More on Mindful Daily Routines – How to Handle Disturbing Thoughts
Remember from the last posts, mindfulness is the ability to be fully present in the current moment and activity, being aware of where we are and what we are doing, but not overly responsive or overwhelmed by what is going on around us.
This post continues about being mindful with regard to thoughts, which we often erroneously think are true just because they appear next to stimuli or feelings that we usually do not have a reason to question. But thoughts are not true. They only share one possible perspective. There are alternative perspectives. That is why it is so important to be able to hear your thoughts, to observe them, but not to be carried away by them.
You can try to treat your thoughts as individual events that disappear, just like waves in the ocean – notice their content, their emotional charge: nice / unpleasant / neutral – rather than be pulled into their content, into the actual stream of thought where a thought leads on to another thought and to a third.
Imagine instead sitting at the beach next to the stream of thoughts, listening to their bubbles and gurgling as the thoughts just float by.
Sometimes you will notice how you are dragged into the stream of thoughts, which inevitably will happen. Then just notice that it happened and get back next to them again. There you can sit and just observe every thought as just a thought – not as truth or facts, but just another powerful element of life.