Asleep at the wheel.

In July of 2020, I was 4 years into depression. I never had an issue with mental health before, but I felt heavy, dense, sad, lost, and pretty miserable.

I tried everything I could think of to break out of it.

Over those 4 years, I changed jobs 4 times and moved across the country 4 times. I tried to bury and numb it away with alcohol and drugs. I convinced myself I just needed to find the right partner. I blamed toxic work environments and bosses.

The whole time, I beat myself up for not being able to figure it out.

Then two weeks before getting fired, while listening to a podcast, I heard the quote:

“Everything in life is neutral. Only the mind creates meaning–good or bad.”

And it hit me like a ton of bricks.

I remember pulling my car off the road into a parking lot and staring out the windshield, jaw-dropped. For the first time, I could see something I’d never noticed.

My mind had been creating my experience of life, and I had been blind to it.

In that moment, I realized that everything in my life was happening because of me. I was allowing my mind to dictate my experience.

I instantly saw how much I had been playing the victim. Victim of circumstance, other people, and, most subtly, myself.

I felt how disempowering it was. I was used to blaming myself or allowing my inner critic to bring me down. But this time was different.

For the first time, I could see my role in creating my suffering without beating myself up for it. And if I was playing a role in creating it, I could also play a role in freeing myself from it.

This was a very empowering perspective of ownership.

I was able to see all the ways I was living like a child, and see the opportunity I had to start living like a man.

There is no room for blame on the path to freedom. I saw that wherever I found myself blaming, I also found myself being a victim. I knew I had to give that up if I wanted to be free.

One of my favorite proverbs is “He who blames others has a long way to go. He who blames himself is halfway there. He who blames no one has arrived.”

I have come to appreciate this more and more over the years as I’ve seen myself shift from one to the next, arriving at the place where there is no one to blame. There is simply what is happening.

I did get let go from my sales job, but this newfound perspective catapulted me into my next phase of growth.

I knew that I had been asleep at the wheel. This whole time, my mind had been running the show right in front of my eyes. And if I wanted to gain true freedom in my life, I had to learn to stop being run by my mind anymore. It was one thing to understand, in theory, what my mind was doing, but another to actually experience it happening with clarity.

I learned about watching the mind as an objective observer–often called the “witness.”

The witness is about cultivating the place within that simply notices what happens. It does not judge in any way; it simply sees what’s happening.

This was when I finally understood what meditation was all about and why it was imperative. I leaned on 25 years of discipline developed through athletics and martial arts to meditate.

It was incredibly hard at first. I saw how wild my mind was–like a wild animal. I started by sitting for 5 minutes every morning, and slowly worked my way up to 20+ minute sessions.

The mind is tricky. At first, I might only experience a half-second of presence in a whole session. But I kept practicing being very still, and when a thought came up, I’d notice it and let it go. Over and over.

I wasn't trying to stop my mind from thinking. I was learning to let thoughts come and go without getting pulled into them.

Growing up, I was taught to always listen to my thoughts, so it took a lot of practice to start noticing them without getting sucked into the drama.

After a short time, I started to feel spaciousness around thoughts. The first time I heard my inner critic as a separate entity and not “me” was incredibly liberating.

I was better able to notice thoughts as they came up without believing they were me. Like noticing a bird fly by and not thinking I’m the bird.

There was so much freedom in that.

I could feel myself no longer automatically contracting at self-critical thoughts. It’s still something I work with, but now I know I don't have to blindly believe them.

Depression would return periodically over the next few years, but the witness allowed me to work with it. It helped me see it coming, to notice the touchpoints and triggers, and to not resist feeling the pain that was present.

Most importantly, it helped me see depression as something arising within awareness and not who I was.

The goal wasn’t to stop difficult thoughts or emotions as much as it was to stop identifying with and being consumed by them. Creating a little space between myself and thoughts radically changed how I experience life.

Most of us have spent our entire lives believing that the voice in our head is who we are.

But what happens when we learn to watch it instead?

A practice to try:

1. Find a comfortable place to sit.

2. Set a timer for 5 minutes.

3. Bring your awareness to your breath.

4. Every time a thought comes up, allow it to exist and let it go.

5. Repeat until the timer ends.

P.S. I'm hosting a free Inner Freedom Session where we'll explore what it means to live with greater peace, presence, and freedom. Anyone is welcome. Join us here.