4 Insights That Changed How I See My Mind Forever

For most of my life, I lived entirely inside my head, without even realising it.

There was this voice constantly narrating my experience. Judging. Planning. Worrying. And I thought that was just me. It was like having a commentator in my mind, offering constant opinions on everything I did: “Terrible decision.” “Why did you say that?” “You should be doing more.”

It never stopped. And I never questioned it. I believed everything it said. That voice was me, or so I thought.

Then one day, I read a book that stopped me in my tracks: The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer. In it, he said something so simple, but so disruptive I had to put the book down.

“You are not the voice in your head. You are the one who hears it.”

That sentence cracked something open in me.

"Wait… what?"

"There’s a voice?"

"And it’s not me?"

It was the first time I considered that I might not be my thoughts. That there could be a me behind the mental noise. And that realisation marked the beginning of a completely different kind of journey. One that wasn’t about doing what the voice said, but about changing my relationship to it.

Today I want to share 4 insights that changed how I see my mind forever. Each one shifted the way I related to my inner world. Together, they opened a doorway to a completely different way of living. A way that’s calmer, clearer, and far less reactive.

If you’ve ever felt stuck in your own head, overwhelmed by your thoughts, or frustrated by the same patterns repeating themselves…

This might be the shift you’ve been waiting for.

Insight 1: I am not the voice in my head

When I first had the realisation, “This voice isn’t me”, it shifted something inside me.

It felt true on a deep level, but I didn’t know what to do with this insight. If I wasn’t the voice, then who was I? And if I wasn’t supposed to follow it, how was I supposed to live? It left me in this strange in-between space, where I could see the voice more clearly, but I was still caught up in it.

I could feel it meant something. But I had no idea where it was taking me.

So I started paying closer attention and watching the voice more closely. What I noticed wasn’t just the big, dramatic thoughts like “you’re not good enough” or “you’re going to fail.” It was the constant stream of commentary running beneath everything:

• “You need to reply to that message.”

• “Don’t forget to write up those notes.”

• “Should you be doing something more productive right now?”

• “Why am I tired? Do I need another coffee?”

It was relentless. Always planning. Always judging. Always trying to manage life.

And because it had been there for so long, I never questioned it. It didn’t feel like a voice, it felt like me. That was the most unsettling part. I didn’t just hear my thoughts, I believed them. I was them. And because of that, they shaped everything:

• How I judged my day

• How I related to people

• How I measured my worth

• How I felt in every moment

It wasn’t just background noise, it was running the whole show.

I soon noticed that the voice was always trying to fix something. Fix me. Fix the moment. Fix the future. Fix how others saw me. As if something was constantly wrong. And up until this point, I believed it.

This was the first insight. Not that I had freed myself from the mind. But that I had finally seen the truth: I’d spent my life obeying a voice I never even realised was there.

After I saw this, a deeper question emerged: "Why is it always talking? And when will it stop?"

Insight 2: The mind was built for survival, not peace

It got me thinking that the mind must be serving a purpose. It wasn’t randomly coming up with thoughts for no reason. It was trying to solve something, avoid something, protect me from something.

So I started asking, "What is the mind actually trying to achieve?"

It didn't take long to see the answer: the mind was trying to protect me.

Once I saw the mind through this lens, everything else started to make sense. The overthinking, the anxiety, the obsessive planning — it was all an attempt to stay safe. Even the self-criticism was a strategy: fix yourself before the world rejects you.

The mind wasn’t trying to make me miserable, it was trying to protect me from pain. It was doing its job, I'd just misunderstood its purpose.

Thousands of years ago, being on high alert kept us alive. We needed a brain that could scan for danger, anticipate risk, and prepare for worst-case scenarios. Back then, if you missed a threat, you might not survive.

But today, those same survival circuits get applied to everything: overflowing inboxes, social media posts, fear of being misunderstood, judgment, rejection, or not feeling in control.

To the mind, there's no real difference between danger and discomfort. It treats everything like a threat, even if it's just a feeling.

That’s why it’s so active. It's not because it’s malfunctioning, it’s because it’s trying to keep you safe. It wants to control every detail, predict every outcome, avoid every possible threat. It replays the past and rehearses the future, trying to fix problems that don’t even exist yet. And it does all of this without your conscious permission. Or even awareness.

It's believed that around 95% of our thoughts are subconscious, and our brain’s default mode network is active even at rest. This means even in silence, the mind won’t sit still. It’s wired to wander, worry, and narrate. It's constantly asking: What could go wrong? How can I stay in control?

Once I understood this, things started to make sense. Of course my mind was anxious. Of course it was trying to manage everything. This is its primary job.

That's when it dawned on me: the mind wasn't built to make me happy.

It was built to manage risk, avoid discomfort, and stay one step ahead of danger, even if that danger only exists in my imagination.

