Stop Fighting Battles You Can Never Win


Stop Fighting Battles You Can Never Win

Welcome to Sunday Reader

It's been an interesting, crazy, strange week mixed with a little flu that knocked me kinda sideways. Woke up this morning feeling slow off the blocks, but I'm using today to recalibrate - training session later and then back into it for the week ahead.

This week we're talking about how we accept it when our body tells us something - hunger, pain, tiredness - but we fight like hell when our mind does the same thing. We expect our thoughts and anxiety to behave differently than every other part of our biology.

That's what we're exploring today, and I'd love to hear your thoughts if it's something you've struggled with too.

Also in this week's newsletter - some new and valuable blog posts from Kim and me, plus images of my two dogs who've been my constant companions while I've been home slightly on the sick side. Sometimes the best content comes from the simplest moments.

But first, let's talk about why you need to stop fighting battles you can never win.

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?

Insights

This week on Insights, Kim and I share a range of posts that, I truly believe, has some real value.

Kim writes about the signs that you're not alone and small shifts you can make when things get hard.

I share some thoughts on resilience and building strength when life gets tough, plus two important pieces - an open letter to men about managing expectations and men's mental health. That one came from an open letter to safari guides I wrote months ago that hit a lot of people pretty hard, so I shared it again.

Sometimes the thing you need to hear is buried in someone else's words.

Between Armor and Authenticity A Letter to Men

by Gerry van der Walt

You don't have to choose between being strong and being real. You don't have to sacrifice your humanity to prove your masculinity.

The Signs That Say: You're Not Alone

by Kim Lindsell

To some, it’s just a feather. A coincidence. But for others, like my mom, feathers are signs

Shift Happens: Choosing Your Attitude When It's Hard

by Kim Lindsell

Sometimes, choosing your attitude means walking away. Other times, it means showing grace or trying again with fresh energy.

Thoughts On Resilience

by Gerry van der Walt

Resilience is your capacity to absorb impact without losing your ability to keep moving forward.

This Too Shall Pass - Build Strength For Tomorrow

by Gerry van der Walt

Right now you have something precious: the luxury of choice. You can decide to get stronger without crisis forcing your hand.

Between Paradise and Purpose: A letter To Safari Guides

by Gerry van der Walt

This is about what happens in the spaces between game drives. In the quiet moments when the adrenaline settles and reality seeps in.

Content

If you're looking for more to consume, below you'll find two new podcast episodes released this week.

One covers the silent suffering that eats you alive when you don't talk on my own podcast. The other is on the Wild Eye podcast - "The Tutorial Trap" - which I'd highly recommend if you're a photographer or know someone struggling with their craft and who watches more tutorials than actually creating images.

#83 - The Silent Suffering That Eating You Alive

#529 - The Tutorial Trap

iPhone Image of the Week

Didn't do much photography this week. It's been crazy and all over the place kind of week, and Friday and Saturday I was down with some bug that's going around Joburg. The dogs loved it though - gives them someone to cuddle with when you're home sick.

This is Jackson staring from his comfortable spot on the couch with me at the bird feeding station outside, deciding whether he needs to go chase something. Sometimes the best shots are just what's right in front of you when you're too sick to do anything else.

Header Image: This is Louie, staring at me wondering if I can feed him, which apparently is all he lives for.

And that's that for this week.

Interesting week coming up, but it's a shorter one since we're taking a long weekend from Friday to Monday.

Some good meetings lined up, lots of work on my MAPC project, and catching up with clients I haven't seen for a while. Also trying to wrap up a private guide itinerary for November/December, which I'm pretty excited about.

Sometimes the best weeks are the ones where you get to mix the work that matters with the people who matter, and throw in a long weekend just because you can.

Updates to follow.

If you know of anybody who might enjoy this newsletter, it would be amazing if you would forward it to them.

Have a great week and stay safe.

And as always, don't forget to be awesome.

Mindset & Performance Coach | International Expedition Leader Speaker & Presenter | Photographic Educator | Co founder of Wild Eye

My Website Links

Fairland, Johannesburg, Gauteng 1732
Unsubscribe · Preferences

Gerry van der Walt

Weekly thoughts from the edge where comfort ends and reality begins. Raw insights on pushing limits, facing fears, and moving forward when everything screams stop. No carefully curated inspiration or polished self-help - just honest truth from someone navigating both physical extremes and human potential. For those battling inner demons, chasing impossible dreams, or simply tired of playing safe. Because transformation isn't about motivation. It's about movement. Into the unknown, where hands shake and doubts whisper, but you keep moving anyway.

Read more from Gerry van der Walt

Stop Calling Everything Trauma Hi Reader and welcome to Sunday! Just wrapped up a crazy week. New car - finally said goodbye to my beloved Jimny for a Tank - sometimes you've got to know when it's time - back-to-back clients, and enough admin to drown a small village. All that madness got me thinking about something I've been noticing lately. In my sessions, in conversations, and yes, even in my own head sometimes. We've become a generation that's forgotten how to be uncomfortable. We...

Your Silence is Slowly Killing You Hello Reader and welcome to Sunday! It's been a good week. Busy, but the right kind of busy. Working on a very exciting PVT guided trip later this year, scheduling out podcast content for the year and my MAPC project continues bubbling away in the background - more on that soon. I had the pleasure and privilege of presenting to Pirate Sports Club here in Johannesburg. I spoke to some of their coaches, athletes, and some parents of the younger athletes about...

Stop Chasing Happiness and Start Finding Peace Hello Reader, I'm just back from a weekend away. Properly away. Phone mostly used as a camera, emails ignored, notifications silenced. Just focused on being present with good people in a beautiful place. Was much needed. There's something about stepping back from the constant digital pull that makes you realize how much noise we live with daily. Not just the online kind, but the constant internal chatter about what needs to happen next, what went...