Your mind’s favorite game is anticipating what others think about you. It simply drags you with or without your willingness to get into the preoccupation of establishing an image of you in others’ minds. Being alert all the time to protect that image, you fall into the trap of anxiety and lose mental peace.
Self-investigation and mindfulness techniques shall help you become aware of the nitty gritty of your mind’s obsession. Releasing the mind from its own shackles comprising links made up of your projections of others’ projections is the step towards harmonious mental health free from anxiety.
Sculpting Your Image
Identity is a strange made-up principle that you create yourself and then that principle governs your existence. With its tendencies and knowledge, your mind carves an image of you. It’s not a hastily made but rather a thoroughly sculpted one with ample time dedicated. You place it in the inner sanctum and then begin to worship it.
That image is so dear to you that you can’t dissociate yourself from it even for a little while. Your actions, thoughts, and speech are dictated by it. Your attitude, behavior, and mental patterns are simply a derivation of the characteristic traits of the image that you have formed about yourself. In short, you exist to conform to that fictitious identity.
If you have chiseled an image of a kind-hearted person, you will portray yourself as one of them in all your modalities. On the other hand, if you have sculpted your image to be a dominating person, you will continue to act as a bully in most situations.
Placing the Image in Others’ Minds
A peculiar quality of the human mind is its preoccupation with establishing the sculpted image in others’ minds. Effort by effort, word by word, act by act, you set your statuette among parents, office colleagues, friends, neighbors, vendors, subordinates, etc. It wouldn’t be far-fetched to say that you place a certain image of yourself in your pets as well.
You perceive that you are entering into an equation with people around you but rather it is the image that enters into the relationship. You may think your relations to be a direct connection between you and the other but in most cases, the sculpture lies in between. The image serves as the symbol of your worth and capabilities.
Most of our acts are therefore to uphold the symbol, maintain its shape, and keep it unadulterated. We strive to keep it safe and free from contamination beyond doubt. Not only the law-abiding well-behaved citizens but also ruthless gangsters’ physical and psychological behavior is shaped by their compulsion to protect the image.
You tend to protect it with your life and even a minute taint on that portrayal brings you enormous pain.
Persistently Anxious Mind
At any instant, the mighty mind without even lifting a finger, gets into another person’s head to mysteriously find out the content. This isn’t any mystical power but the mind’s helpless habit of anticipation. It sends out a thought, word, or action and then engages in continuous thoughts if that leads to strengthening the hold of the image in the other’s mind or deterioration.
You speak or write a message to someone but immediately get into a loop of thought whether it conforms to your identity or not. Should you have said or written it or not? What else could have been said or written? Did you lose the value you have created so far? Why hasn’t he replied back yet, have I lost his trust? You lose control over the countless thoughts that get triggered.
Persistently being anxious drains all your energy and keeps you gloomy. The constant anticipation comes from its obsession to hold on to the painted image in the other’s mind. At any cost and at any time its value shouldn’t degrade otherwise a pensive pain originates. To this pain, the mind tries to avert thus generating another thought. Soon, it enters into a cycle of anxious thoughts, pain, and aversion.
You suffer in the mind and that suffering transmigrates soon to your body as well. Loss of sleep, loss of appetite, uncontrolled body motions, irritations, and several other symptoms surface. You lose the capability of enjoying the simple things in life like watching a rose in the garden and deriving the subtle happiness out of it.
How to Break the Anxiety
A logical problem-solving method has to be employed to begin the process of breaking free from anxiety. All problems of the mind can be mitigated through the use of intellect to self-analyze and discriminate. Self-analysis should take you to its root cause to see the chain of reactions leading to an anxious state.
A thorough understanding of your mind’s play is half the work done. If you can become aware that all this while the mind has been forming an image, establishing it in others’ minds, and then acting for the sake of its protections through self-analysis, it won’t be difficult for you to discriminate this entire act as an absurd frivolous play.
But this awareness alone wouldn’t be able to break the cycle immediately as your mind has been habituated to go on like that for a long time. The cycle needs to be broken strategically by building healthy habits. Discipline plays paramount importance in this regard as the strong tendencies of the mind would always sway you in its favor.
It is difficult for the mind to remain aware of this frivolous play and become forgetful when the anxious reactions get active. That’s natural and therefore the tool that has to be used to weaken forgetfulness is Mindfulness. Serious practice of Mindfulness slowly loosens the grip of the compelling tendencies of the mind that were leading to anxiousness.
But again like every other time, my ending message is that Mindfulness practice needs to be done with dedication and patience. It takes time to fight against the extraordinarily strong currents of the mind that have been built perhaps since your childhood. So one step at a time.
May you be encouraged to take back the charge of your life !
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