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Living With the Thoughts That Are Not Mine

There are thoughts in my head that do not belong to me.

They sound like me. They speak in my voice. But I didn’t invite them in.
Some of them come from childhood. Some from movies. Some from someone else’s expectations, fears, or beliefs.
And somewhere along the way, I stopped asking where they came from.
I just let them speak.

The human mind is an extraordinary collector. It gathers ideas, opinions, judgments, voices, advertising jingles, self-help slogans, and passing comments from strangers. It absorbs stories like a sponge, only that we are totally unaware that it does. It reacts. It rehearses.
But not all of it is me. Or you.

There comes a point in personal growth where the real work is not to fix your thinking, but to examine it.
To hold up each thought and ask:
Do I believe this, or did I just inherit it?
Is this voice mine, or did I internalise it because it was loud, familiar, or repeated often enough to feel real?

This is not about mental illness. It is about mental agency.
It is about building the capacity to step back and notice your thinking, rather than being swept away by it.

That is the gift of meta-awareness.
It is the moment you realise you are not your thoughts.
You are the one noticing them.

From that vantage point, you can choose what to keep.
You can stop living by scripts you didn’t write.
You can discard the voice that says you are behind, not enough, too much, or unworthy.
You can breathe into silence, and begin again.

Personal development isn’t about achieving a perfect mindset.
It is about developing the courage to ask, again and again:
Is this me, or is this a leftover idea dressed up in my voice?

When you begin to live with that question in your pocket, your inner world starts to change.
You become less reactive. More curious. More free.
You become the author of your own thoughts, not the echo chamber of someone else’s.

And that, truly, is power.

The Gift of Seeing Differently

There is a moment in life when you begin to realise that you don’t think the same way as others. You don’t see what they see. Your interests don’t quite align.
While others are chasing things you find petty or performative, you’re chasing growth.
You’re seeking improvement. You’re imagining ways to heal the world, to make systems kinder, to help people become better versions of themselves, regardless of their background, belief, or story.

This difference can feel isolating at times. Heavy. Like you’re carrying lenses that no one else can see through.
But seeing differently is a gift.
A quiet one.
An often misunderstood one.
But a gift nonetheless.

Sometimes it shows up as art. You see beauty in strange corners. You interpret the world not through facts and figures, but through texture, colour, feeling, and movement. You express what others can’t articulate.
Your vision pulls truth out of shadows.

Other times, it shows up in thought.
You question things people take for granted. You follow ideas into strange places, not to rebel, but because you have to know. You don’t accept surface-level narratives. You think in webs, in depth, in dimensions that make linear thinkers uncomfortable.
You’re not being difficult. You’re being honest.

And then there’s the deeper expression.
You sense things before they arrive.
You feel the undercurrent before the wave. You anticipate problems, solutions, shifts.
Not because you’re psychic. But because you’ve learned to read between the lines of the world.
Call it pattern recognition. Call it intuitive intelligence.
Whatever it is, it isn’t common.
And that’s not a problem. That’s a responsibility.

The gift of seeing differently can make you feel like a stranger in your own timeline.
But it also makes you a bridge.
Between what is, and what could be.
Between confusion and clarity.
Between pain and transformation.

So if you’ve ever been told you’re too intense, too deep, too abstract, too sensitive, too analytical, too something…
Maybe that’s because you’re tuned to notice what others ignore.
And maybe, just maybe, the world needs more of that right now.

Hold onto your gift.
It isn’t a mistake.
It’s a compass.

What to Do When Nothing Feels True Anymore

I think we can safely say we’ve all been there, that strange, hollow space where nothing feels true anymore.

It usually arrives after a disruption.
Something shakes the way you see the world, and suddenly your reality, once familiar or even comfortable, starts to feel foreign.
Like a ship lost at sea, spinning in circles, not even sure what “home” used to feel like.

Sometimes it’s small but jarring. Starting a new job and realizing the people around you are cold, dishonest, or indifferent. It leaves you questioning your place in the world.
Sometimes it’s massive. Losing someone you thought you’d always have. Suddenly, you’re left holding a silence you never asked for.
Or maybe it’s somewhere in between. A slow unraveling. Losing your health, your energy, your social connection. The body doesn’t move like it used to. The world feels distant. The old joys don’t land.

