When we need to disconnect our mind from everything

Disconnecting your mind is one of the keys to being happy. Life demands a lot from us. It demands too much of us. It is not enough for society that we are good at what we do, they want us to be the best. All we have is what we are worth. If we have money, a big house, a good car and a sculpted body, we will be worth much more than if we don’t. They set very high expectations for us.

It’s no wonder we need to escape from time to time to replenish ourselves., to ventilate all that weight that we carry and that slows down our pace. The problem is that when we need to disconnect our mind from everything We discovered that it is not an easy task.
All these expectations are surreal and disproportionate , fruit of an increasingly consumerist and selfish society where the only thing that seems to be valuable is our production capacity. If we produce more, we are worth more. If we produce less, we are worth less. It’s that simple. When I sit down to do my mindfulness exercises, people often say to me, “What are you doing sitting there? Get up and do something.”

“If someone took a look at one of our classes at the hospital, they would most likely find us with our eyes closed. It seems like absolutely nothing is happening. They practice “not doing.” You are actively connecting with each moment in an effort to remain awake and aware from one moment to the next. “They are exercising mindfulness.”

-Jon Kabat-Zinn-

Give me a minute

How many times have we told someone around us to give us a moment? Dozens, hundreds, maybe. There is so much demand that we receive from around us that we need to say “enough!” and take a break for a while. We urgently need to disconnect our minds from everything and regain peace. But it costs us too much. Our father tells us one thing, our mother another, our friends another, our work or study colleagues another, we are bombarded by daily information in the media, on the internet, on our mobile…

“In our modern world, we are consumed from morning to night with endless activity. We do not have much time or energy left to consider the basic causes of our happiness or suffering.”

-Matthieu Ricard-

Everything is information and almost all of it is a demand. “Do this”, “do that”, “buy this cell phone to be happy”, “buy this perfume if you want to seduce”, “buy this car to feel important”, “if you are not number one you are nobody”… Television commercials are full of beautiful houses. People have a huge house in the ads and they are all very happy, everything is going well for them. Little by little we are beginning to believe all this information.

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Social networks also transmit false messages to us. People only show what they want to show, the image they want to give, and that image is as ideal as possible. But also We believe that everyone is having a great time except us. We compare ourselves in that carnival of identities and we fall apart. If we are not able to use social networks in a healthy way, it is not a bad idea to disconnect our minds from them for a while.

A much needed moment

Disconnecting your mind from everything is very necessary. What’s more, it is essential for healthy mental functioning. We would need at least an hour (and if we don’t have it, half) of our day just for ourselves. To be at peace, to be calm. Thinking that during that moment we don’t have to worry about anything. Of no project, of no work. It could be at night, when we get home from work. Or in the afternoons if we leave early.

We sit at home, on the couch. Or we go for a walk. We focus on the present moment. We observe everything around us without judging anything. If we go out on the street and see cars, we don’t think about whether they are ugly or pretty. If we see people we avoid thinking about whether they are handsome or not. We simply observe. The plans can wait. The one who can’t wait is us.

Why is it important not to judge? Judging involves a value judgment and these are carried out through a negative or positive evaluation. These evaluations produce emotional states in us that can vary in intensity, but When we are in our disconnection time, it is very important to try to maintain an emotional state that is as unreactive as possible.. In this way, we will feel much more serenity.

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Our mind needs that rest. We are an angry ocean with waves up to ten meters high, so we must return to being a calm and serene ocean. From peace and calm, we will take life in a different way and we will begin to realize that external demands are so artificial that we will not only find them ridiculous but they will cease to interest us.

Inside each of us

Jon Kabat-Zinn states that “As a general rule we have very negative thoughts and we take them as real. We create our own suffering unnecessarily. Life is stressful enough on its own, we don’t need to add anything more.” When we go further and take advantage of our time to look inside ourselves, we will realize that, as Dr. Kabat-Zinn states, we have very negative thoughts, and we will realize that the vast majority of them come from meaningless social demands. .

When we disconnect the mind from everything external and we begin to connect with our interior, We will increasingly become more aware of the importance of self-knowledge. We will realize that happiness is not found in the unrealistic goals they set for us, but rather it is found within us. We have the potential to be happy.