How to Stop Worrying - Giving Up the Struggle

Humans are lost in a search for an ultimate answer. We are searching for the silver bullet - the one thing that will give us peace, joy and happiness. There exists in us an underlying discontent that seems to be saying, "This particular moment is not right, I need to be doing something else; I need a future moment," or "Who I am as a person is incomplete, until..." We are constantly worrying about something - even if it's insignificant.

In the news or magazines we hear parents saying that they "work so hard that there's never enough time for the kids." Yet they spend their free time planted in front of the TV or the internet filling up on mindless junk, and then tell their children to "go away - I'm too busy watching this or doing that." If you're one of these people, stop reading this article right now and go and spend time with them!

It's OK - this sort of behaviour is merely a symptom of the discontent I'm talking about. Be gentle with yourself. You've learnt all of these things innocently. Society has taught you all of this. It's taught you to feel that you need to be tending to something that you aren't tending to. Restlessness: you can't sit still for five minutes without turning on the TV, adjusting the ornaments on your mantlepiece, reading the daily newspaper (much of which is rubbish), clipping your nails, or fretting over some inconsequential matter.

As I've said previously, we are all running, running, running. We're on a treadmill to nowhere - we're running towards a happiness that doesn't require any running; that doesn't require us to get to some future accomplishment or better version of ourselves.

These are the common things we "run towards":
Money, material possessions
Lover
Human relationships, family
Status, success, fame
Knowledge
Religion/ Spirituality/ Personal Development
Entertainment/ Drugs

These things never fill the hole. They may seem to do so for a while, until you get bored and seek the next thing. Eventually - perhaps - you come to the proverbial "end of the road." You realize that nothing in your outer world can fill the hole. The end of the road is where it began.

You yourself can fill the hole. (In reality, there is no hole.)You have a choice in all of this. Perhaps it takes a certain amount of dissatisfaction and suffering to arrive at this place of choosing. That place of choosing has, however, been available to you all along. And when you do make the choice, you become largely free of the world. "Good" things and "bad" things happen, but your perception of those things is what counts. Your prime focus will be on a joyful inner world that you create.

Start shifting away from all the negativity in your life - primarily the negativity that arises in you. Create for yourself an inner positive world. How do you do this? Well, you make a decision to do it! Nobody is going to do this for you. The outside world isn't the cause of your worry and suffering - it's all internal. When you make this decision, it will change your whole life. And slowly yet surely the world will treat you better. Your days of worry will diminish - possibly even disappear.

Turn your focus away from the outside world. Enjoy it without being wrapped up in it. Tolerate it without violent resistance. Know that the end of your search is you. Turn your focus inward. This is the beginning of the end of worry. Be happy!