That realisation hit hard. Because if the mind’s primary goal is survival, not joy, then what did that mean for happiness? Was I supposed to live my whole life trapped inside a system designed to manage threat? Did peace mean overriding the very thing I’ve relied on to keep me safe?

These thoughts unsettled me. But the more I looked at it, the more I understood what the mind was actually doing. And once I saw that clearly, something softened. I stopped blaming my mind for doing what it was designed to do. I could see the machinery behind the noise. The survival system trying to protect me.

Yet even with that understanding, something didn’t feel right. I was no longer confused by why the mind acted the way it did.

But I still felt trapped in it. Still tense. Still restless. Still caught up in its thoughts. I could see the logic. But I still couldn’t escape the feeling that something deeper was keeping me stuck.

Insight 3: My preferences were driving all the inner noise

I remember listening to a Michael Singer lecture on my morning walk when he said something that caught my full attention.

He said, “I bet I know the exact reason why your mind reacts to every situation.” Then he paused. “Don’t worry, I can’t read your mind — but I bet it’s for one of two reasons: either you didn’t get what you wanted, or you got what you didn’t want. Am I right?”

I laughed, because I knew it was true. It wasn’t another productivity trick or mindset hack that helped me understand the chaos in my head. It was an insight much simpler, and far more uncomfortable.

The mind suffers because it wants reality to be different than it is.

It has created a big list of all the things you like and all the things you dislike. Call this your personal preference list.

If life matches your “likes” list, you feel good.

If it matches your “dislikes” list, you feel bad.

Once I became aware of this, I started to notice it everywhere.

• I woke up feeling tired, and my mind immediately said, “You shouldn’t feel like this today.”

• A video I worked hard on didn’t get many views, and my mind whispered, “That wasn’t good enough.”

• I had a gap in my schedule, and my mind jumped in, “You’re wasting time. You should be doing something useful.”

Every moment, the mind was silently labelling:

• “I like this.”

• “I don’t like that.”

• “This is how things should be.”

• “That’s not okay.”

It didn’t matter what was actually happening. If it matched my mind’s preferences, I felt good. If it didn’t, I felt tension. Not because life was painful, but because my mind had decided it shouldn’t be that way.

That’s when I realised something deeper was driving all this inner noise: my preferences were running the show.

The more I clung to them, the more suffering I experienced.

It’s so subtle you almost miss it. You think you're reacting to life, but you're really reacting to whether life is meeting your expectations. And the more tightly you grip those expectations, the more pain you feel when they’re not met.

The mind doesn’t just want to understand reality. It wants to protect and control it. And when it can’t — it protests. That protest is the inner voice trying to fix things.

Unfortunately it’s a game you can’t win. You can never get life to always give you what you like and avoid what you dislike. That’s impossible. And somewhere deep down, we already know that. But as long as those preferences are in control, the mind will stay active. Endlessly trying to shape reality to fit its list.

At first, I didn’t know what to do with this.

Was I really supposed to stop wanting what I liked? Stop disliking what hurt? Am I just supposed to have no preferences now? That sounded ridiculous. Even absurd.

But the more I paid attention, the more I started to wonder, what is it costing me to hold on to all this?

That question stayed with me. Because the more I watched my mind, the more I realised something important: The struggle wasn’t with life, it was with how my mind wanted life to be.

Insight 4: Resistance was keeping me mentally stuck

It started with something simple. I had blocked off the morning to write, but when I sat down, I felt off. Low energy. Distracted. Not in the mood. Instead of just noticing that, my mind instantly pushed back,“You need to focus.”“You can’t waste time today.”“What’s wrong with you?”

I wasn’t just tired, I was fighting being tired. And the more I resisted it, the worse it felt. A quiet moment had turned into a mental battle. I wasn’t writing, and I wasn’t resting. I was just stuck, trapped in the tension between how things were, and how my mind wanted them to be.

I’m sure you can relate. Most of us carry around an invisible script for how life should go. And we project it onto every moment without realising it.

• “I should be more productive”

• “This shouldn't have happened.”

• “I should feel more motivated.”

And when life doesn’t follow that script, the mind gets active. It resists what’s happening. It judges. It tightens around it, trying to push it away or pull something else closer. We resist the things we don’t like. And we cling to the things we do.

But clinging is just another form of resistance — it’s the fear of losing what makes us feel good. At the root of it all is a simple, powerful driver: feeling.

We label every moment as good or bad, based on how it makes us feel. Over time, we build an invisible framework, a narrow list of the things we believe will make us happy, and a longer list of the things that won’t.

The mind’s job becomes clear: avoid what feels bad and hold on to what feels good.

But in doing so, we create constant tension. Because life doesn’t care about our lists. It just unfolds.

