I’m not my thoughts and feelings — I’m also the silence

Filtering voices, seeking silence and actively cultivating thinking can free the mind of cloudiness and cluttering.

Clarity is an achievement. (Illustration Julia Geiser)

I don’t enjoy when I’m consumed by negative thoughts or emotions. I wonder how I can make them go away. Can I do anything about it or is this part of life? Pain is a great teacher, but often suffering is unnecessary. To stop it, I must first acknowledge that I’m not my thoughts. There are thoughts I have been carrying for a while and others are new on board. Actually there are so many thoughts and almost none of them are really mine. They are thoughts from people near and far. People in my real life like my partner, parents, bosses, siblings, colleagues, mentors, teachers, exes, uncles and aunts. And people I follow on Twitter or Facebook, like my favourite actors, athletes, or authors. The voices in my mind can be good and bad. Becoming aware of repetitive, negative and even self-limiting thought is the most important step. That alone will not make them go away. Some thoughts stick around like glue. So what can I do about it? These are options that work for me:

Filtering voices

Amongst all the noise it can be hard to distinguish which voices I should actually keep in my mental ‘home.’ I find it easier to ask the opposite: what voices should I kick out? It’s the voices that…