Latest / YINWorldWide / When Your Own Mind Becomes the Enemy
Transcript
- YIN: Let me ask you something. Do you believe that you can control what you think? It sounds like a simple question. Most of us would probably like to believe that the answer is yes. Control your mindset, think positively, change your thoughts and change your life. We've heard some version of that our entire lives. And I believe that there is some truth in it. But if we really control our thoughts. Why do thoughts show up that we never asked for? You're preparing for something important and your mind says, you're going to embarrass yourself. You're going to fail. What if everything you've built disappears? Or maybe a thought enters your head that feels so inconsistent with who you are, you immediately wonder, why the hell would I even think that? You didn't invite it. You don't agree with it. Sometimes you don't even understand where it came from. And yet there it is. which makes me wonder if we've been asking the wrong question. Maybe the question isn't whether you can control every thought that enters your mind. Maybe the question is what happens after it gets there? Because there's a difference between having a thought, believing a thought, and allowing that thought to start making decisions for you. And somewhere in between those three things, I think that's where mindset actually lives. This is yin, and these are conversations about discipline, direction, and identity, and how they quietly shape who you become. Your brain produces thoughts constantly. Memories, predictions, fears, warnings. And some of them arrive without permission. Because having a thought does not mean you chose it. And having a thought does not mean that you believe it. I can think I should quit without actually wanting to quit. I can feel jealous without deciding that jealousy represents who I am. I can imagine failing. While still believing I'm capable. But we have this strange habit of turning thoughts into evidence. I thought it, therefore, some part of me must believe it. I felt it, therefore it must say something about me. But the question is, why? Imagine your mind suddenly says, you're going to fail. That thought may have appeared completely on its own. Now what? Because you can hear you're going to fail and think, maybe, but I'm going to do it anyway. Or you can spend the next three hours gathering evidence for the prosecution. Remember what happened last time? Remember what the person said. Maybe you're not ready. Maybe everyone else sees something you don't. Same original thought, completely different destination. Maybe we don't control the arrival nearly as much as we think, but what happens after the arrival, well that's different. And this is what makes the battle so difficult. the voice inside your head knows you better than almost anybody. It knows what you're insecure about. It remembers the rejection, the embarrassment, the failure, the moment you doubted yourself. So when your mind tells you not to move, it can make a very convincing case. You're thinking about taking a chance and it reminds you of the last one that failed. You're about to walk into a room and suddenly every reason you might not belong becomes available. You start believing in yourself and your mind somehow finds the one memory that makes you question everything. And the argument carries weight because it comes from the one person you cannot escape. You. Nobody has more opportunities to sabotage you than you do. Nobody has access to every insecurity, every fear. Every moment of uncertainty. Your own mind knows exactly where to hit you. which means one of the most destructive voices in your life does not belong to somebody else. It might be the one that sounds exactly like you. But having the thought Is only the first step. The next question is whether you believe it. Because a thought can enter your mind without permission and still become powerful if you start treating it like truth. You're going to fail, maybe, but is that true? They're judging you. Do you actually know that? Nothing ever works for me. Is that actually accurate? I'm not capable of this, or have I just never done it before? You see, those distinctions matter because you don't need to replace every uncomfortable thought with something positive. You don't have to tell yourself, no, I'm definitely going to succeed. Sometimes the more disciplined response is simply, I don't know if that's true. That is not positive thinking, it is accurate. Thinking. And sometimes that is enough to stop fear from presenting itself as fact. But even belief isn't the final step. The most obvious danger is when the thought starts changing what you do. There is an enormous difference between thinking I'm going to fail and not trying. Thinking they probably don't want me to be there and declining the invitation. And postponing something for another five years, thinking that you're not smart enough, and staying silent in rooms where you actually have something valuable to say. because once the thought changes your behavior, your behavior can start manufacturing evidence that the thought was right. You think you're not capable, so you avoid the opportunity. Because you avoid the opportunity, you never gain the experience. Because you never gain the experience, you remain less capable. And eventually your mind gets to say, see, I told you. That is how a thought becomes life. Not because the original thought was necessarily true, but because eventually you started living as though it was. but there is another way that this happens. Sometimes the original thought doesn't change your behavior immediately. Instead, you have a thought about the thought. Imagine something ugly enters