I've been thinking a lot about thoughts lately.
Maybe it's because I'm teaching Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy for Depression at Arizona State University, where I work as a staff psychologist. Since it's cognitive therapy, we do a lot of talking about thoughts, about how positive ones, negative ones, and even neutral ones affect the body and the spirit.
Here's what I know:
All thoughts are sticky. One thought attracts another and another, and so on until you have a snowball of related thoughts. What happens next is interesting: your emotions get involved. For example, one happy thought + another + another brings about a positive emotion. The same kind of thing holds for sad thoughts or angry thoughts or whatever. Your emotions respond to what you think about. What you think about responds to how you feel. Both your thoughts and your emotions are intimately connected with how the body feels.
For instance, if you're feeling happy, your thoughts are moving in a positive "I can do it" direction. In turn, your body probably feels pretty good. But when you're feeling sad, your thoughts are more likely to be distorted. The "might as well go eat worms" kind of thoughts that we all think from time to time become prominent in your experience. Your body follows, and pretty soon the shadow of depression rises and begins to overtake you.
Your thoughts are not facts. Yet, most of us unconsciously believe: "if I think a thought, it must be true!"
The truth is that we don't even know where thoughts come from. Thoughts are just mental events that occur whether we ask for them or not. Most of the time, we're so out of control of our thoughts that we're not even aware of what we are thinking, much less about the effect that our thoughts are having on our experience in the world.
Most people that I work with tell me that they can't meditate because "I can't make my mind stop thinking" or "I can't shut off my brain." Here's some new information: Just as the nose smells and ears hear and the eyes see, the mind thinks. That's what it does.
I would never ask you to stop thinking. But you don't always have to pay attention to your thoughts (not all the time, anyway). My mentor Lynn Rossy at the University of Missouri says, "most of the time, our thoughts lead us around by the rings in our noses." Put another way, we act as if we have no control of what we're thinking.
When you feel out of control, guess what happens? The double whammy of anxiety and depression comes knocking. Future-directed, out-of-control, worried thoughts quickly move the body into a state of anxiety and panic. Past-oriented, ruminative thoughts are the precursor to depression. Either way, you're not in The Now. And as far as creativity and insight goes, The Now is where it's at.
How do I get into The Now?
Mindfulness means paying attention on purpose, as openhearted and non-judgmentally as possible (Jon Kabat-Zinn). Formal meditation practices are a way of cultivating mindfulness in our lives. The formal practice of mindfulness meditation teaches that you are more than your thoughts. You can train your brain to stay focused in spite of what your mind is thinking about.
To get into the now, start meditating regularly. When you meditate, you become aware of your thoughts - not all of them, but at least you begin to notice when (and what) you're thinking. When you keep practicing, you begin to develop the ability to watch your thoughts without getting sucked into the drama that they create in your head.
You can start by focusing on your breath. Breathe in. Breathe out. And know when you're breathing in and when you're breathing out. Take 5 good breaths, 5 times/day. That's a good first step.
More to come...
Love + thoughts
Robyn
