You don't have to control your thoughts. You just have to stop letting them control you.
The real wisdom here isn't the fuzzy idea of "letting go"—it's the liberation of recognizing that thoughts need not be obeyed like commands from authority. Most people exhaust themselves trying to cultivate perfect, positive thinking, when the actual freedom lies in indifference: you can notice your mind spinning catastrophic scenarios about tomorrow's presentation without treating those narratives as prophecy. Millman distinguishes between the impossible task of thought-policing and the eminently doable practice of simply not *acting* on every anxious whisper your mind produces. That separation—between thinking and doing—is where actual peace lives.
“Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason...”
Marcus Aurelius“For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. I...”
Viktor Frankl“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.”
Seneca