Are you feeling tense or anxious? Do you regularly worry? Do you sometimes feel nervous? Do you get easily annoyed? Are you stressed? If you perceive yourself to be suffering from any of these afflictions, then you’re letting your mind play tricks on you. The inner you cannot be anxious, nervous, stressed or uncertain. The real you is simply not capable of being stressed or anxious. All these afflications are symptoms of an over-active personality – when you feel any of these symptoms, it’s only your personality trying to trip you up.

You’ve got to understand that your personality – from the Latin persona, meaning a mask – is just a mask that not only hides the real you from everyone else, it has fooled you into thinking that it is, in fact, who you are. However, psychology tells us that your personality is an ‘album’ of snapshots of people and events that impressed you when you were a young child – what we normally call our formative years. You took snapshots of these things because they were big enough to make you feel good or bad about yourself at that time. Unfortunately, psychology also tells us that the normal mind is much more likely to focus on the negative rather than the positive photographs.

Your subconscious mind is currently obsessed with those photographs and this obsession is what creates your personality. In essence, your personality is not real – it may well have got you to where you are and you may be very fond of it – but be careful you don’t fall in love with an illusion.

To rid your life of the problems from which only your imaginary personality can suffer – stress, worry, anxiety, self-doubt, fear, loneliness – you need to go beyond your personality, your perceived weaknesses and strengths. You need to go searching within for the inner you because not only does it not experience stress, worry, doubt, not only is the inner you fearless, the real you is capable of achieving effortless success and happiness. The great news is that you won’t have to look to hard to discover the inner you – it is crying out to be found. You’ll find the real you in the quiet of a reflective moment, in the experience of one of those perfect “natural high” moments that we experience at some point in our lives – where peace and happiness reign.

But you shouldn’t wait for the next peak moment to get over the illusions of worry, stress and all the rest. You can do that right now by indulging in some meditation. When you meditate you will start to understand that stress, tension and fear are simply self-destructive thoughts and that a clear and focused mind (the real you) simply has not time for such nonsense – it has far more important things to do.