I May Be Wrong: And Other Wisdoms From Life as a Forest Monk

by Björn Natthiko Lindeblad

So how do you let go of a train of thought that’s dragging you along with it? You turn your attention elsewhere. The only thing fuelling your thoughts is your attention.

We all have the ability to let go of our thoughts, to choose where we direct our attention, how long we allow our attention to linger on things that cause us harm.

Nothing lasts. Not even the difficult times.

Directing our attention, choosing what we aim it at, is the best and possibly the only thing we can do when things get really hard.

‘Don’t believe your every thought.’

We don’t choose our thoughts. We don’t control the shape they take. Possibly, we can encourage some more than others, allow them more or less room. But we can’t control what pops into our minds. We can only choose whether or not to believe it.

you want someone to be easy to deal with, to behave in a way you find tolerable, there’s really only

one way: learn to like them exactly as they are.

We think we’re so omnipotent. I know what everyone should be like and I’m going to make myself suffer psychologically if they refuse to comply. We really think a lot of ourselves!

It reminded me that there’s value in not getting stuck in a state of certainty. If you always cling to what you think you already know, you make yourself inaccessible, and you miss out on so much. If we want access to a higher wisdom, we have to let go of some of our convictions and become more comfortable with not knowing. Thinking that we know is often a big problem. Knowing you don’t know is hardly ever a big problem. If we always cling to what we think we already know, how will we ever discover anything new? How can we learn?

Practising letting go is one of the most important things I’ve learned. The wisdom of that is profound. We never stop benefiting from getting better at it. The only way to get rid of thoughts that are harming us, that are making us feel small, useless, lonely, afraid, sad, angry – is to let them go. Even if they’re ‘right’. That’s obviously easier said than done. But it’s worth noting that, at the end of the day, it’s the thoughts we have real trouble letting go of that tend to harm us the most.

And there’s wisdom in not expecting life to turn out the way we think or feel it ought to. There’s wisdom in understanding that we are essentially clueless.

Somewhere inside, whether consciously or subconsciously, we know a lot of the things that are difficult in our lives are caused by our own thoughts. Our psychological suffering is for the most part not caused by external events but, rather, by what’s happening inside us – the thoughts bubbling up that we can either believe or not. It’s there, in our minds, that our suffering is created; that’s where it lives and thrives. For as long as we allow it to. The fact that psychological suffering is self-inflicted doesn’t make it any less painful. Not at all. But understanding that it is can give us a new way of relating to it.

‘It seems to me, the more refined forms of happiness are characterised by the absence of things, rather than the presence of things.’

universe operates according to this principle: You will know what you need to know when you need to know it.’

A big part of spiritual growth is about finding the courage to face uncertainty. When we learn to endure not knowing and not being in control, we gain access to a wiser part of ourselves.

here and now, which is the only place where life really happens.

What we send out eventually comes back. The world is not as it is. The world is as you are. So be what you want to see in it.