How To Use Confusions To Our Benefit?

The Imperfect Physical World

Everybody longs for a perfect world. A world where we live with physical and mental perfection & clarity. We expect to achieve everything we want. We expect to think exactly as we want to think and use our mind perfectly to our benefit. But life is far from perfect. Actually, exactly opposite to being perfect. To say that it is a big chaos, is to say the least. Our real lives are a big drama in which things don’t seem to work out the way we want them. This is because of the multitude of possibilities and probabilities in the real world. And these infinite number of possibilities & probabilities generate a mirror sets of thoughts in our minds. 

The Confused Mental World

For every possibility there is a tsunami of thoughts to manage. And this Tsunami of thoughts, choices and options lead to a chaotic confusion in our minds and in our lives which ultimately causes destruction of one’s dreams and aspirations. Hence, it is very important to find a solution to the problem of confusion. We need to find a way not only to stop letting confusion destroy our peace of mind or life but also use it to make our lives perfectly balanced and happy. So, we begin by trying to understand the basics of confusion.

Childhood : The Confusion-Less Times

Childhood : The Confusion-Less Times

As a child, did you ever feel confused? No. Even when we were a kid, we had a possible infinite number of options, choices & ways of doing things. We had to choose among these choices. But we never felt confused while making any of those choices. Every choice was equally right to us and we never felt bad about having to choose only one amongst so many choices irrespective of the consequences it brought with it. This was because as a kid, we did not think in terms of alternatives, substitutes or options that we had. We lived in the perfect ‘Unity World’ which did not have any divisions or differentiations. This imaginary world in our mind kept us free of confusions and any mental struggle. 

Adulthood : The Beginning of Confusion & Mental Chaos

Adulthood : The Beginning of Confusion & Mental Chaos

But as we grew up, the ‘perfect world’ of our childhood got increasingly squeezed to finally collapse in our minds as we came face to face with reality. We got educated and learnt that there are various names, types and sub-divisions of everything around us. We learnt that all the flowers are not called just flowers. There are many types of flowers with a completely different world of their own. Similarly, we came to know that there were a million different options and ways to do everything we do in our lives. We can opt to become a doctor among many professions. Among doctors too, we could become either a heart specialist, a physician or an animal doctor among various other options. And within the animal doctor segment also, we could choose to become a horse doctor or a bird doctor or a dog doctor and so on. 

Confusion is An Unavoidable Part of Life

When we have so many options and choices to make in life and we don’t know  fully about any of them, we are bound to get confused. But we need to accept the challenge of turning this source of mental chaos into a source of mental peace and happiness in our life. After all, this is what life is all about.  But how do we do this? How do we turn our confusions into clarity and precision so that we could use it to create a beautiful life of our dreams?

Solution To Confusion : Regain Your Childhood

Light-Minded Playfulness

One way is to become a child once again in our minds and see the world as one perfect place in our imagination irrespective of what is in front of us. This way life will become smooth, certain and totally confusion-free once again. We will not have to think too much about all the options we have in life and we can choose any one we feel like and just go on with it. 

But this will amount to ignoring the realities of the physical world. It will contain our lives and won’t let us do many things beyond a certain level. It will reduce our capabilities and would prevent us from becoming responsible, able & a skilled human-being. Moreover, it will give us failures in life which would make us feel guilty and bad about ourselves. Ignoring the realities of the physical world works well only when we are kids because at that time we can afford to be irresponsible and absolutely free of its consequences. But once we grow up we need to take responsibility of our actions and their consequences. 

We definitely need to be playful in shouldering these responsibilities so as to not get over-burdened or stressed but at the same time we should not go on hiding behind the child in us because that will cause serious damages to things and people around us including ourselves. We need to strike the right balance between playfulness and responsibility. 

The Desirable Way To Handle Confusion

What we need to do is to educate ourself with the realities of the material world, make ourselves skilled enough to manage these resources, plan well to use them and make ourselves able of implementing & improvising on this plan in the best interest of our society, nation, the world and ourself. Basically, we have to turn a completely imperfect, complex and chaotic world into a perfectly balanced, simple and organized world through our responsible behavior. 

The material world is and will continue to remain imperfect and unbalanced by nature regarding which we can’t do much. But if we can take complete responsibility of the confusions & imperfection of our own mind, the imperfection of the material world will go on reducing for us. So, how do we take control of the confusions our mind goes through?

Best Way To Tackle Confusions : Find Your True-Self

Find Your True-self

If we can find our true self, we can turn all confusions into clarity & opportunities. By true self, we mean the complete understanding of our real-self. People think that their  surface likes, dislikes & thoughts define them which is a completely immature and wrong perception. People are not their thoughts, opinions, views, bias, prejudices, likes or dislikes. These are only their surface personas. Their truth is deep within them in Nothingness. When we think that we like the shirt our favorite actor was wearing in a movie, actually we don’t like the shirt but just the actor. When we forget about our favorite actors and then find our favorite shirt, have we found our truly favorite shirt. Similarly when we stop trying to live like others we naturally start living our life as our true selves. 

And once we find our true self, we would clearly know what we want while making every decision in life. There remains no scope of getting or remaining confused once we find our true self. But this is a long, difficult and tiring process which requires an extremely determined approach in life. This is why majority of people have not been able to find or achieve their true self which has kept them stuck in the mire of confusions. 

Tackling Confusions : The Alternative Way

Alternative Solution To Confusions

But there is another way to tackle confusions, make the right choices & decisions in life and ultimately find your true self. What we need to do here just requires stillness of your mind which can be achieved through consistent practice and work upon your mind. 

See, confusion is nothing but the inability to handle the huge influx of thoughts regarding a situation. The biggest mistake people do when taking a decision is to do the first thing that comes to mind. They do this to avoid confusion and mental struggles but in the process end up choosing the worst possible option among possible decisions. What we need to do here is to keep our mind still and ourselves patient till our mind gives us all the possible courses of action that we can take in the given situation. We don’t have to get troubled by any of these thoughts. We just need to continuously observe them. And once we are fully informed about the situation by our mind, we can choose the most suitable option among all these possible courses of action. This way we will not only make the right decision but will also move closer towards achieving our true-self. Doing this consistently will one day make us achieve our potential best self making us free of any confusion.

Conclusion

Limiting ourself due to the fear of confusions will only curtail our growth and hence our lives. We need to make ourselves strong enough to be able to stay still while observing & absorbing the thoughts generated by our mind in different situations. And only when we come to know the best possible course of action among all these choices, shall we start acting upon it. This is how a little courage, our sense of responsibility and the meditative stillness within us can go a long way in transforming our confusions into a tool to make the right decisions and achieve our true self in life! 

Transform Confusion Into Clarity