You can see this cycle everywhere. You get stuck in traffic, and your mind turns it into a crisis. You wake up tired, and your mind labels it as a problem. You get criticised, and the mind spins it into a personal attack.

The moment itself isn’t that painful. The mind’s resistance to it is.

I saw this most clearly during my recent Vipassana retreat. One morning, a sharp pain started to build in my back as I sat in meditation. I tried everything — shifting, adjusting, breathing — but nothing worked. The more I resisted it, the worse it got. I was battling the pain with every ounce of effort I had. Eventually, I gave up. I stopped fighting. I sat still. And something unexpected happened: the pain softened. Not all at once, but enough for me to feel the shift. In that stillness, I discovered peace — not because the pain disappeared, but because I stopped fighting it.

The pain wasn’t the enemy. My resistance was.

In that moment, I didn’t just understand resistance, I felt it. And more importantly, I saw the cost of it. So now I’ll ask you the same question I had to ask myself:

“What reality have you been quietly resisting — hoping that if you fight it hard enough, it might change?"

Maybe it’s the way you’ve been feeling lately — low, anxious, unmotivated.

Maybe it’s something that happened — a mistake, a rejection, a moment that didn’t go how you wanted.

Or maybe it’s something you can’t quite name — a sense that things should be different than they are.

Whatever it is, just notice how much energy goes into resisting it. Trying to fix it. Control it. Escape it. That’s the real cost.

Because as long as you’re resisting reality, you can’t be at peace with it.

At this point, you're probably thinking,“But if I stop resisting, doesn’t that mean I’m just giving up?”“What if something actually needs to change?”“Won’t things get worse if I don’t try to fix them?”

I used to think the same thing, that if I let go, everything might fall apart. But here’s what I’ve come to understand: letting go of resistance doesn’t mean doing nothing. It means you stop fighting the moment, so you can respond to it clearly.

When you're caught in resistance, you’re not present with the situation itself. You're caught in your reaction to it — the fear, the frustration, the need to control. And from that state, even your best intentions become reactive.

But when you let go of that inner pushback, even just a little, something shifts. You start to see the moment for what it is. Not what you wanted, not what you feared, just what is. And from that place, you can respond — not react.

You can still take action. You can still make a change.

The difference is you’re doing it with presence, not panic.

Clarity, not chaos.

Awareness, not reaction.

Am I Going Crazy?

When I started to go down this path, I started to wonder, "Am I going crazy? Or is everyone else?". Everyone seemed to live this way, chasing what they wanted, resisting what they didn’t, constantly in their heads. Wasn't this just…normal?

Most people live their whole lives without ever questioning the voice in their head. They have identified so strongly with the thinker, that they feel it's who they are.They believe every thought, follow every emotion, react to every story — without ever noticing the pattern.

As I looked around, I could see that society is built by people who are trying to give the mind what it wants. More success. More attention. More control. The next thing that will finally make them happy. Yet most people are never satisfied. Never content. Never at peace.

I know this pattern well. The things I thought would make me blissfully happy never did. Sure, they gave me a moment of enjoyment, but then it was gone. And the mind had already moved on to the next thing. The next goal it said I needed to finally feel okay.

I wish this was a game you could win. A part of me wanted to hold on to the fantasy that I could earn my right to be happy. That one day, I’d have achieved everything my mind told me I needed.

I’d cross the finish line.

I'd have made it.

And finally, I could relax — and just enjoy my life.

But at some point, I stopped believing that was true. I started to see through the illusion that my mind had built. It didn’t have all the answers. It wasn’t leading me toward peace. It was just making it up as it went along.

That's when everything began to shift.

If the mind didn’t have the answers, maybe I needed to stop following it. Maybe peace wouldn’t come from fixing every problem, achieving every goal, or getting life exactly how I wanted it.

Maybe it would come from something much simpler.

The Doorway to Freedom

I realised I didn’t need to silence the mind. I didn’t need to fix it. I didn’t even need to believe it.

I just needed to observe it.

There’s a part of you — a quiet part — that can watch the voice without getting pulled in. The part that notices the thought, instead of identifying with it. The part that sees the storm, but doesn’t get swept away.

I've started to believe that this is where the real shift begins. Not when you silence the mind. Not when you finally get what you want. But when you stop believing every thought it throws at you, and just observe.

No fixing. No controlling. Just watching the mind, without following it.

That's how you begin to live free. Because once you can see the voice, you no longer have to obey it. And once you stop obeying it, you get back in contact with life. You live in the same cage as everyone else. The difference is, you’re starting to see the bars.

And once you can see the bars, you can begin to step outside of them.

What's Next

Next week, I’ll show you how to take this awareness even deeper — how to observe the mind in real time, exactly when you need it most.

Not just in stillness. But in the chaos of everyday life. When you're overwhelmed, triggered, or lost in thought… this is where the real work begins.

Adam