The egoic mind argues with life. It’s in a big hurry usually. It creates a sense of time and the sense that there isn’t enough of it. One of the ways it does this is by pretending that something could or should take less time, which of course is a lie. Things take as long as they take, and there is usually nothing we can do about it—and sometimes they take even longer than they usually do: People are late, traffic is slow, we’re out of an ingredient when we’re cooking, someone interrupts us with a phone call. The egoic mind doesn’t even accept things taking as long as they normally take, so any delays are especially cause for complaint. The mind compares whatever is going on with either an idea of how it should look or an idea of how it looked in the past, and thinks it should comply to that idea or memory. But life doesn’t work that way. The mind just doesn’t accept how life works, and that causes us a lot of stress—if we listen to and believe our thoughts.

What if with every little and big thing in life we just let it take as long as it takes? It’s going to anyway. Not being okay with how long something takes is a source of ongoing, subtle suffering that most of us live with without questioning it. But we don’t have to live with a sense of pushing, hurrying, frustration, anger, and dissatisfaction if we see that we are creating that unpleasant experience with the perception that something shouldn’t take as much time as it does. Notice this as you are going about your day. Notice how dissatisfied with daily tasks the mind can be. And yet such tasks must be done: We have to drive to get somewhere, we have to brush our teeth, we have to pay our bills. We have to do the many things that make our lives work and run smoothly.

Resisting and complaining about such tasks is dysfunctional and unpleasant, so why listen to and agree with the egoic mind’s resistance, complaining, and negativity? The key is just to see that any resistance or negativity about what you are doing is your mind’s resistance and negativity and not yours. You are that which is capable of noticing your thoughts and what the mind is up to—how it creates negativity and dissatisfaction. Our default position as humans is to agree with our thoughts and feel they are our thoughts. But they are just the programming we were given. If those thoughts were going on in someone else’s mind instead of our own, we wouldn’t consider them to be ours. But since those thoughts are going on in our own head, we agree with them. We believe that is how we feel and that it is right and appropriate to feel that way.

What a blessing it is when you discover that which is within you that can disagree with negativity, that can disagree with your own thoughts. What is that? That is who you really are. You are that which is happy with life and able to let everything take as much time as it does. This very simple shift from pushing yourself through something to letting everything take as long as it takes will change your experience of life dramatically. It is much more peaceful, functional, and fun. The same things get done in the same amount of time but with ease and peace instead of stress and frustration.

Freedom from anger, frustration, and dissatisfaction is possible just by noticing how the mind is able to create those feelings within you if you let it. And then let that which notices this choose to be grateful for the life you are given and all the things you “have” to do. From that place, if something about your life or how you do things can be changed for the better, you will more easily find a way to do that. The mind actually loves to feel terrible, martyred, and self-righteous, so it won’t help you find a way to be more functional and happy. It would rather wallow in its own suffering. You—the real you—has to find a way out by not listening to your negative thoughts and by letting everything take as long as it takes. Relax and enjoy the ride!