Anyone who has ever prepared for a bodybuilding show or body event will attest to the paranoia that seeps into the mind. For some, a glance from a stranger can ignite a story – they hate me – while for others, that same glance can mean the exact opposite. Both are just stories because we really do not know what anyone is thinking, and assuming what others are thinking does not make it true, even if the mind can find compelling evidence to support its particular position.
So what drives the creation of these stories? First, we must recognize that the source of all stories lies within us. All stories start with us, and we can choose to end them, but only if we are willing to accept responsibility that we are, in fact, their creators. Our mind creates stories because it attempts to make sense of things, having only limited information. This limited information conflicts with a primary mental desire to create certainty, so the mind has devised a way around that by making up things to appease this primary need. The mind also craves the uncertainty of excitement and newness, so one can easily see why we can never seem to find balance.
During a bodybuilding preparation, this entire process of making up stories is intensified to a very high level because there is so much uncertainty. The enormous amount of uncertainty puts the mind in a tailspin because it is desperately trying to make sense of everything, so it has to create stories that create a level of certainty. So, when someone looks at me in the gym, my mind really does not know what they are thinking, so it makes up a story: they are jealous, they hate me, or whatever else it can come up with in order to appease the anxiety of not knowing. This is why athletes need constant affirmation from their support teams.
Right about now you may have realized that I am using bodybuilding as a specific example of what happens to every human being who faces an uncertain situation. When uncertainty infiltrates the human psyche, story creation is the method it uses to cope. Up to now, this mind pattern ran automatically when uncertainty occurred, but now we have the awareness that it exists. Being aware gives us the opportunity to investigate and discover how uncertainty leads to many of our actions that result in some very painful outcomes.
In this exploration, we will discover that uncertainty is a very powerful emotion that we do not have to try to escape or alleviate. We observe how we need to experience the rawness of this cutting-of-the-flesh kind of experience. Sitting through the uncertainty is very hard because the mind's impulse is to alleviate it or escape from it. At first, our mind will work against us, but by remaining in the fire of a mind that is about to blow and emerging on the other side without doing a thing, we will discover something amazing. It was just a mind storm, and all is well, like it has always been. This is the hidden truth behind our incessant need to create stories.