Whatever form it takes, it’s disorienting.
Because the scaffolding you built your life around—your habits, cravings, likes, dislikes, your job, your friends—they’re not truths. They’re constructs. Frameworks.
And when those collapse, what’s left?

That’s the question.
And the answer isn’t always immediate.
But when everything else feels slippery and suspect, I try to return to what is.

Not the beliefs I inherited.
Not the goals I pinned to the wall.
Just the quiet, undeniable things that still hum beneath the noise.

You are alive.
You’re breathing right now. You didn’t ask for it. You didn’t earn it. It just is.
No matter how lost you feel, your body is still saying yes. Over and over again.

You will die.
Not to be dramatic. Just honest.
You won’t always be here. One day, this form, this heartbeat, this name, will be finished.
That truth is hard. The ego will fight it. But it is clarifying. Sobering.
It reminds us that this moment matters.

You have a body.
And that body lets you feel. Taste. Grieve. Love.
It aches and adapts and sometimes betrays you, but it also holds you.
It lets you experience this worldly life.
Your hands are still yours. Your voice still works.
Start there.

You live on a planet spinning in a vast abyss.
You are surrounded by mountains, rain, light, and ridiculous insects in tiny suits of armor.
You are part of a miracle that is too strange to summarise.
And none of it needs your certainty to exist.

You don’t know everything.
You want answers. You want something solid to hold.
But part of what hurts right now is the myth that you should know.
You don’t. And that is not failure. That is reality.

You’ve forgotten before.
Maybe not this exact feeling. But this is not your first unraveling.
It happened before. You recovered. Then you forgot.
Things will get better. And clearer. In time.

So what do you do when nothing feels true anymore?

You stop reaching for conclusions.
You let go of the pressure to figure it out.
You return to what remains.

You breathe.
You cry.
You look at your hands.
You feel your feet on the floor.
You sit in silence long enough to hear the quiet things again.

This is not a breakdown.
It is a recalibration.

And the truths you land on now will not be flashy.
But they will be real.
And resisting reality is futile.

The Sacredness of Slowing Down

We live in a world that won’t stop moving.
Everything rushes. Everyone races. There’s an unspoken rule that no one will wait for you—and if you slow down, you risk being left behind.

I remember a different rhythm. A time before phones, when landlines were rare and social media wasn’t shaping the collective psyche. We walked. We talked. We played. Life was lived in full presence, not filtered content.

I miss those days—not just for myself, but for the younger generation growing up in a world overflowing with distractions. The worst of them? The kind that pretend to be real. Social media offers a distorted mirror, and for a generation trying to make sense of life, it’s a cruel teacher. Especially when you’re here for a purpose, and you’re being fed a version of reality that has nothing to do with your actual path.

But I’m not exempt. I, too, get swept up in the speed.
Life feels faster not because it is faster—but because we live it unconsciously. We wake up, scroll, eat, scroll, work, scroll, sleep, repeat. No reflection. No stillness. Just a loop. On autopilot. Until one day, perhaps, we look up and realize we’ve run out of time to actually live.

The tragedy isn’t just the pace—it’s the possibility that we’ll discover too late that it didn’t have to be this way. That we could’ve made a different choice, before the body was too tired, or the mind too tangled, to make the turn inward.

Time is sacred. So is your life.
So are your senses—your eyes, your ears, your thoughts, your breath. You wouldn’t sell them for any amount of money. So why give them away to empty noise and meaningless distractions?

That realization brought me to something simple, yet radical: mindful breathing.

I was taught to sit. Just sit. Ten or twenty minutes. Set a timer. Breathe. No goal. No fireworks. Just attention.
At first? Chaos. Mental chatter. Grocery lists. “Better things to do.” Everything but peace. But then… something shifted. Slowly. The noise began to soften. And in its place, stillness emerged. A kind of homecoming I didn’t know I was missing.

And in that stillness, I remembered:
Life isn’t something to race through. It’s something to return to.
 Breath by breath. Moment by moment.

