“Leave your front door and your back door open. Let the thoughts come and go. Just don't serve them tea. "~ Shunryu Suzuki
There are few things in life that are more annoying than a loud chatter between your ears – a busy mind that never stops and doesn't leave you alone for a moment.
You are sitting by the pool on your long-awaited vacation.
The weather is perfect. Your diary is clear. You sit on your deck chair with an ice-cold drink and your favorite book.
Everything is perfect – well, almost everything.
The message "on vacation" has clearly not entered the Department of Thoughts.
“Man, this drink was expensive. Better suck your stomach in, someone's coming. You are as white as a sheet. What on earth will people think? Okay, that's it. I start a diet on Monday. Oops, I forgot I was on vacation. Okay, I start when I get home. "
Just writing about it is tiring enough, let alone living it.
Being exposed to a relentless stream of mindless chatter and having no idea how to stop it can be annoying to say the least.
I know. It was the intense suffering in my own mind that made me sign up for a six-month meditation retreat and later be ordained a monk.
Fortunately, I quickly realized that calming a loud mind as I had imagined is not nearly as difficult.
Note: You don't even have to change or correct your thoughts.
Nowadays, my general experience is so much calmer and more peaceful than before, although I still have my crazy moments when the mind goes up in flames.
I would like to share some (possibly surprising) truths that I hope will help you achieve the same.
Here are seven tips you can use right away.
1. Accept that your mind is busy.
Did you know that the average mind emits about 70,000 thoughts a day? That's a lot of thoughts.
No wonder it feels so full there!
Even relatively relaxed people have a lot of traffic between their ears.
So don't be surprised that your mind is busy. Do not create an additional layer of suffering by thinking that something is wrong with you if you have a lot of thoughts. There is none.
To expect that your mind is not busy is to expect that the grass is not green.
Let it be busy.
2. Dealing with the mind is optional.
If I chose one thing that I learned about reason in my time as a monk – the one thing that had the greatest impact on my peace would be:
Dealing with the mind is optional.
It is not so much the thoughts themselves that make us suffer, but our fascination and preoccupation with them.
We spend our days chewing on them, wallowing in them, braising in them, and generally devoting too much time and attention to them.
And we don't need that.
Would you like to learn the secret of lasting peace?
The less you engage in what the mind does, the more peace you will experience.
Sit back and let the ghost dance. Your participation is not mandatory.
This brings us to the next point.
3. Watch your thoughts from a distance.
In order to free ourselves from our thoughts, we have to create a certain distance, a certain breathing space between us and the mind.
Most thought patterns that rob us of our peace run unconsciously on the autopilot. The same old patterns play over and over again day after day – like broken records. And it's so habitual that we don't even notice we're doing it.
The key is to pay more attention to these unconscious patterns.
The first step in learning to meditate is to step back and observe the mind objectively – with an attitude of curiosity and non-judgmental acceptance.
You may also find that the simple process of observing thoughts instead of being enveloped in them stops thinking them in their tracks – or at least slows them down.
4. Give your thoughts the freedom to come and go.
If you want to tame an angry bull, the worst thing you can do is tie him up or lock him up in some way. This will only make him angrier and harder to control.
The best way to calm him down is to give him a large, open field to walk around in. If he does not resist, he quickly runs out of steam.
And so it is with the mind.
Thoughts themselves do not cause trouble. Left alone, they appear in your consciousness, stay for a moment and go on again.
No problem.
When we try to control or manage them – by calling them bad, wrong, or unacceptable – we get into trouble and cause ourselves suffering.
Let them wander freely through the wide, open field of your consciousness and they will quickly run out of steam. Don't get them going with your resistance.
If there are thoughts anyway, it is much better to befriend them than to fight them.
What happens to a sad thought or an angry thought if you greet it rather than reject it?
What happens if you don't mind being there?
5. Don't take your thoughts personally.
Seeing that "my" thoughts are not personal was another groundbreaking finding for me.
The following typically happens for most people:
You feel jealous. You are afraid You are angry. And then you hit yourself and believe that you are personally responsible for the thoughts (including feelings and emotions) that appear in your head – and believe that something is wrong with you if you have these thoughts.
Doesn't exist. You are not the originator of your thoughts.
If you watch the mind closely, you will notice that thoughts appear on their own, apparently out of nowhere.
In mindfulness training we use the analogy of "undercurrent and observer" to illustrate our relationship with the mind.
The key understanding is that the undercurrent – the continuous stream of thoughts, feelings and emotions that flow through your consciousness – is self-evident.
It is not under your control and is therefore impersonal.
What most people do is play around in the middle of the stream, like a crazy thought traffic cop who tries desperately to control the flow – to greet this thought and to reject it.
Trying to control the river is futile and exhausting.
Better to be the observer, to sit quietly on the river bank and watch the river flow past – knowing that it is not personal.
The less you try to control the river, the more peace you will experience.
6. Know the difference between thoughts and thoughts.
Although there is nothing you can do about the thoughts that appear in your head, thinking is a different matter.
Suppose the thought appears: "My boss doesn't like me."
It then triggers a dialogue in your head: "He will definitely overlook me when the upcoming promotion takes place. It is so unfair. I work here much longer than Jane. But he seems to like her very much. Things are going well never in my direction. I'm just unlucky in life. "
This type of unproductive thinking is the main cause of suffering for most people – and it is entirely within our control whether we indulge in it or not.
Repeating the past over and over again, catastrophically rethinking the future, wallowing in unsubstantiated beliefs and assumptions – these are some of the patterns that can cause so much unnecessary misery.
And it is completely avoidable.
If you notice that you are involved in an unproductive film, STOP.
There is nothing that can force you to continue if you don't want to.
You are the person responsible.
Instead, focus on being present at the moment. Concentrate on your breath, the sensations in the soles of your feet, the rustling of the wind through the trees.
Unproductive thinking is usually a habit. And like most habits, it can be broken with a little awareness.
7. Live more in the present moment.
One of the most important findings in meditation practice is that your consciousness can only ever be in one place.
If you are lost in your thinking, you cannot perceive your surroundings at the same time. Likewise, thinking stops when you focus your attention on the present moment.
When you are here and now, the mind automatically becomes silent.
Whenever you are conscious enough to allow yourself to fall into the usual thinking pattern, stop and engage your senses.
Adjust yourself to the feeling of the air that caresses your skin, feel how your body comes into contact with the chair, listen to the sounds around you.
Be very aware that something is happening now and notice what is happening to your thinking mind.
Take back control of your busy mind
The mind is of course not a bad thing. It would be pretty hard to get through life without you.
It can be very useful to solve problems, write articles, book flights, or remember which house you own when you get home from work.
The human mind is used productively for certain tasks and is an incredible tool.
But it can also be deeply destructive – like a runaway Frankenstein monster with its own life.
The mind can be a beautiful servant or a dangerous master.
It all depends on who is in charge.
The next time you sit on your deck chair and try to relax, the crazy dance will remind the mind of who the boss is.
Don't give him the strength to ruin your vacation.
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