You do not get what you want

There are mornings I wake up underneath a crushing weight which I can't seem to name nor quite shake. It's like an undercurrent of emotions telling me something in my life feels off. And strangely, what makes it worse is that I know I am the one who made it this way.

If I know that I am the one causing it, then why don't I just change it? Why do I still choose the suffering, albeit benign? I often return to this question because my heart knows that it is the honest question that I can ask myself. By disseminating it, it becomes quite evident that I am allowing myself to be stuck, trapped in a loop of thoughts and often, pure inaction. To ameliorate this feeling of being trapped, I reach for things I think I want, knowing full well that they lead me nowhere, a pure mindset of escapism from what is real in my heart.

So here I am, doing nothing to fix it, and feeling my world collapse inwardly whilst crying out for someone to help me, without knowing the truth of it all: that I am the only one who can save myself and have no one to blame. Only I can make the necessary shift in perspective to improve my life, not the people I love, and certainly not through waiting on circumstantial changes. The underlying problem that I have diagnosed in myself is an aspect of excessive wanting, precluding a potential transformation. Before I elaborate on this, I want to state a law which I often return to on these days:

You do not get what you want, you get what you are.

Obviously, when I wake up with dread inside me, feeling like the world is collapsing inwardly, definable as either depression or anxiety, I desperately want it to go away. This desperate wanting is precisely what is trapping me, as it places excess importance on not being in this depressive state. It makes me feel like the gap between me and a life of freedom and joy is further than it needs to be.

The more I grip to the wanting of "I don't want to be depressed" or "I want to stop feeling this morning angst and dread", the more I will experience the "depression" and the "angst and dread". When you keep the thought of not wanting a negative, you effectively keep the thoughts about the negative "thing" in your mind, and what you keep in your mind long enough shall inevitably materialise. So here I am, materialising my own depression, anxiety, existential dread, because I keep wanting to change, wanting to get out of it, rather than just doing the simplest thing of accepting exactly and precisely where I am right now, and taking the actions that follow most naturally.

This wanting is what traps you, and forcing change doesn't work. The more you grip to wanting, the further the object of your wanting moves away from you. So therefore, in contrast, the opposite must exist. The more you lower the grip, the more your object or emotional state desired can drift easily towards you. Funnily enough, this usually occurs when you have forgotten about what you desire and no longer place such immense importance on its establishment. Remember, when you place importance on anything (it can be objects, emotions or feelings), you are signalling to yourself that there is a gap between you and a version of you that has attained the object or is experiencing the desired emotions. I find myself learning, forgetting, and re-learning this again, more often than I can count.

When we suffer, the suffering is rarely about the situation itself but rather the importance we place on it: either the importance of getting out of it, or the importance of getting into a "better state of existence". Non-acceptance or fighting the situation is what hurts the process most, as it often causes us to reach for numbing devices and mechanisms, of which society gives us a plethora. This often causes more pain than the initial situation. For me it was one small habit, but the morning was bad because of that habit's existence in my life, so it's a catch-22. The escapism leads to worsening situations, and whilst we all know that deep down, we find it hard to actually stop ourselves.

So, rather than allow oneself to get to that point, stop fighting the initial "negative" situation you are in and immediately establish new perspectives. Use your mind and translate negative aspects of your life into positive ones. You lost your job? No, it's not a loss. It's you finding your feet again to do what you love. Don't repeat the same mistakes, and a great lesson is learnt. One can do themselves a great service by letting reality unfold the way it is supposed to. This is true insight. When you can begin to see that things happening are not as bad as what you make them out to be, you come across a metaphysical idea that situations and events are happening "for" you rather than "to" you. For me, this was one of the best realisations that I apply to my life daily. Instances where I have chosen to see situations as a problem are now considered, to me, as a wrong move. I think of it like chess. In chess you have rules to follow, but you have the creative freedom to choose the series of moves available to you. Choosing to see situations negatively is simply a wrong chess move for me, especially when I could have utilised creative freedom to think of situations that work completely in my favour. This is what it means to use your god-given power of imagination.

As an example, whatever situation arises, I am able to tell myself that it is happening so that I can awaken to an internal need to alter my perspective and make permanent changes to my mental neurological wiring to expand my capabilities. That way, situations are just minor stress tests for my mind, helping it to grow. I truly believe this is what it means when someone realises their true potential. Instead of trying to force outcomes, they trust and maintain an inner knowing that the outcome is inevitable, and therefore negate all aspects of wanting. They realise the arrival of it in their life is simply a matter of time, and every single event is leading them closer to it.

Sometimes, your inner child might scream for someone to fix your "situation". It might be demanding, as it wants someone or anyone to "make things easier" and to hand you what you decided you want. But this is a fallacy, because the very process of "making things easier" needs to be done by the person "suffering", so that they can learn to never suffer like this again. It detracts the person from initiating what they need to do for their own growth. And growth is in the process and cannot be offloaded to an external entity.

For instance, I have a life, a vision for what I am building, and operating life through a lens of my inner child does not work anymore. I cannot let the child dictate my moves. I am not saying that the inner child can't exist, but it must take a back seat, as key life decisions fall to me, consciously present and grounded in actuality. A challenge of growing up is this concept of re-parenting myself, where I gently but firmly say no to the inner child who wants to be rescued through an external saviour. As stated already, only I can save myself. We are our own saviours, through the conscious decisions we make based on the perspectives we carry.