I wrote this review of The Untethered Soul about three years ago when I initially read the book. I had published this original blog on another site of mine and just came across it again today. I wanted to share it again for those who may have missed it the first time around.
This book really pushed me to think about my mental health in a new way. It gave me pause when I thought my brain would take over my daily life in such a negative way that it was ruining many of my relationships. I encourage everyone to read this book. Please leave me a comment below to tell me what your thoughts on it.
I recently read the Untethered Soul by Michael Singer. This book was life changing for me. The idea behind the book is about living a life with less anxiety and more happiness. Sounds easy right? Just stop worrying and do more happy things. Well, for me this is not so easy. It ends up being a complicated, messy, ruminating and catastrophizing drama that won’t shut up.
We all have what Singer calls the “roommate” in our head, that voice that you hear telling you what it think about your weight, or how what you just said to someone was stupid, or how that pretty girl would just turn you down if you asked her out. This roommate can feel like it is who we are. It can feel like it knows everything and if we just listen hard enough, it will tell us what the answers to the universe are. Not so fast… is this voice accurate? In my case, I can firmly tell you that it is not accurate. Like the quote above says.. 99% of what my roommate says in my head is complete bullshit, and I spend 99% of my day listening to something/someone that is lying to me. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like liars. In fact, I don’t stay friends with people who lie to me. The hard part here is that I have to live with this roommate. I cannot extract it from my brain or stop texting it or unfriend it. It is always going to be there. The Untethered Soul has helped me start understanding how to live with this roommate, the unwelcomed liar in my head.
At first I thought that there was no way that it was as easy as just sitting back and listening to the roommate while knowing it was lying and then just move on like it hadn’t ever said anything. How could it be that easy? Isn’t the conscience there to help guide us? Isn’t it there to help us make good decisions? I thought so. Then I realized that a lot of times, even when I listen to the roommate, I have ended up making terrible decisions. So it cannot be the voice of ultimate truth, the path to always take. In the book, Singer tells us that the roommate will always talk, it will argue with itself until we are exhausted and are so confused we cannot see any path, let alone the right one.
During the time that I was reading the book, I spent time listening to my roommate, actually listening like it was someone else talking. You know what happened? I started to understand that the dramatic arguing that goes on in my head is in fact bullshit. It didn’t steer my decisions one way or another, or be supportive when I needed assistance, it just caused me chaos and confusion with its never ending arguing. So after listening to it for awhile, I decided that if this was going on outside of my head, I would have walked away minutes ago and just cause it is going on in my head, doesn’t mean I have to actually pay attention to it. So I started investing my time in other things like planning my next blog, or what I was going to do for fun on the weekend. Amazingly enough, I felt less exhausted and more focused. The roommate didn’t go away completely, but it sure tones down a lot if you chose to not listen.
So I am encouraging you to tell your roommate to fuck off. Tell it that you are not going to listen to it drone on and on about how terrible you are or how you should have done this or that. Talk kindly to yourself and treat yourself the way you would treat anyone you love.. with compassion and kindness.
Deep Breath Adventures 