Stop trying to control your thoughts
As someone who teaches mindfulness and meditation, one of the primary motivations I hear from people wanting to learn is “I want to control my thoughts.”
Other variations include “I want to stop thinking negative thoughts,” or “I want to make myself think more positive.”
Pursuing this motivation leads to a great deal of frustration — not just when it comes to mindfulness and meditation, but when it comes to general self-improvement (the amount of self-help books espousing “positive thinking” could fill a large room…if not a small library).
This frustration stems from one major drawback when it comes to trying to control thoughts: you can’t do it.
Before this digresses into a debate over free will, I would encourage you to explore where thoughts come from. What causes the next thought to pop into your head? Sure, sometimes a thought related to your immediate environment or the task at hand materializes and seemingly “fits” with what is happening. Other times, thoughts appear random and can range from something that happened to you in grade school to the person who cut you off in traffic last week.
The bottom line is, thoughts come and go. Trying to control what thoughts occur when, or trying to stop certain thoughts from happening altogether, is a poor use of your time and energy.
Side note: trying NOT to think of something actually makes it more likely that you will. It’s called Ironic process theory, which refers to the psychological process whereby deliberate attempts to suppress certain thoughts make them more likely to surface.
There is good news, however. If you accept that you can’t control thoughts, you can focus your efforts on what you can do: you can strengthen awareness of them, and develop the skill of observing mind-made activity without getting caught up in it. In doing so, you learn to interrupt the process that leads to conditioned behavior and habitual actions and reactions.
Through practice, you can become better at watching thoughts as they come into being, exist, and cease. This is the essence of meditation. The first thing you’ll notice is there’s a constant dialogue in your head. You may have caught glimpses of it before, but — most likely — you never realized the extent of its presence. We are usually aware of only a small portion of what actually goes on in our minds at any given time.
Self-experiment: if you want to prove (or try to dis-prove) this to yourself, start a timer for 10 minutes, sit down with a pen and paper, and write down every thought you have. Most people don’t make it the entire 10 minutes!
Your mind is constantly going. Thoughts and emotions arise and — if you mindlessly indulge them — lead to habitual actions and reactions. This process unfolds moment after moment after moment. But, awareness allows you to slow it down, observe it, and disrupt it. It allows you to stop mindlessly indulging “mental drama.”
By watching thoughts and emotions, you can learn not to cling to them and make them “mine.” You can learn not to get swept away by them. And, you can recognize them for what they are: temporary appearances in consciousness.
They arise and they pass, even though your mind tries to make you believe they are permanent (when you are experiencing anxiety or depression, for example, you believe it will never pass…which makes it even worse).
But, you don’t have to dwell on — or wallow in — any of it. You don’t have follow the mental activity down a path that results in the same old outcomes.
With consistent practice, you’ll discover for yourself that the content of your mind does not matter. What matters is how you let it affect you. Thoughts and emotions are like clouds floating across the sky: instead of getting lost in them, you can choose to watch them come and go. They only hold power over you if you continue to blindly follow them wherever they lead.
Unfortunately, people usually go through life like this — operating on autopilot, being dragged around by their minds. As a result, their daily existence is mired in what we commonly refer to as “the struggles of life”: stress, anxiety, worry, fear, depression, self-doubt, et cetera.
You don’t have to live on autopilot, though. You can strengthen awareness, become proficient at observing mind-made activity, and stop being at the mercy of the next thought, emotion, or urge that pops into your head.
The more you practice, the better you get. And, life can improve dramatically as a result.
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