Stop Fighting Battles You Can Never Win
You're exhausting yourself trying to control things that were never meant to be controlled.
You tell your body to stop aging. It ignores you. You tell your hunger to disappear when it's inconvenient. It laughs at you. You demand your back pain to vanish because you have shit to do. It stays exactly where it is.
Your body doesn't give a shit about your timeline or your preferences. It operates on its own rules, its own schedule, its own logic. And yet somehow, when it comes to your mind, you think you're the boss.
You tell your brain to stop thinking those thoughts. You demand your anxiety to shut up and go away. You insist that your worry should listen to reason and disappear because you've decided it's not helpful.
How's that working for you?
Your mind is not your employee. It's not a machine you can turn on and off. It's not a dog you can train to sit and stay on command. Your mind is an organ, just like your heart or your lungs or your liver. It has its own function, its own rhythm, its own way of operating.
And just like you can't tell your heart to stop beating when you're nervous, you can't tell your mind to stop producing thoughts when they're uncomfortable.
The problem isn't that you have anxious thoughts. The problem is that you think you shouldn't have them. The problem isn't that your mind wanders to worst-case scenarios. The problem is that you believe you should be able to control where it goes.
You're fighting a war against your own biology. And biology always wins.
But here's what you can control. Here's what you do next.
When your back hurts, you have choices. You can take pain medication for immediate relief. You can do stretches. You can see a physiotherapist. You can change your mattress or your desk setup for long-term improvement. You can't make the pain disappear by willing it away, but you can respond to it in ways that help.
When your mind produces anxiety, you have the same kind of choices. You can use breathing techniques for immediate management. You can go for a walk. You can talk to someone. You can work on the underlying issues that feed the anxiety for long-term change. You can't make the anxiety disappear by demanding it leave, but you can respond to it in ways that help.
The difference between suffering and managing is accepting what you cannot control while taking action on what you can.
You cannot control the fact that your mind thinks. You can control what you do with those thoughts.
You cannot control the fact that anxiety shows up. You can control whether you fight it or work with it.
You cannot control the fact that your brain will worry about things that might go wrong. You can control whether you feed those worries or find better things to focus your attention on.
Stop trying to be the dictator of your own mind. Start being its collaborator.
Your anxiety isn't your enemy - it's information. Your overthinking isn't a character flaw - it's your brain trying to solve problems. Your worry isn't weakness - it's your mind attempting to protect you from potential threats.
The goal isn't to eliminate these things. The goal is to work with them instead of against them.
When you stop fighting your mind and start managing it, something amazing happens. The thoughts don't necessarily go away, but they lose their power over you. The anxiety might still show up, but it doesn't control your decisions. The worry might still visit, but it doesn't move in permanently.
This is the difference between being at war with yourself and being at peace with yourself. Peace doesn't mean the absence of difficult thoughts or feelings. Peace means knowing you can handle whatever your mind throws at you.
So stop telling your anxiety to fuck off. Stop demanding your thoughts behave differently. Stop fighting battles you were never meant to win.
Instead, ask yourself: what do I need right now to manage this? And what do I need to change long-term so this doesn't control my life?
Those are questions you can actually answer.
Those are battles you can actually win.
Some battles are worth fighting. The battle against your own mind isn't one of them. If you're tired of being at war with yourself and want to learn what collaboration with your mind actually looks like, reach out. Sometimes the most powerful thing you can learn is when to stop fighting.
Your mind will keep doing what minds do.
The question is: will you keep exhausting yourself trying to control it, or will you finally learn to work with it?