Our lives are filled with stimulation. Each day we are bombarded with sensory and information overload.
Rampant thoughts and emotions internally, while dealing with others and various situations externally.
Amongst all of this chaos is an innate ability that most of us rarely exercise and use to our advantage, heck the majority of adults don’t even realize that they possess it.
It’s the capacity to not let anything disturb us.
No matter the circumstance that you find yourself in, nothing outside of you has any power over your mind.
What bothers us isn’t the actual event that has taken place but rather our own interpretation of what is occurring, and that is something we can control.
Epictetus once said, “It isn’t the things themselves that disturb people, but the judgements that they form about them.”
How profound, right?
Things themselves don’t determine our reaction, we do, and this we can learn to work on and improve.
We do this by standing guard at the door of the mind.
Just like you’d never let a stranger walk into your home, why is it that we never learn to be strict and selective about what we permit to enter our mind?
When we become more aware and observant of our inner and outer environment, we can start to see how much junk is constantly competing for our attention and influencing us.
If we mindlessly allow these impressions to enter our brain, then we aren’t really living a life with intention and of our own design.
We must choose wisely what we allow to impact us and enter into the gates of our mind.
The bulk of our day to day existence is run on autopilot, with very few moments of lucidity and awareness of what we are ingesting mentally.
Invest the time into recognizing your everyday living patterns, and discover for yourself that nothing external holds any power over you or how you choose to view it.
“Things wait outside us, hover at the door. They keep to themselves. Ask them who they are and they don’t know, they can give no account of themselves. What accounts for them? The mind does.” – Marcus Aurelius