One thing I find particularly interesting about the human psyche is the voice inside our heads.
You know what I am talking about...
The voice inside your head that is always making you second guess every decision you make.
The voice inside your head that doesn't let certain things go and haunts your subconscious at all hours of the day.
Many of us have names for the voices we hear, many refer to them as "demons."
These demons can be crippling and tiresome for the average person and many people feel hopeless against them.
For the sake of today's post, I want to go in-depth about how we can face the demons and silence them from controlling our minds, and our actions.
Before we dive into what we can do to silence them, let us first define them and figure out where they are coming from.
I have personally thought a lot about my own demons and the origins in which they come from.
What I have been able to conclude is that the demons are often results of past traumas and negative feelings that we have felt at some point in our lives.
Oftentimes when overthinking, there are long periods of silence trying to argue against these demons.
We know they are bad, we know they don't want us to progress and succeed in life, and yet most still give in to listening to them.
It is the never ending battle between good and evil - the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other.
While I will not discuss in full detail on the effects of trauma on the human psyche (more on this topic in past blog posts), it is interesting to point out that a lot of the negative thoughts we have are from things we have experienced.
When we are often faced with similar situations that we have seen before, it is natural for the demons to take full control and completely fill your mind with their treachery.
It is crippling at times.
We can use breakups as an example: whenever we experience a breakup, we often react in similar ways in which we have reacted to breakups in the past.
Those that have been abandoned often feel some sort of abandonment every time they have to deal with someone leaving that they don't really want to leave.
It is the fear of experiencing the same thing over and over again that often allows the demons to take way and have control of the mind.
When it comes to breakups in particular, we know when we break up with someone it is for a reason and we know that the reason has something to do with that particular person not being right for us.
Yet when we separate from those people, most are often left only thinking about the good times because we are simply afraid of missing them.
I have been battling with my own demons my entire life and I have only found one way to silence them and that is through productivity.
Missed feelings and negative thoughts can be replaced through productive behavior and keeping the mind and body occupied on something else.
This doesn't go without mentioning that the demons will always find ways to creep back into your mind, but this is where mental training and mental fortitude come in handy.
By having something that is productive to focus on that you can fully engage in, the negative thoughts and feelings will have no power over you.
Some people find this productivity through things like working out, going for long walks outside, reading and writing, or just sheer hard work.
For me personally, I am the type of person that needs to have my body and my mind equally stimulated throughout the day and that is why I find such fulfillment in ranching and training horses.
I obviously go to the gym on a daily basis, while I also read and write for education and staying productive with creating content for this platform.
From the time I wake up at 5am, to right now it at the time of this writing at 9pm, I am busy working on something and there is no time for the negative thoughts to consume me.
Do those thoughts still find their way in here and there? Absolutely they do!
Do those thoughts have a chance in stopping me from reaching my goals? Not a chance in hell.
Having goals and something to wake up and work towards everyday is the only cure to suppressing the demons from consumption.
As men, we have to stay working in order to be useful, otherwise we open the door right up for the demons to control us.
Men need to have a purpose to fulfill everyday because every time we defeat the demons by pursuing our mission, we gain strength.
This is exactly why I do not advocate for the new modern ideology of it being "okay" for men to be in their feelings and be vulnerable.
Men need to be strong and be driven by a purpose because being driven by purpose leaves no room for the demons to control us.
For women, I feel it is slightly different, but works off the same principle in finding something productive.
For many women that experience trauma, they become defensive and live in a more masculine frame of mind in how they operate within the world.
I would say that for a woman to be able to suppress her demons, she would need to find her purpose and focus on being productive for the sake of being a woman.
Being defensive, independent, and masculine is not the answer because those same demons will continue to control you until you can break yourself free of them.
One thing that is important to note about the difference between men and women are the level of emotions women feel compared to men.
This is why it is easy for women today to say it's "okay" for men to be in their feelings because that is genuinely how women view the world, from an emotional mental framework.
Men view the world from an entirely different point of view because we make decisions based off of facts and logic, not emotion.
This is one of the big discrepancies as to why we see separation between men and women today.
At the end of the day, I believe most women want to feel and act like women, and most men want to feel and act like men.
We are all faced with demons we have no idea how to control because everything that we have known since the beginning of time, things and behaviors that are rooted in our DNA, are buried under modern day societal bullshit.
Listening to our demons is always going to be the path of least resistance because it requires no action.
To face our demons by fulfilling our life's purpose requires a lot of action and a lot of hard work!
The only way we silence our demons and win is by fulfilling our life's purpose, whatever it may be so that we can live a life of fulfillment.