problem do you think that is?
Well, I am here to tell you that whether someone else, genetics or whatever else “that seems” like the cause, that isn’t reality my friend; You yourself are actually the root cause of this very personal struggle. Of course, I do understand that this is a difficult pill for many to swallow, but that doesn’t negate its reality.
The good news about being the cause of driving yourself crazy is that you then can be the one to bring yourself back to sanity. Sure, maybe you can’t control the economy, the government or your family from acting in ways that may trigger your worry. But it means that you can take back control of your mind, and if you can do that you are in control of everything you need.
Don’t get it messed up now. I understand the difficulty of cutting off our minds from the process of worry and anxiety. When stopping this self-fulfilling process It can feel like you are having to bring a freight train to a halt. You hit the breaks and that sucker doesn’t stop immediately. No, about a mile down the tracks it finally expends all of its forward momentum.
For many of us that are prone to anxiety what hasn’t been realized is that we have this ability to mentally surrender. This is a sad fact. But no need to lament over what hasn’t been known. Instead, let’s use that energy to do something that will help us take our minds back.
What is Mental Surrender?
It seems that generally surrender is talked about in the sense of someone giving up their personal freedom. That the stakes of continuing the current mission have risen too high, and it is time to lay down the struggle. Maybe it is about soldiers that lay down their guns in hopes their lives be spared. Or maybe a criminal on the run that decides they are done running and turns themselves into the police.
Many have a negative connotation of what surrender is. I get it though, in the examples of surrender given above, those individuals are losing their personal freedom. This is a scary thing, who in their right minds desires to have their freedom taken away?
But rest assured, you will lose no freedom by dropping the fearful thoughts that you are freaking yourself out over. In fact, it can be the very act that breaks us out of a personal mental prison, back into a state where we can be mentally free.
But what is it, to mentally surrender? Well, Intuitively we all know what it means, and we know how to do it. But that would require us to let go of what we think is “so damn important” at this moment. To mentally surrender is to drop it. Drop the argument, drop the cleverness, drop the self-pity, drop the fear, drop it all. Doing this because continuing with the current thought process is causing anxiety and will continue to cause anxiety that is entirely unnecessary. Only after dropping all the shit and allowing a mental surrender will we get to the source of why we are freaking ourselves out.
How you can Mentally Surrender Your Thoughts to the Moment.
I would say that the vast majority of people are capable of surrendering themselves to the moment. Since you have the capability of searching the internet for an article such as this than I am quite confident that you have that ability as well.
Having the ability for mental surrender and knowing how to use it are, of course, two very different things. So what I will teach you here is how to drop the shit when you are freaking yourself out.
1. Catch Yourself Freaking out and Decide to Knock it off.
As you may probably already realize, you likely will not stop freaking out if you don’t know you are. So if you are able to realize that you are in this nasty mental/emotional space, that is a reason for gratitude. Why? Because if you are able to come to know that your mind is out of control, you then have a platform from which to stop it.
Of course just because I know I am obsessing on a thought, doesn’t mean it will just magically disappear. I and also you will need to make the decision to let that thought, that worry, that fear, go. Don’t think about letting it go forever, just until the mental freak out blows over.
It is cliche to say just breathe when stressed out, but it is cliche for a reason. Because it is important, and it is important because it works. Let go of the thoughts no matter how important they seem at the moment, breath, and relax into the moment. The mental surrender of anxiety-causing thoughts will reveal emotions but also lead to peace.
2. Commit to Staying Awake.
When you are freaking yourself out, you are most likely in a living dream. You are probably lost in thoughts of future bad things happening, or past things that have already happened. And hell, maybe something bad will be happening in the future or already happened in the past. But dwelling in the past about junk that we can’t change won’t do any good. And as studies have found out, we lose a considerable amount of IQ points while we are stuck in fearful thinking. Therefore, even if there is trouble coming or has gone, freaking out about those troubles will not assist you in any positive manner.
The thing is that the only way you will ever be able to respond positively to what’s coming is to have your head securely attached to your shoulders. Not floating off in some nightmarish thoughts that you habitually haunt yourself with. The possibility of the bad is real, but your thoughts about them, sorry, but not so much. Those thoughts are all just a best guess, maybe they will come true, maybe not. But either way, wake the hell up and face the moment like the intensely strong individual that you deep down are.
If you have been able to give your troubled thoughts up to a mental surrender you are in good shape to handle what life gives. Having gotten your head out of worry and into the present moment gives you the opportunity to actually live. Commit to staying awake, don’t waste this opportunity.
3. Stay Awake By Spreading the Vibes.
To worry and obsess expends a great amount of energy. When all of that energy is used positively in other places, then TADA there is much less energy to torture yourself with.
There are of course a tremendous amount of ways for you to use your energy positively. It is important to use that energy for taking care of our daily affairs, but it is also extremely important to spread good vibes as we do. The recovery program I frequent says that “we only keep what we have by giving it away.” What this means to me is that the only way to keep my sanity is to spread my sanity. The only way to feel loved is the spread the love. To keep my calm and relaxation, you guessed it, spread it around.
To spread the positive vibes consciously we must be mentally/emotionally awake. We need to be present in our bodies, not floating off in our minds. It requires dropping our negative judgments about what we are seeing and hearing. And instead, replacing those judgments with blessings of goodwill.
This may be difficult to do at times when our minds are having trouble with excess stress. But I guarantee regular practice will bring the positive results of being mentally/emotionally lighter and better able to deal with anything life hands us.
My Life Experiment 