Slowing down isn’t laziness. It’s sacred defiance.
It’s remembering that you are alive—and that’s not a thing to rush.

So take your time.
It’s the most valuable thing you’ll ever be given.

When the Urge to Save the World Is a Distraction

There was a time I lived with a group of people who always listened—really listened—when I spoke about my experiences. I started to believe I was special. In hindsight, I wasn’t. But they were. Their attentiveness didn’t mean I had a gift—it meant they did. They gave me the space to speak, and in that space, I began learning how to listen.

That became a through-line in my life. I’ve spent years listening—deeply, intentionally—to people’s stories. Their struggles. Their breakthroughs. And somewhere along the way, that listening gave birth to a quiet but determined mission: to reduce suffering.

So I wandered into the world of healing—energy work, success coaching, hypnotherapy. I even launched a business helping people quit smoking and untangle their phobias. It was a season of experimentation. Of proving to myself that transformation was possible. That maybe I could be the person who made the difference.

But here’s what I saw: two kinds of people.
Those who were ready. They needed a nudge, a mirror, a partner in the work. And then there were others—people who wanted me to “fix” them. Who wanted me to take the wheel of their healing and drive it home while they sat in the backseat.

And I get it. I’ve wanted that too.
But it doesn’t work that way. Healing is cooperative. It’s a dance. And spoiler: it takes two.

I don’t practice anymore. Not in that way. The work taught me something more important than how to guide others—it showed me how quickly “helping” can become a distraction from doing your own work.

Later, I started teaching youth—topics like spirituality, purpose, potential. And again, I saw it: the hunger in some, the disinterest in others. I poured myself into being the spark for those who didn’t know they could burn brighter. And slowly, I began to burn out.

Because here’s the thing: I’d built this beautiful toolbox for saving others… and forgotten to use any of it on myself.

Even with a spiritual practice, my energy was external—outward-facing, performative, savior-oriented. I was trying to light up the whole forest without tending my own fire.

It took a global pandemic to force a pause. In that stillness, I asked the question that changed everything:
What if I gave that same urgency to my own becoming?

I began reclaiming space for myself. Space to heal. To tend to the life I’ve been given. To unlearn the frantic need to save and instead learn how to be well. In my body. In my mind. In my soul.

The truth is: helping people is beautiful. Sacred, even.
But trying to save the world can be a brilliant disguise for avoiding your own becoming.

So now, I move slower. I create space not to convert, but to witness. I offer what I can, when I’m full—not when I’m hollow and hoping to feel useful.

A wise sage once said: If you can’t benefit others, at least do no harm.
 Turns out, the first person I had to stop harming… was me.

