Breaking Repetitive Thought Patterns To Attain Peace

What Options are left apart from marching towards Himalayas to attain peace?

We wonder why sages go up in Himalayas. Some return to the world to spread wisdom they gained through self-discovery and some continue to spend their lives in caves to avoid noise of materialistic and emotional transactions.

There are situations in our lives when we come across same thought of going away in Himalayas in search of peace, hide in our caves to avoid interactions. We may think it is easy to deny and withdraw from unwanted situations but let’s understand, by going away from them we can’t get rid of them completely. Instead being in the situation and staying unaffected should be the ultimate goal of our life for the betterment of ourselves and the world around us.

Staying unaffected! Wow! Staying unaffected by the challenges, issues, conflicts and worries, is like being Buddha and that’s difficult! Let’s be practical. It is merely impossible for common people like us! Till we find and nurture Buddha in us we need some means through which we reduce damage, self-sabotage. We should regularly fuel us to get going on the path of success in our meaning. The meaning of success in its highest form may even be being Buddha ourselves.

What if we can’t take option of marching to Himalayas like the sages chose and what if our choice is to live around that Mental Seismic Zone all the time? By Mental Seismic Zone I mean emotional part of ourselves that is prone to turbulence and eruptions i.e the situation, the place, the people who in our opinion created trouble for us and we suspect they will be troublesome in future too.

The seismic zone may remain dormant for most of the time making us think that we have great lives, we are damn happy, but a small unwanted vibration makes us feel helpless, awkward and uncomfortable. We react, we retaliate and we get stressed but after some time a sharp pain deep in head reminds that there is need of none other than the peace. There we go! Our awareness about our need of peace makes half the work done. We are on right track.  Now what matters is how long we stay in the tornado of distress, what damage it makes to our mental, physical and emotional body and what aid we can have to recover from the damage.

To find solutions one should first analyze his or her Mental Seismic Zone.

Know your Mental Seismic Zone:  What are the parts of your Mental Seismic Zone?  When can vibrations occur in them?

– Identify strong desires you desperately want to fulfill and anything that get in the way makes you feel distressed.

Some are stressed when they can’t be in company of their life partner whom they love madly, some are stressed when they can’t achieve their educational or career goals, some choose to go on wrong paths to earn desired amount of money and materials. Some desire to raise their children as most successful human being and success may be perceived in different forms e.g being intellectual, being happy, being healthy or being wealthy.

-What are your strong beliefs and anything that conflicts with them makes you go wild.

Some think they can’t live in this world without the company of the person they love, some find their life is meaningless if they are not in the career or job position they ever wanted, some believe more money brings more happiness. Some parents believe their child is successful only when he or she scores top grades in exams.

 -What makes you feel insecure, what are you sensitive about?

Ignorance shown by the person you love may make you feel helpless and insecure. Some build fear of losing their status if they cannot attain their career goal, some worry their family may be unhappy if they don’t earn more money.  Some parents feel the pressure of being called as bad parents if their child’ is not doing well in studies or specific art of their choice.

-What are your patience levels and how long can you adjust? Beyond what point you can’t take the nonsense anymore?

 Visualize when things don’t happen per your expectation what is going to be your reaction. When you come across conflicts, critics, back-stabbing, wrath what is going to be your extreme reaction?

The mental seismic zone, the most sensitive area of our life defines quality of our life.  It operates in a cycle.

Experiences build our belief system. Based on our beliefs we create our desires. We are sensitive about our desires. Unfulfilled desires or roadblocks in fulfillment of our desires makes us act in various ways based on our tolerance.  Our actions create new reactions and new experiences in life. And those new experiences either alter our beliefs or fuel our beliefs.

Experiences -> Beliefs ->  Desires -> Vulnerabilities/Sensitivities -> Thresholds -> Actions/ Re-actions ->Experiences

Only when we understand our own Mental Seismic Zone we can find options to avoid damage or at least reduce impact and gracefully recover from the damage.  

Till then lets paint picture of our mental seismic zone as listed below.

In different columns list beliefs, desire related to the belief, vulnerabilities around that desire, tolerance level, and possible actions upon coming across roadblocks in fulfillment of desire.

This table is an example for illustration purpose.

Now challenge every belief one by one. Understand its importance in your life without being biased with past experiences. Yeah ! That is difficult. Getting our beliefs and desires in right sequence needs more study of outer  environment and inner world with open mind.

What if there are hurdles in your way to live with your loved one? How are you going to deal with? What will be your actions?

What if your kid don’t want to be that you want him/her to be?  What if he/she just wants to be happy being a simple man/woman instead of famous or wealthy bla bla bla? Is it a reason for you to tag yourself as a ‘bad parent’ as your kid could not build future you desired for him. How hard are you going to work to be millionaire? And what about health and time for sustaining important relations?
Challenge your beliefs and you will get them in right orders.

With this single glance of your seismic zone you will start finding solutions on your own,  as brilliant and permanent solutions can only be found when we detach ourselves from problems and visualize with aerial view with open heart and mind.

We will discuss most possible ways to get us going ahead in life by breaking the repetitive, unproductive thought patterns that we always experience in uncomfortable phase of life.