You're looking forward to something. A party, a gathering, a celebration.. and then you remember they're going to be there.
And just like that, your mind is off. Replaying things. Running worst-case scenarios. Rehearsing what you might say, what you might not say, how you'll hold yourself together in the room. The event hasn't even happened yet and you're already exhausted by it.
Here's what I want to offer you: the suffering isn't really coming from that person.
It's coming from where your attention is going.
Your mind is a survival machine. It was built to spot threats and solve them before they arrive. And somewhere along the way, social discomfort got filed in the same drawer as actual danger. So when it locks onto someone who makes you feel uncomfortable, it does what it always does — it zooms in, amplifies, and inflates. A person who represents maybe 5% of the event starts to fill 100% of your experience of it.
The solution most people reach for is suppression. "I'll just ignore them." Or performance. "I'll be perfectly polite and unbothered." Neither of those work, because they still require you to keep them at the centre of your attention.
What actually works is something the yogis called pratyahara — the conscious withdrawal of attention. Not ignoring. Withdrawing. Bringing your focus back to yourself, back to the real reason you're there, back to what you actually came for.
You don't have to fake anything. You don't have to pretend. You just gently, repeatedly, bring yourself back.
That's where the freedom is.
Watch the full satsang above.
If you'd like to explore this kind of inner work live, I hold a free satsang every Friday — come join us if you'd like to be in the room.
And if you want to go deeper, the free 7-Day Inner Work Challenge is a good place to start.
Big love, Dylan