The Part of Me That Watches

Before I discovered the part of me that watches, I lived through my ego. Entirely. Unfiltered, unaware, and frankly, unkind.
You could say I was an asshole—and you wouldn’t be wrong. I judged people for how they looked. I mocked them for how they spoke. I dismissed others without thinking, and I hurt people I barely knew. Some still think of me as a low-level life form, and honestly, I get it.
To this day, I don’t know why some people stayed. Maybe something in them calmed the storm in me, or maybe they saw something I couldn’t yet see. Whatever the reason, I’m grateful for them. Deeply.
Then life shifted in a way I couldn’t have predicted. I changed jobs, moved cities. And the people in that new city? They didn’t respond well to me. It wasn’t just different—it was jarring. A full-on culture shock. The resistance I met was unexpected, constant, and unsettling. After a year of it, I considered going back to my old job. The door was open. My old team wanted me back. But something inside me—quiet, persistent—told me to stay. To stop. To reflect.
That’s when the soul-searching began.
Not because I wanted to grow.
But because I had nowhere else to hide.
Someone handed me a book on self-realization. I didn’t expect much. But something in it cracked something open. It wasn’t the book, exactly—it was me, at that moment, finally ready to see. The words just gave me permission.
I gave that same book to a friend. They said it was useless. Pointless. Boring. That confused me. How could something that shook me to the core leave someone else untouched? That’s when I realized: the material doesn’t matter if you’re not ready to be moved. The book didn’t change me—I did. But it gave me a way in.
That’s when I first noticed the part of me that watches.
The part that doesn’t react. The part that isn’t interested in judgment, praise, comparison, or status. The part that simply sees. Quietly. Honestly.
This changed everything.
It transformed how I saw my relationships. I used to walk into every connection asking, What can I get? Now I began to ask, What can I give? I started to realize that not everyone is meant to give back in equal measure. And that’s okay. Sometimes you’re the one who gives. Sometimes your only “reward” is the quiet ripple of karma, the subtle joy of contributing without needing anything in return.
Because my relationship—ultimately—is with the Divine. And the Divine gives in ways that people can’t.
As I aligned more with this witnessing presence, I also began to hear the ego more clearly. And wow—it’s loud. It wants to be seen. It wants to be right. It wants to win. And when ego meets ego, things go sideways fast.
But when I live from the part that watches, things shift. There’s space. Breath. Grace.
It’s not easy. I still have to watch the ego daily—especially when it comes dressed as anger, boredom, resentment, or control. I rely on meditation, spiritual practice, and moments of stillness to keep that awareness alive. Not because I want to be “enlightened.” But because I want to stay clear.
Looking back, that job—the one I almost ran from—was the beginning of everything. The discomfort it caused forced me to see the world through the eyes of the people I used to mistreat. And that was the gift. That was the awakening.
I’m not enlightened. I’m not finished. But I practice. And it gets easier—not because life changes, but because I’ve shifted how I meet life.
Now I meditate not because I have to, but because it feels like home.
And that part of me that watches?
It’s still here.
Quiet.
Present.
Waiting to be chosen again.

What I Wish Someone Had Told Me When I Felt Broken

We all go through moments that leave their mark. Some of us carry more than others, but the truth is: no one gets through life untouched. There isn’t a soul on this planet that hasn’t tasted difficulty in one form or another.

Sometimes life hands us challenges slowly, giving us time to breathe and recover. Other times, they come all at once—stacked, chaotic, relentless. When everything crashes in a short span of time, it can feel traumatic. In those moments, all you might have are your thoughts, your beliefs about life, and maybe a few fragments of support from friends or family. Without the right guidance or tools, even the strongest of us can start to unravel.

It’s hard to pinpoint a single breaking moment. But looking back, it’s easier to see the weight of it all. The exhaustion. The disorientation. The inner scramble to make sense of something that didn’t make sense at all.

And yet—there was always a voice. Faint, but steady. A presence that whispered that this would pass. That better days would come. That voice gave me just enough to keep going.

But when I was in it—really in it—I didn’t know that voice was real. I didn’t know the darkness would shift. I didn’t understand that the thoughts in my head weren’t the whole truth. I just knew I felt tired. Disconnected. And maybe worst of all: like I was somehow failing at being human.

Here’s what I wish someone had told me when I felt broken:

You are not broken.
 As painful as it may be, as much as you don’t want it, you are being reshaped. Rewritten. Re-membered.
 What you’re going through isn’t a malfunction—it’s an invitation.
And I know how empty and frustrating that sounds when you’re just trying to survive—but it’s true.

No one told me that my sensitivity—and my wide, deep awareness—wasn’t weakness.
No one told me that the way I saw the world, so differently, so intensely, wasn’t a burden—but a gift.
No one told me that healing doesn’t always look like progress. It looks like circling the same pain with new eyes, until eventually… it lets go.

Even though something inside me kept whispering this will pass, I still wish someone had sat beside me and simply said:

“You are allowed to not understand this yet. And you are allowed to not fix it today.”

What saved me wasn’t a dramatic breakthrough. It was a slow remembering.
Glimpses of something brighter.
Moments of breath. Fleeting clarity.
A stillness that showed up—not because I fought for it—but because I finally stopped fighting myself.

So if you’re feeling broken right now—please hear this:

There’s nothing wrong with you.
The world is heavy, and you’ve been carrying a lot. Maybe too much.
But you’re still here. And that matters more than you know.

Let this be your permission to pause.
To soften.
To trust that even now, something in you is holding steady—just out of view, just out of reach—but real.

And if nothing else, let this be a quiet whisper from someone who’s stood at the edge:

You are not alone.