How do you control your thoughts and be the master of your mind?

A young monk once asked his master, “How do I stop negative thoughts?”

The master smiled and replied, “You don’t stop them. You watch them, like you would watch clouds float across the sky. Some clouds are dark, some are white, but none of them stay forever.”

That stayed with me because it’s the same in corporate boardrooms or in life. The thoughts never stop: one moment you’re replaying a heated conversation, the next you’re planning next week’s project, then you’re worrying about something that hasn’t even happened yet. If you try to fight them, they grow stronger.

The mind doesn’t like being ‘controlled’. It likes being ‘understood’.