How Do I Find Inner Peace When My Mind Won't Stop Racing and I Can't Sit Still?

When doing nothing means the world, you have found stillness.

There's a beautiful story about a monk who sat by a river every morning. A curious traveler asked him, "What are you doing?" The monk smiled and said, "I'm letting the river teach me."

"But you're just sitting there," the traveler protested. "Nothing is happening. All I see is water. What is the river teaching you?"

The monk pointed to the muddy water rushing past them. "See how cloudy it is? But watch what happens when it reaches that still pool ahead."

Sure enough, where the water slowed and became still, it cleared completely. The mud settled at the bottom, and you could see through the crystal clear water.

"That's what I am learning," the monk whispered. "In stillness, everything settles."

Sitting in Silence

Your mind is like that rushing river. Every day, it carries the mud of thoughts, worries, plans, and fears. You keep stirring it up with concepts and ideas, thinking you’re helping, but it actually makes the river muddier.

The healing you've been searching for isn't found in more doing. It's found in less.

If you sit still for just 25 minutes, something incredible will happen. Your nervous system will begins to reset. Your breathing will naturally deepen. That constant mind-chatter will quiet down.

Most of us are afraid of true stillness because we think we need to be productive every moment. This drive for doing something comes from the fear of facing our inner emptiness.

Facing the Darkness

We escape and run so that our deep inner loneliness and isolation doesn’t catch up with us. We fill our silence with thoughts, music or these days, with collective mindless chatter called a podcast.

But healing happens in quietness. It happens when we stop running from ourselves. When we let our inner discomfort come to the surface and learn to be with it. That is true resilience. That is true self-love.

Your body knows how to heal itself when you give it space. Your mind knows how to find peace when you stop feeding it with matter.

Go into quietness. Face your darkness.

Start with 25 Minutes of Absolute Physical Stillness

Find a comfortable spot where you won't be disturbed. Sit quietly without your phone turned to 'Do not Disturb', set a timer for 25 mins.

Do not move until the timer goes off. Let the mind wander. The mind is free to chatter, escape, or do some introspection. The only condition is, you body does not move.

Sit with a single intention : I will not move until I hear the timer go off.

Simply sit and let whatever happens, happen.

Why doing nothing is hard.

Most of us cannot do nothing. We are deeply conditioned to keep acting. We are perpetually occupied. 

We love being busy, as if busy means useful.

Our impulse to act on our thoughts is so strong that it overrides our need for peace. When these impulses come you will feel as if something is commanding you to move.

Don’t. Refuse to bend to those impulses. They are not real.

Let those impulses crash over you like waves crashing into a large rock on the shore. If you do not go with their pull, you will enter a state of deep stillness.

There you will find the nothingness that contains everything.

Try it. If you succeed, you will have done most people will never do in their entire lives.

Which is to do 'nothing'.