In the span of about 5 minutes, my mind can move from doing a routine thing, like scratching my elbow, all the way to something totally ridiculous – say….. moving myself into a cardboard box underneath a bridge. I don’t even have to exert any effort. I can shift my mind from a relaxed-non-thinking state to a weight-of-the-world-on-my-shoulders state and within seconds. How is it that my thoughts go from peaceful floating to a crash landing?
Getting Yanked Around by Your Mind
In Dan Harris’ book, 10% Happier, he refers to the nonstop conversation we have with ourselves as “getting yanked around by our mind”.
I get that. It’s so easy to get pushed around by our thoughts. The mind cuts out on us. Here’s an example: I’ll feel an itch on my skin. My fingernail automatically does it’s thing on my elbow.
Cut to remembering the time I had an allergic reaction to a medication.
Cut to lying in St John’s Medical Center.
Cut to worrying about my health.
Cut to thinking about the future.
Crash landing into losing everything I own and residing in a box.
I’ve never lived inside of anyone else’s mind, but I’m pretty sure you do a version of this too. We’re not alone in our mental skirmishes.
There are a lot of ways to respond to the “fast thinker” or “monkey mind” mode.
Just Do Something
Activity reigns supreme in my ideal world. I’ve never felt too cuddly with the notion that rest is best. Quite the opposite. I innately believe that if we’re busy, busy, constantly busy – something good is bound to happen. The problem with that is, sometimes you’re powerless, can’t do anything, and mentally crash anyway. You’re stuck with a mental mess.
Dream a Little Dream
Woe is me if I linger on the crash ending. I can stay “in my head” and let feelings of anger, panic, or sorrow wash over me for all the loss that I have, or could potentially face. The crazy thing is, most of the time, I haven’t even experienced the loss yet. But my brain doesn’t know that. The problem is that our body becomes accustomed to the chemical brain bath that floods our cells. It will actually scan our environment demanding more worry and anxiety to level out. You’re stuck with a mental mess.
Either of these can lead to negative feelings and behavior. If you always end up doing doing doing, whether at work or home, you may begin to feel used. So you day dream about running away because nobody appreciates all your sacrifices. Self pity could lead to passive aggressive thoughts and actions. That cycle sucks big time.
But wait, it also seems that either of those can also lead to right behavior. I’ll get back to that in a minute. *
Instead of darting down to the mental crash landing, what if you had been spending time doing mental calisthenics for your brain?
Meditation is the equivalent of prefrontal cortex push up.
Each time you sit in silence, noticing your thoughts cutting here and there – simply NOTICING them – you’re meditating.
You’re sitting with your thoughts and calling them out for being unruly. Yeah. That’s meditating. By practicing noticing your thoughts, you’ve begun a meditation practice. Now, that’s how to prioritize what your mind is doing.
It simply makes sense to catch myself before I start lining that homeless shelter cardboard box with used newspapers. I can mindfully follow a line of thought that has me living the life of my dreams, living fully in the world I was created to live in.
I don’t know where this website is going yet, but with the meditation class at St Paul growing steadily, I want to honor it (and my friends who join me) with some tidbits of information about mindfulness, spiritual growth, physical health, and loving ourselves.
* As far as doing something or dreaming a little dream to get positive results? I’m all for it. There are just a couple of rules that go along with doing and dreaming. I can tell already, this is going to be while ‘nother blog. I hope you’re at least noticing the sequence of thoughts and taking time to congratulate yourself just for that. Maybe you can join us on Monday for an informal meditative sit.
image courtesy of youtube