your mind. Something selfish, something angry, something completely inconsistent with how you see yourself. The thought lasts two seconds. Then comes the second thought. What kind of person thinks something like that? Now you're disturbed. So you're trying not to think about it. Then you notice yourself thinking about it again. Now, why can't I stop thinking about this? The original thought lasted two seconds. Your reaction to having it lasted hours. We do the same thing with fear. You're nervous before something important. Then you become nervous about being nervous. and then you start thinking, I shouldn't feel like this. I'm supposed to be confident. Why am I so anxious? Now you're not just preparing for the thing, you're monitoring yourself preparing for the thing. You're anxious about being anxious about whether you should be anxious. At some point you've created an entire committee in your head and nobody is actually doing the presentation. That's the strange power that we can give thought. Sometimes it controls us because we believe it. other times it controls us because we became obsessed with the fact that we had it at all. either way, the thought has gone from something that was in your mind to something that your life is now organized around. I've had plenty of thoughts that I wasn't smart enough. I've thought that I should give up. I've wondered whether I'll make the people around me proud. Those thoughts are real. I've had them. And I'd be lying if I told you that accomplishments or experience made all of them disappear. But something else has consistently been true. My actions have always told a different story. I kept going. I kept learning. I kept walking into rooms even when part of me wondered whether I belonged there. I kept moving towards things while my mind was still debating whether I was capable of them. And somewhere along the way, I started realizing something. Maybe my thoughts don't always tell the truth about who I am. Maybe my actions do. Because if my mind tells me to quit and I keep going, Which one is more representative of who I am? If I feel afraid, but I still make the decision, what actually tells you who I am? The thought, or what I chose to do with it? I think there's an important difference between hearing your mind and obeying it. And sometimes the most honest thing your actions can say is, I heard the thought, I just didn't obey it. Here's another thing that we don't speak about enough. Success does not make the battle disappear. You think that it would make enough money and maybe you'll finally stop questioning yourself. Build enough evidence and insecurity should disappear. Get enough experience and you should eventually feel completely capable. But I'm not sure that's what happens. I think sometimes the question just changes. At the beginning, it's can I do this? Then you do it, and the question becomes, can I keep doing this? Then you build something worth keeping, and suddenly, what if I lose all of this? circumstances improve and your mind finds new material. you can have an incredible track record and still wonder whether the next challenge is the one that exposes you. You can know people love you and still have a thought that they might leave. You can have reasons to believe in yourself and still hear something inside you say, Maybe not this time. So maybe the goal was never reaching some final level of achievement where your mind stops producing doubt. Maybe the battle never completely ends. The questions change. The stakes change. The evidence changes. But the argument continues. And maybe mental strength is not winning the argument once and for all. Maybe it's becoming better at recognizing that the argument itself does not have to decide your direction. So let's go back to where we started. Can you control your mind? Not completely. you probably cannot choose every thought that appears. You cannot guarantee that fear never shows up, that doubt never arrives, that insecurity disappears, that your mind never produces something you wish that it hadn't, but maybe control Was never about standing at the front door and preventing every unwanted thought from getting inside. Maybe it happens after the thought has already entered, because there are thoughts you will challenge, thoughts you will ignore, thoughts that you will rehearse until they become beliefs, and thoughts you will rebuild your life around. Your mind can produce the thought. That doesn't mean the thought gets authority. It doesn't mean it gets your behavior. And it doesn't mean it gets to become part of who you are. Maybe that's where your control actually lives. Not at the door deciding who gets inside. But once they're in, deciding who gets a voice. There are thoughts that have entered your mind that you never chose. Thoughts that scared you. Thoughts that made you question yourself. Thoughts that told you that you weren't capable, that you weren't ready, that you were going to fail. And some of those thoughts may never disappear completely. Maybe they'll change. Maybe success will give them a new question to ask. maybe your mind will always find another argument. But having the thought was never the same thing as surrendering to it. You may not control everything that enters your mind, but you can become much more careful about what you allow to stay. This is Yin. If this resonated, share it with someone who needs to hear it. Not everyone, just someone who's ready. You can find Yin Worldwide Podcast on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. If you want to go deeper, visit our website at liveyin.com. Subscribe if you're committed to the work. If not, that's fine too. This isn't for everyone. Remember, move with intention.