How to Relate to Negative Thoughts

Mindset is everything?

If you've ever been interested in personal development or self help or mindset mastery, whatever you call it, you'll no doubt have countless times come across the notion that you've got to get control over your thoughts.

To be a director of your thinking. Be relentlessly focused on solutions and maintain a positive attitude.

And for the most part it is good advice.

I mean, obviously there's a huge amount of value in being able to reframe negative thinking patterns into ones that are helpful and that support you and your well being and the life that you want to live.

But there is a big downside to the way the advice is often given and received.

The message is usually:

Be careful what you think

Thoughts are things.

They're powerful.

What you think is what shows up.

You've got to be vigilant, because thoughts are a potent force governing the flow of your life and the kinds of experiences that you get to have.

If you spot a negative thought, you've got to take control, flip it around, always be choosing what you're thinking.

The Thought Police

Now, I don't know about you, but I don't have that level of control over my mind, and that feels like a real heavy responsibility, right?

Again, there's nothing wrong with the technique of reframing, or 'cognitive reappraisal', if you want to be fancy. It really is helpful and it's linked to all kinds of beneficial outcomes.

The problem is that we can end up unwittingly training ourselves to become anxious about the power of our thinking.

Like there's this inner contraction born out of us taking our thinking far more seriously than is necessary.

And it can start to feel like we're being followed around by the thought police all day long.

You know what it's like when you see a police car in the rearview mirror, and even when you know you're not doing anything wrong, you can still feel a bit on edge.

Look, thoughts can be powerful and they can direct the flow of our experience, but only when we are identifying with them and infusing them with significance and importance.

They're not inherently powerful by themselves.

Two components of every thought

With every thought, there's two components.

There's the content of the thought, what it is we're thinking about, and that's the bit that we usually give too much weight to.

And then there's the simple phenomena of thought itself; this mysterious activity of the mind that bubbles up and provides a container for the contents of thought.

I mean, without their specific contents, what are thoughts?

They're naturally occurring movements of energy in the mind, conditioned by our conditioning.

And there's nothing particularly anxiety provoking about the mechanics of thinking itself.

They come, and if we leave them alone, they go.

Of course, you can direct your thoughts and for a while you'll be successful, but the moment you stop consciously trying they'll just go back to serving up any old random kind of content and you have no idea what that's about to be.

It could be positive, negative, helpful, unhelpful, surreal, genius, utter nonsense.

And it doesn't really matter because the only time a thought is significant is when we forget that it's just a thought and we take it to be more than it is.

Observing the mechanics of thinking

I promise you you'll get much further along your personal development path when you stop seeing it as your job to have to control every thought that pops into your head and start instead to become really curious about the empty nature of what thoughts really are.

And you can practice this.

Just take a moment to get quiet and still and watch what your mind does.

It's not going to be long before the next thought comes along.

And when it does, rather than getting drawn into what the thought is about, simply observe it playing out from the sidelines as if you're an impartial observer and notice what happens to the thought as you're aware of it.

I can guarantee it's going to fade and it will pass and it will have had no impact on your life whatsoever because in that moment you weren't taking it to be anything other than what it was; your mind simply having a thought.

This isn't something that you can just see once and then all of a sudden your "thinking problems" are solved.

This is something that we need to see directly again and again and again

Which is why meditation, particularly what we call insight meditation or mindfulness meditation, is so helpful.

We're literally getting to train our minds to have a wiser and more easeful relationship with itself.

And if you want to begin that journey of having a wiser, more easeful relationship with your mind, then get in touch - I can help.

But circling back, none of this is to downplay the necessity of thinking.

I mean, we wouldn't be able to get much done without it, right?

And sometimes the best thing we can do for ourselves is to reframe the meaning we're giving to the events and circumstances of our lives and to direct our thinking in helpful, solution focused ways.

But we mustn't do it because we're anxious about the consequences of negative thinking.

It's always best done from a foundation of understanding about the true nature of our minds.

But let me know what you think.

Be well. Please take really great care of yourself. Speak soon.