He might be stuck in mindset 1, where he is reacting to his fear, depression, and anger. If he is in mindset 2, he needs the skillful tools, techniques, and concepts to make the best of his situation. Most likely he is experiencing both. Sometimes stuck and sometimes able to cut through the powerful tendency to react to emotions to make the best of his situation by accepting and letting go.

Change your mind

States of fear, anger, boredom, and depression are natural. It is how we experience and work with them that matters. Identify with them, let them take over and you are lost. Instead realize that your emotions and thoughts are the result of mental habits, beliefs, and biases that are often below the line of consciousness. Know that you can change your mind.

You can change your underlying beliefs, your view, to see your thoughts, feelings, and emotions as clouds passing in the sky. Where the sky is a natural state of clarity, awareness undisturbed by the clouds. Identify with that spacious underlying awareness so you can experience the clouds as invitations to look at their root cause. Work on the cause and there are fewer and fewer clouds 

Root Causes

Realize that the root cause of unskillful thoughts, feelings, and difficult emotions is attachment to wanting things to be different than they can be. Cultivate a mindset of acceptance and letting go and identify with the always present sky instead of the clouds. Realize that your thoughts, feelings, and emotions are impermanent, continuously changing, and not under your complete control. Step back and mindfully observe the display of their movement.

Acceptance and letting go does not mean being passive. It means choosing to be responsive rather than reactive. You can do what you can do to change the things you can change. Just do it with the mindset that accepts the outcome, even if it is one you don't like. Then from there do what you can do.

That is mindset 2. The mindset that lets you make the best of your situation.

No Guarantee

There is no guarantee that you can change your reactions. When you are mindful, you may just be able to watch yourself acting angrily at your caretakers, your fate, or yourself. You may be aware that you are so depressed that you can't get yourself out of bed. You may feel stuck and lost. You may temporarily forget about the sky and think the clouds are all there is.

But then you wake up to remember that you are the sky, not the clouds, and you step back and apply techniques that calm you, reduce your stress, avoid reactive behavior, and enable you to avoid spiraling into anger and depression. The techniques are mindfulness and concentration meditations, devotion, singing and chanting, contemplation, and breath and body work. Applying them requires patient effort until they become natural and effortless.

Cultivating the mindset of acceptance and letting go with a sense that you are not your thoughts, feelings and emotions requires the courage to question and confront your beliefs and your desire for stability, certainty, and always getting what you want. When you realize that the nature of your mind is sky-like awareness, the way is easy.

What is your mindset? Do you believe it is fixed or that you have the power to change it?

"Two simple words: let go. The words may be simple but is it easy to really accept and let go? In his new book The Peaceful Warrior's Path, George Pitagorsky writes a prescription for removing obstacles that may be keeping you from letting go. The book is designed to help gain insight, work with new skills and show us a path to freedom."

 - Sharon Salzberg, author of Lovingkindness and Real Life.

You can buy the Peaceful Warrior's Path: Optimal Wellness through Self-Aware Living on Amazon:

Paperback

Kindle/eBook