dear friends,
Skillfully managing the thoughts that swirl through our minds from the moment we wake up to the moment we drift off to sleep is not an easy task. We’ve all played the “don’t think about a pink elephant” game only to have a bubblegum pachyderm pop into our heads. It’s easy to understand why so many of us throw up our hands and simply assume that there is no other way to be human than to be controlled by the thoughts that drift through our internal awareness, not to mention the thoughts that bombard us from the outside.
But … there is another way to be human. The truth is, we all have agency when it comes to how we interact with the thoughts that drift (or storm) through our awareness, regardless of their source.
Now, I’m not talking about the kind of thinking we all do when we’re starting a business, managing a project, writing a report or planning a vacation. Those thoughts that are part of our active thinking process. Here, I’m talking about thoughts that highjack our attention — and frequently our emotions — and yank us from the present moment to worrying about the future or ruminating about the past. You know, that argument you had with your brother eight years ago that you play back in minute detail, rehashing every last point of contention? Those are the thoughts I’m talking about.
This practice hasn’t been easy for me, but I can promise that it does become more easeful. And the thoughts that cause the most suffering visit less frequently.
There’s a lot of advice out there on the subject of human thinking. I won’t even attempt to make this missive comprehensive. Instead, I’m going to focus on a few simple steps that helped me the most when I started the process of reclaiming agency over my own thinking. This is what I do whenever I find myself stuck in a thought loop.
(1) Entertain the idea that while your thoughts are real, they may not be true. Like all gentle practices, this one starts with a small shift: Acknowledge that your thoughts are real, but reserve judgment about whether those same thoughts are true. If you grew up in a thinking-centric environment, like I did, this small shift won’t seem small at all. You were probably trained to believe that logical and rational thought necessarily meant that those thoughts must be true or at least lead to the truth. I’m not going to ask you to give up that assumption right now. It took me months (years?) before I could even begin to question the Cartesian paradigm, so I know this change doesn’t necessarily happen over night. (If it does for you: Yay! You can skip the next paragraph.)
Instead, I’m going to ask you to do a little thought experiment from your own life: Bring to mind a time when you knew what someone else was thinking. It could be a time when your boss made a curt remark, and you were certain it was because she thought the memo you just emailed her was substandard and was rethinking your position within the company. It could be a time when your partner wasn’t paying attention to what you were saying, and you concluded that this was the end of the relationship. Or it could be something as common as a friend not responding to a text, and you knowing that he was purposefully ignoring you. Now, let me suggest: your boss’s spouse was just diagnosed with Alzheimer’s; your partner gave a major presentation that day which did not go at all well; and your friend lost his phone.
You get the point: Just because we come up with a logical thought to explain something, the reasonableness of that explanation has nothing to do with what is actually true. That’s what I mean in the subtitle about distinguishing between what is real and what is true. Our thought are real, but not necessarily true.
Okay, if you’re still with me, here’s the next step.
(2) Watch your thoughts. Whether you imagine them as leaves in a stream, clouds in the sky, or anything else that simply moves through space, start observing your own thinking mind. At first, this felt really strange to me. I was so identified with my thoughts that I could barely comprehend how I could be separate from them. For me, the breakthrough happened when I was able to see thoughts for what they are: mental formations, no matter how pleasant or unpleasant they made me feel. A mental formation is real in that you can describe it to someone in words or drawings, but that realness is not the same as being an accurate reflection of reality. When I began to understand this distinction, I was able to sense that my thoughts were neither solid nor necessarily reliable indications of anything. That gave me the space to see that I was not the thought I was experiencing. Like watching clouds on a lazy summer afternoon, I could just let thoughts pass through my mind. When you sense this for yourself, celebrate. Seriously. This is a big step in reclaiming your power over both intention and attention.
(3) Hold yourself in gentle awareness. Most meditation traditions advise you to step into the role of “objective observer” at this point. That may be fine advice for many, but I find it a little clinical or even cold, especially when I’m dealing with thoughts that tend to spiral. Instead, I’ve found that sensing some tenderness for the person having the thought (in other words: you) opens up space to be gentle in accepting the reality of the challenging thought. If you struggle with this, imagine a child you care about having a painful thought: a mean girl at school made fun of the sweater your adorable twelve-year-old niece wore to school, and now she has those words lodged in her mind. Of course, you feel compassion for her. That’s the gentleness I want you to feel for yourself in this step. Don’t worry about whether the thought makes sense or what you should do or shouldn’t do with it. This step is all about re-learning that we can be okay even when a disturbing thought passes through our awareness.
(4) Come up with a gentle way to acknowledge the thought and let it go. This is a riff off the famous Buddhist parable, “Hello, Mara. I see you.” The point is to be gentle with your thoughts, too, even the ones that tend to cause suffering. I do actually name my most persistent thought visitors, usually with an alliterative adjective (think Competitive Connie, Mean Mary) and in my mind I’ll say something along the lines of “Hello, Snarky Cindy, May I offer you some tea? You’re welcome to stay as long as you like, but I have other things to do.”). You don’t need to name your thoughts or say anything to them, but I’ve found that the silliness of the practice is helpful in letting go.
These few steps are only the beginning. But if you’re anything like me, when you start to get it, you’ll feel a sense of freedom and lightness. You may also start to experiment with your own unique ways to become less entangled with painful and sticky mental formations as they pass through your head. You might even discover that shifting the way you think about thinking will transform the way you think about life and how you live it.
That’s it for this week! I hope you find some calm, compassion and clarity in your thinking.
warmly,
alison
