In general, our cognitive processes (interactions between our observer mind and our thinking mind) work something like this:
| A | B | C |
| The Observer Mind receives sensory information (it notices an event). For example: | The Thinking Mind makes a judgement (creates a story) about the event: | We experience an emotional reaction: |
| A car cuts in front of us on the freeway | How dare they! What a $#%&* idiot! | Stress, anger, frustration etc. |
Most of the time we tend to think that A causes C. That is, we feel angry because a car has cut in front of us. In other words, the car cutting in front of us caused us to feel angry! But when we do this we are missing B: we miss the story that we have created in our thinking mind about the event. What we actually react to, and what causes our emotional stress, isn’t A at all, it’s B!
When we get caught up in our thoughts about an event we’re no longer paying attention to reality. This is why, for example, when we’re driving along in our car whole suburbs can go by without us even noticing. What’s happening here is that our observer mind (our attention) has shifted from observable reality into our thoughts. When we do this we’re no longer paying attention to reality at all – the car that cut us off is long gone – but we can remain caught up in the drama of our thoughts for hours, days, even years afterwards!
The issue for us is that we tend to pay a lot of attention to, or become ‘fused with,’ the judgement about an experience rather than to experience itself. When caught up in the judgement about an event we’re no longer paying attention to observable reality, but rather to our interpretation of a reality that has already passed. We start reacting to judgements, memories and worries as if they are fact, and, in doing this, mistake a mental event for reality. When we do this, and we do this most of the time, we’re not grounded in reality. Rather, we’re lost in our own fantasy world, our own ‘head-trip’ – our own interpretation of reality.
So, what to do about this? Well, we could spend a whole lot of time and energy trying to get rid of our thinking mind or our thoughts; to suppress them, push them away, or even replace negative thoughts with positive ones. However, the issue with these types of strategies is that we’re using the thinking mind to try and get rid of the thinking mind!! And, of course, the strategies don’t work particularly well: all we tend to do is create an intellectual struggle. In fact, we have far less control over our thoughts than we’d like to believe.
We can’t stop our thoughts: our thinking mind is a problem-solving machine – it’s designed to think, judge and analyze. Thinking is what the thinking mind does. That’s its job, its nature. The thinking mind is on 24/7, and we need it to be – we need our thinking mind to remember, converse, plan and make decisions. The thinking mind is a necessary and invaluable part of what it means to be a human. Why would we want to get rid of it?
The issue is not that we think: it’s that we tend to give our thoughts far too much attention. When we pay too much attention to our thoughts we lose sight of everything that is happening within and around us. That is, we cease to see the real world as it is in each moment.
So, rather than trying to get rid of our thoughts, the solution to building a more resilient mindset is to learn how to pay them less attention: to become more discerning about which thoughts we engage in, and which thoughts we don’t. The fundamental skill required to enable this is known as mindfulness.