What makes you feel better?
What makes you feel better about yourself? Money? A promotion? A new relationship? Travel the world or to Mars? No matter what it is, it is just another accessory or distraction.
When you are not feeling well and your body is perfectly healthy, maybe it's about time to realize that your body belongs to you but there is something else that is not feeling well. Automatically, you will start thinking as a defense mechanism that you are your mind if you are not your body. The function of the mind is to judge, to compare, to classify, to differentiate according to the way your society has programmed it. What the mind wants is just what the society wants, whatever the society considers valuable automatically your mind will create a desire for it, and whatever your society despises your mind will avoid it. So in the end even your thoughts aren't your thoughts. Thoughts are like the clouds, they come and go, sometimes you enjoy them and sometimes you don't.
Your body, let along your mind is negligible in size compared to the world let alone the universe. The reality of being small has given rise to the ego to create an internal world in which you will fill big. The ego does that by accumulation, it accumulates wealth, relationships, properties, achievements, anything that will make you feel bigger and is approved by your society.
The result of accumulation is attachment. Attachment is when you consider what you have accumulated as a part of you. Attachment is a double edged sword, if you get too identified with what you have it will control you. It's like giving a remote control to someone or something and they are free to push the buttons the way they want and you suffer the consequences.
The more attachments you have the more your thoughts will be revolving around them. Naturally we have the instinct to grow, nobody likes to go back in any way he/she as already crossed. The problem arises when the mind realizes that it has no control over it's attachments because anything is possible, for example, a relationship may end, you may lose your money, or an accident may happen, the company you work for goes bankrupt, your investments may fail, anything can happen. So the mind will start overthinking and over analyzing on how to keep what you have instead of enjoying them. You will suffer their loss without losing them.
Attachments are like pillars that we like to lean on when we get tired, but when they start shaking we might collapse.
So attachments, accessories, assets, wealth, jobs, whatever you can acquire are not the solution for feeling better. Because nothing on the outside can be guaranteed. We have to make an effort to realize what we want is what we don't have or to be able to keep what we have. For example, a wealthy and an average man were having a conversation and suddenly the wife of the average man brought the food she prepared for him, The wealthy man said this is worth millions.
What we don't have always looks more attractive, it is just your eyes fooling you.
The eyes will always interfere with the silence of the mind, that's why most meditations are done with the eyes closed just to filter our the noise.
Just like anything in the material world has it's opposite, like the day and the night, hot and cold, man and women, yin and yang, the mind also has a masculine and feminine aspects. Feeling uncomfortable is the result of the battle going on between the "I" (masculine) and the "ME" (feminine). If the "I" is not strongly established to control the "ME", the "ME" will listen to someone else's "I" finding it more stable. This is how hypnosis works. The weaker your "I" the more suggestible you will be. Advertisements always target the "ME", because the "I" is about the fire element, the logic, the judge.
Naturally, what comes between fire and water is the air. Between the "I" and the "ME" there is the air, which is the collective thinking way of your specific society. If you live in a happy society you will probably have more positive thoughts, and if you live in a negative society you will have more negative thoughts.
Positive and negative are the poles of the same line. Like a thermometer or a battery. The positive and negative touch each other from within but from outside they look separate. If you generate positive thoughts you will pull yourself to being more positive, and if you generate negative thoughts you will drag yourself to being more negative.
When you say that something is not possible or it will never happen chances are very high that it will never happen.
Everything around you started with a thought, a chair, an ashtray, your laptop, you mobile phone, they all started with an idea. And the more the idea was empowered with thoughts the more it's manifestation became tangible in the material world, This is called the crystallization of thoughts.
Thoughts are very powerful, they can even affect the air you breath or the food you eat. For example, if you are eating your food and thinking about something negative that has happened during the day, you are imprinting the negative ideas on your food. Because whatever you eat, you are unconsciously imprinting your DNA on it so that it will be transmuted into your blood, bones, skin etc. Even the air that is becoming a part of you, the mediator that links your soul to your body, if you are having negative thoughts while breathing, you are poisoning yourself and feeling more uncomfortable.
Controlling your thoughts will be very difficult as long as you don't realize that what you really are looking for not to miss out on life is within you.
The fear of missing out on life and doing all the things that you do will never solve the problem. Because you are looking for life forgetting that you are life or life is within you in it's purest form and you can have a first hand experience of it if you cut out all the noise of the 5 senses that are distracting you with ephemeral pleasures that will start to look pointless with time anyway.
The human being has 7 levels awareness wise. Once you get to the 4th level which is becoming a peaceful man/women, a point that nothing can bother you from the outside anymore the rest will come relatively easy.
Practically what you can do is DO NOTHING. Just sit and let your ideas and thoughts flow. Be the air that is witnessing, listening to the conversations between the fire and water in your mind. The "I" and the "ME". Don't get involved, let them fight, dance, make you feel good/bad, just let them play, it's just a play. It is your psychological world. A world you have created in your mind.
Your life story has nothing to do with life, it is just your story which most of it you have lived unconsciously under outer influences.
The idea of doing nothing is not allowing new information to flow in and get in the loop of restless thoughts. You can imagine, which is also a powerful tool, that the "ME" and the "I" are hugging each other in your mind. The conflict is over, you are stable, there is no-one talking in your head anymore. Your judgement is objective, and by instinct you already know what is fair and unfair because you can feel it without thinking about it.
It will be a waste of life to look for happiness outside because the gold mine is within you and you are trying to collect bits and pieces of copper from the outside.
Anything material has an expiry date, even your body, clinging on expiring things can never make you feel good on the long run. So again, pleasure is just a distraction, not that you shouldn't have any but have them being consciously aware that there are much valuable things within you.
Whatever you are trying to accumulate, you can convert your desire to the peace and joy within. Because desire cannot be killed, trying to kill desire is a waste of time, it will only grow stronger because it is anti fragile.
Absorb peace, calmness, relaxation with every breath, with every meal, with every thought.
You cannot change the world but you can change the way you see it, and it will be the way you want when you take away all the unnecessary distractions, noise and pollution.