Find Out More!
At the end of one of my emails to my mailing list, a Find Out More button somehow snuck in. I only noticed it afterward—probably a feature my mailing list provider suggested. But now that I think about it, isn’t that exactly what happens with so many of our thoughts? Maybe with most of them, actually?
It’s as if every thought comes with its own Find Out More button. You click on it, and suddenly, you’re taken to a memory connected to the emotion you’re feeling now, a similar past experience, an imagined future scenario, or more associations and bits of information stored in your personal archive—things that have been categorized as somehow related to what you're experiencing at this moment. And sometimes, it’s so hard to stop clicking Find Out More.
It reminds me a lot of binge-watching on platforms like Netflix—I barely get to the end of one thought before another similar one starts playing, automatically, whether I want it to or not. My hand isn’t fast enough to grab the remote or the mouse, and before I know it, I’ve drifted off into yet another thought. But the truth is, if I decide I don’t want to keep going, I can stop. And even when it feels like I can’t—if I don’t have the energy to move my hand, if I feel like I lack the willpower or ability—if something suddenly happens (my daughter starts crying, there’s a loud noise outside, or I really need to go to the bathroom), my attention shifts immediately, without me even realizing it.
So what does that say about our ability to let go—even when we don’t think we have it?
You may know that a few years ago, around 2017, I had a major realization about the nature of thoughts—especially the fact that thoughts are fleeting. I mean, it seems obvious, right? It’s easy to see when someone else is caught up in unpleasant thoughts or when our own inner storm has already passed.
But that’s the thing about insights—something we know intellectually as a good idea, or something we kind of know but aren’t fully aware of, suddenly becomes something we truly know. And from that moment on, we can’t not know it. It shifts the way we see things permanently. Even if our behavior doesn’t change, our perspective already has.
Alongside that, I also discovered something else: Even though thoughts feel incredibly real and deeply personal, they actually aren’t! A mind-blowing discovery.
Realizing that thoughts are temporary, illusory, and impersonal was incredibly freeing. Suddenly, I didn’t have to fight what I was thinking for it to pass. I didn’t have to argue with it, reframe it, or try to change myself so I wouldn’t think that way anymore. Not that these things never happen—but they became much less of a big deal. I care way less about the content of my thoughts and how they feel in the moment. It’s just clearer to me now that this is how life moves through me, and it will keep moving. I know that something else WILL come. It’s like I am stuck on some radio channel with the worst music and there’s no volume button. It’s damn annoying but I know that eventually I’ll receive some other channels too. And sometimes those channels are quite magical.
I wake up to this insight over and over again. We wake up, we fall asleep, we wake up again. And sometimes, suddenly, the awakening is to something even more alive, a little deeper than before. And again, nothing outwardly changes, but somehow, everything looks just a little different—like I’m living in a slightly different dimension. And this is available and possible to everyone, you too.
