A personal story of self-realization. Discover how recognizing the mind as the real problem leads to awareness, growth, and inner freedom through yogic insight.
For a long time, I believed my problems were external.
I thought life was too demanding. I thought people were difficult. I thought circumstances were unfair, timing was off, and responsibilities were heavy. I believed peace would come once things settled down when work became easier, relationships smoother, and the future more certain.
I was wrong.
At the time, I didn’t know that my real problem was not life at all.
It was my mind.
But this realization did not come suddenly. It came slowly, quietly, through moments I would have otherwise ignored.
From the outside, everything looked fine. I was functioning, meeting responsibilities, doing what was expected. But inside, there was constant noise. Thoughts never stopped. Even when nothing was happening, my mind was busy creating something to worry about.
If work was going well, I worried about the future. If relationships were calm, I replayed old conversations. If the day was peaceful, my mind searched for something missing.
I didn’t call this a problem back then. I thought this was normal. Everyone thinks like this, I told myself. Everyone worries. Everyone overthinks.
What I didn’t realize was that I was living almost entirely inside my head.
Like most people, I looked for solutions outside myself. I tried changing routines, environments, goals. I tried becoming more productive, more disciplined, more positive. I even tried distracting myself keeping busy so I wouldn’t have to listen to my thoughts.
For a while, these things worked. Or at least they seemed to.
But every solution was temporary. The moment life slowed down, the same mental patterns returned. Anxiety came back. Restlessness returned. Dissatisfaction resurfaced.
It felt like fixing the symptoms while ignoring the disease.
Still, I didn’t question the mind itself. I questioned everything else.
The turning point came during a very ordinary moment. Nothing dramatic happened. No crisis. No breakdown.
I was sitting alone one evening, physically tired but mentally restless. The day had been uneventful, yet my mind was racing. Thoughts overlapped, argued, replayed, imagined. I noticed how exhausting it felt to simply be with myself.
For the first time, a strange question arose:
Why am I not at ease even when nothing is wrong?
That question lingered.
I didn’t answer it immediately. But something had shifted. Instead of trying to silence the mind, I started watching it.
As I began observing my thoughts, something became clear. My mind was constantly commenting, judging, comparing, predicting. It rarely stayed with what was actually happening.
Even simple experiences were filtered through interpretation. A silence became awkward. A delay became a problem. A small comment became a story.
I wasn’t responding to life.
I was responding to my thoughts about life.
This realization was uncomfortable. It meant that much of my suffering was self-created. Not intentionally, but mechanically.
This was the moment when the mind stopped being invisible.
Around this time, I encountered the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. I had heard about yoga before, mostly in terms of posture and relaxation. But this was different.
One line struck me deeply:
yoga is the calming of the fluctuations of the mind.
It wasn’t poetic. It was precise.
For the first time, I saw my experience reflected in ancient wisdom. Yoga wasn’t saying the world must change for peace to arrive. It was saying peace depends on the state of the mind.
Suddenly, everything made sense.
This didn’t mean the mind was bad or wrong. It meant the mind was unobserved.
I realized that my thoughts were not facts. They were habits. Patterns. Conditioned responses formed over years. The mind reacted the same way to different situations, creating the same inner disturbances regardless of reality.
The problem wasn’t thinking.
The problem was unconscious thinking.
When thoughts went unchecked, they dictated emotions. Emotions dictated behavior. Behavior reinforced patterns. The cycle continued endlessly.
Awareness was missing.
Earlier, I tried to control the mind. That never worked. Now, I tried something simpler: watching.
I didn’t judge thoughts. I didn’t argue with them. I just noticed them. At first, this felt awkward. Sometimes uncomfortable. The mind didn’t like being seen.
But slowly, something changed.
Thoughts lost intensity when observed. Emotions passed more quickly. I began to experience short moments of space gaps between thoughts.
Those gaps were quiet.
As observation deepened, another realization followed. I saw how much energy the mind wasted on unnecessary mental activity.
Replaying conversations that were over. Imagining problems that hadn’t happened. Mentally defending myself against situations that might never arise.
I saw how tired I was not because of life, but because of constant inner commentary.
This realization was both relieving and humbling. Relieving, because peace felt possible. Humbling, because I saw how long I had lived unconsciously.
One of the most surprising discoveries was that life didn’t suddenly become perfect. Challenges remained. Responsibilities continued. People stayed imperfect.
But my relationship with these things changed.
When difficulties arose, I noticed reactions instead of being consumed by them. When anxiety appeared, I observed it rather than feeding it. When frustration surfaced, I paused.
I wasn’t free from emotions.
I was free from being controlled by them.
This was the freedom yoga spoke about.
The greatest lessons didn’t come during meditation or reading. They came during ordinary life.
A disagreement showed me how quickly the mind defends. A delay revealed impatience. A compliment revealed attachment. A criticism revealed insecurity.
Instead of reacting immediately, I observed these movements. Each situation became a mirror.
Gradually, life itself became a teacher.
Stillness played an important role in this journey. Not dramatic silence, but simple moments of quiet walking without headphones, sitting without distraction, breathing without doing anything else.
In stillness, the mind revealed itself more clearly. Patterns became obvious. Awareness sharpened.
I began to understand why yogic traditions valued silence. Without it, the mind hides behind noise.
Later, when I read the Bhagavad Gita, one line felt deeply personal: the undisciplined mind is an enemy, and the disciplined mind is a friend.
Discipline here didn’t mean control. It meant awareness. A mind seen clearly stops working against you.
For the first time, this wasn’t philosophy. It was lived experience.
As awareness grew, blame slowly disappeared. I stopped blaming people for how I felt. I stopped blaming situations for my unrest.
This didn’t make me passive. It made me responsible.
When the mind was disturbed, I looked inward. When peace arose, I recognized the conditions that allowed it.
Life became simpler not easier, but clearer.
With time, something subtle emerged: trust.
Trust in awareness. Trust that I didn’t need to control every thought. Trust that calmness was possible even in uncertainty.
I wasn’t chasing peace anymore.
I was allowing it.
This confidence didn’t come from success or achievement. It came from understanding how the mind worked.
Looking back, I see how many years were spent trying to fix the world instead of understanding the mind experiencing it.
The mind was never the enemy.
Unawareness was.
When awareness entered, the mind softened. Resistance reduced. Life felt lighter not because it changed, but because I did.
This realization matters because it applies to everyone. We all live with the same mind. We all experience the same patterns of worry, fear, desire, and restlessness.
The problem is not that the mind thinks.
The problem is that we live inside those thoughts without knowing it.
The moment observation begins, growth begins.
The Real Beginning
When I realized my mind was my real problem, I didn’t feel defeated. I felt hopeful.
Because if the problem was within, the solution was within too.
No one needed to change for me to be at ease.
Life didn’t need to slow down.
Circumstances didn’t need to improve.
I only needed to see clearly.
And in that seeing, something extraordinary happened the mind stopped being a prison and became a tool.
That was the beginning of real freedom.
