What to do with thoughts we don’t love
A lot of the time, when I wake up, the first thought that comes to mind is, “What’s wrong?”
LOL. Even admitting this makes me go whoa Vera, chill.
Isn’t it amazing how our minds are like overactive immune systems? No sooner has a nice thought come up e.g. “oh it’s sunny, what a wonderful — shit. There’s that thing I gotta do. Oh and why did that person say that yesterday? And why didn’t I respond this way instead?” than a million not-so-nice, probably rehearsed, habituated, practiced thoughts come to surround it and whisk it away like white blood cells to a foreign contaminant. And it doesn’t just do that with our own thoughts. If someone else tries to introduce something that might help, might alleviate our pain, might offer us a different perspective or way of doing something, our thoughts come marching to the front line of defense ready to attack and defend anything that might take us out of safety, out of comfort, out of habit.
Our brains are wired for protection, not happiness, and herein lies the issue. We can think we know all the ways to be happier, in fact most marketing campaigns for any product pretty much makes that promise, but what actually makes us happy can be something else entirely. Precisely because our brains love to protect us, anything negative is magnified, stored and repeated in our consciousness until it seems set in stone that we’ll never forget that mistake we made or stupid thing we said or be put into another situation beyond our control and therefore subject to danger and the unknown (emphasis on “seems” - because if there’s anything I know, my thoughts aren’t all that effective in protecting me lol, if anything they just makes things worse).
When we meditate, it gives us that opportunity to stop the unending churning of thoughts. The thoughts might still come, but in the silence, in the stillness, I can recognize it as what it is. It’s basically a washing machine on a repeat cycle. And I can either be that shirt getting washed over and over again, pressed against the clear plastic door, groaning and squeaking and completely lacking agency, or, I can be the crazy person sitting on the outside of the washing machine, watching it clean my clothes (it’s oddly soothing, okay).
Our thoughts, as some Buddhist teachings might say, are just another sense. Just as our sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell are all senses we can experience, so it is with our thoughts. If I don’t like what I’m seeing, I can choose to look away. If I don’t like what I’m hearing, I can put in ear plugs or ear buds and listen to something else. Same with taste, touch and smell, so why should thoughts be any different? If I don’t want to think about something, I can choose to think about something else. And as simple as I’m making it sound, of course it’s not easy. After a lifetime of believing my thoughts, and allowing them to propel me to some very bad unsound decisions at certain times of my life, I’m finally just deciding to be a bit of a rebel here and recognize that actually, no. I don’t have to believe you, negative repetitive voice in my head (sometimes it helps to imagine you work at a call centre and to simply put that negative voice on hold “while you find your manager” indefinitely).
Aside from quieting the voice, there’s also those thoughts that don’t necessarily manifest as words. They could show up as flashbacks, memories replayed again and again, asking for a different outcome, a different turn of events. Or sometimes they show up as feelings, emotions waiting to be acknowledged. Anger. Impatience. Anxiety. Depression. Grief. Sometimes there are no words, and no ways to really make them go away, except time. So when these ones show up, I tend to think of them as seeds. Do I want to water the seed of a past I can’t change? It’s literally like watering barren soil and lamenting when nothing sprouts. Do I want to water the seed of anger? What will that do for me? It will probably make me seethe and resent and walk around being reactive and volatile like a mail order pipe bomb. Do I want to water the seed of impatience? Will it make the thing go faster? If anything, it will probably make the thing go slower lol. Do I want to water the seed of anxiety? Well that will definitely be a fun party in my head. It’ll be like I volunteered for a difficult customer hotline. Do I want to water the seed of depression? To believe all my thoughts of worthlessness and hopelessness? And if the answer to these questions is no, I don’t, then what seeds do I want to water?
The other day I was having one of those no-matter-what-I-do-I-can’t-get-comfortable-in-my-own-body days. My skin felt extra irritable. My hair felt extra dirty. My muscles felt extra sore and stiff and tired. My mind felt extra exhausted. And if I were to physically express what I was feeling I’d be a hairy moldy no good grey blob on my living room floor. And then I remembered something I heard on The One You Feed podcast, “You can’t think your way into right action, you can only act your way into right thinking.” So I stopped thinking about my gross grey self and started thinking about the wonderful people in my life. And what I could do for them. And then throughout the day, I monitored. When I woke up, I was probably a 10/10 depressed and anxious. By noon I was an 8. By 3pm I was a 6. By 6pm I was a 3. And by bedtime I was a 1. Because I found new seeds I wanted to water, and eventually something bloomed in the tundra of my mind.
I learned that sometimes the best way to get out of our head is simply to start moving in a direction, any direction. It doesn’t necessarily have to be productive. Even to think about helping someone and shifting that focus to somewhere outside ourselves can trigger a series of other thoughts and actions that start a chain reaction toward positive change. It only really takes that first step. And even if I feel like I was a shitty person yesterday, that’s okay. Because today I can just aim to be less shitty. I think that’s really all we can do. Rather than focus on some end goal, just focus on what I can do right here, right now. To not be the shirt in the washer. To be the observer of the shirt in the washer. To not be the cultivator of shit thoughts, even if they show up, as weird plants sometimes do in our garden. We don’t necessarily have to root it out or judge it, just let it be and don’t fertilize it with our attention. Turn our sight and attention to the seeds we do want to water, and watch it grow. And then maybe those shit thoughts will eventually decay and turn into fertilizer for the pleasant ones and then we have a healthy ecosystem of darkness and light, difficulty and ease, fear and love. To accept our garden as it is, and to realize that there isn’t any part of us that needs to be removed. It is precisely because of these dark parts in us that give us the opportunity to choose light. It is precisely because of the difficulty in our lives that we find comfort in ease. And it is precisely because we feel fear that we can choose to fill that vacuum with love. The thoughts are there not to torment, but to ask us again and again, day after day, to choose. And with this awareness, I chose.
