Stop Letting Your Mind Default to Complaint

I remember a time when my mind never rested. Every day was a calculation. What bills were coming, whether I could cover them, whether there would be money left to eat. I was running a business in the middle of the pandemic, a business that was struggling, and I wasn’t collecting a paycheck. Everything I made went straight back into keeping it alive. Sometimes that meant paying myself almost nothing. Sometimes it meant skipping the dentist, the doctor, anything that cost money I didn't have.

After the restaurant closed, the uncertainty only deepened. I moved into survival mode, taking whatever small jobs and gigs I could find, my mind constantly scanning for the next way to get through.

The Yogis teach that when the basics of life feel threatened, the mind contracts. Attention narrows. Fear becomes repetitive. I didn’t need a book to tell me that, I lived it. Even when I had big ideas and ambition, a part of my awareness was always pulled back to the same question: How am I going to make this work?