Author: Mairead

The thing that helps me to stop listening to my thoughts is surprisingly simple. Noticing. I notice when I am thinking. Now, to be clear, noticing I am thinking is NOT stopping the thinking. It’s not getting angry at the thinking. It’s not changing the thinking. Noticing, is spotting I am thinking and saying the word thinking. Simple, right? Yes simple, but… also a bit difficult. Practice makes it less difficult.

Noticing, is spotting you are thinking and saying the word thinking.

So how to practice? Well, the way I practice is once a day for 10 minutes I sit in my chair, turn on a meditation app and follow the instructions. After a few years of doing that (yes, I know it would be so much better if it had been faster… but it’s wasn’t) one day I realised I was thinking. Ok so I know that might sound weird but up until that point I really didn’t hear my continuous thinking. I did hear it while I was sitting down in my armchair practicing but not during the rest of the day. When I first started to notice it I wanted to stop it. When I couldn’t do that I was annoyed and frustrated at myself, at mindfulness, at the mean things I was thinking.

This thinking was going on all during the day and whenever I woke at night. Mean and unkind thoughts going round and around in my head about myself and even thought I wasn’t aware of it consciously, it still had the ability to make me feel miserable. Eventually I realised I had to do the noticing thing I had learned from the meditation app. Every time I noticed I was thinking, I used to say the word thinking.

All the 10 minute practice during the meditation time paid off and I started to become aware that I was thinking… while I was thinking. Sometimes I am so surprised by noticing that it makes me smile because in that moment reality is so much nicer than my thoughts. The noticing (or awareness) had made me realise that these thoughts, these unkind thoughts are not real.

These unkind thoughts are not reality.

The thing about my thoughts is that they convince me they are REAL. That this thought inside my head is more real that what’s happening outside my head. I am real, says every single thought. But they’re not!

Our thoughts do an amazingly good job. The thought, You are a mean-spirited person! makes me believe I am a mean-spirited person. With a little practice I was able to experience a minuscule moment of awareness in which to say the word Thinking and the realisation that it’s just me thinking becomes the actual reality. Good, right? No, not just good –  this is GREAT! Holy Cow I can’t tell you how amazing this is! It’s the difference between going around all day feeling like a block of misery incarnate and going around all day feeling grand, ok, fine.

This is important – a block of misery can last for hours but an emotion only lasts 90 seconds.

In any moment you might feel cold, hot, tired, energised, sad, happy, angry, frustrated and that’s grand because emotions make us who we are, we get to connect with each other because of our emotions and the really fantastic news is that they only last for 90 seconds. Wait 90 seconds and the emotion is gone. No problem… except for when the emotion is caused by repetitive thinking. Repetitive thinking can last all day and more disturbing, it can last all night.

It’s because our thinking, my thinking (the man at the next table’s thinking, the woman in your gym’s thinking) is stuck on repeat. The emotion created by thinking keeps repeating on and on and on and on in 90 second cycles fueled by the next thought and the next thought and the next… you get the picture. And although my least favourite thoughts are the mean and unkind ones, the same rules apply to the lovely thoughts. Lovely thoughts going round and round and round in your head are exhausting and tiredness will eventually turn them into mean thoughts… well at least it does for me.

So how do we stop the thoughts? We can’t, sorry ): but just noticing them can disrupt the repetition.

That doesn’t mean we can’t do something about them, we can. We can notice them. Any time you notice you are thinking say the word thinking to your self. You can say it in you head or out loud, whatever you like. (I like saying it out loud but I do get funny looks…)

The way to get better at noticing you are thinking is to practice noticing you are thinking. For me this was huge and very motivational. I definitely wanted to get better at noticing because I didn’t want the reality my thinking was giving me.

The real world is a kinder reality than our repetitive thoughts and although the world is not always a happy place or a calm place at least our uncomfortable feelings will only last 90 seconds.