You're Making Yourself Miserable
(If you prefer to watch, check out my video on YoutTube!
A week ago, I traveled to a country I’ve never been to before. I had been looking forward to this trip for months now, excited to finally be able to see all the natural wonders that people boast about after visiting this eco-conscious country. Costa Rica: The happiest, greenest place on Earth.
Screen capture with “Costa Rica” added of a video posted by Pat Whelen on Pexels
In planning for the trip, I booked an AirBnB right outside of San Jose, the capital. My thinking was that I would still be very central, but I would be surrounded by a lot more nature and therefore peace and quiet. Plus, I would be that much closer to all the places I wanted to see throughout the country. After seeing this picture, I knew I had found exactly where I wanted stay.
Image taken directly from AirBnB listing
Fast forward to last Monday when I finally arrived at my AirBnB at 8p local time, after a long day of travel that started at 8a that day. All I wanted to do was get in bed and sleep, which is exactly what I did. I didn’t even bother to eat or shower, much less unpack and organize my things.
But an hour later, I was still lying in bed, my frustration growing every minute. It turns out that the AirBnB I booked is located in more of a city than a town and the AirBnB itself is probably 100 feet from a main road. So, regardless of how tired I was, I couldn’t will myself to sleep. The walls here are concrete and there’s no sort of insulation or sound-proofing, so it literally felt like I might as well be sleeping on the sidewalk next to the road.
Three days later, things were continuing to deteriorate. I was in a bad mood, my body was super tense and I was breathing shallowly. And the worst part was that I couldn’t seem to change any of it even though I was aware of it.
But then I meditated.
For months now, I’ve been meditating with my mom first thing in the morning through an app called Insight Timer. That day, the topic was on letting go of control, which I didn’t plan. I had just forgotten to pick a meditation out the day before and this was the default.
Screen capture of meditation on Insight Timer
Regardless, as I followed along, I took note of how much tension the meditation was helping me release. It was then that I realized that the reason I was feeling like I was was mostly due to the fact that the reality of the AirBnB and by extension, my experience here in Costa Rica, had not at all met my expectations of being a serene nature experience.
Because of that, I was hyper-focusing on the noise; all my thoughts were surrounding it. Thoughts like ‘it’s impossible to concentrate,’ ‘how am I going to get any work done?’, ‘I can’t find a single moment of peace’ kept looping through my head. I was blaming my host for not warning me about the noise and myself for not thinking to ask. Worst of all, I had made this booking for four weeks and thinking that this was going to be my reality for that long was torture.
But this meditation allowed me to see that it wasn’t the situation itself that was making me tense, it was my desire to control it. Wish it away. Make it different. Rather than just accepting it and working with it.
Ever since doing this meditation, though, I’ve found that I can just let the traffic noise be in the background. It no longer consumes all my attention. Instead, it’s become part of my practice – a very literal, tangible, and physical reminder to just let things be the way they are. To let things go and to Surrender.