Observing your thoughts and emotions
Hi everyone, I thought I'd share my view on observing your thoughts and emotions.
The process of learning to observe can be quite challenging. When I first started mindfulness I tried to think of myself as someone standing on the sidelines, watching my thoughts and emotions go by. If this works for you that's great, personally I found it very hard. That's when I came to a realization, instead of being on the sidelines, I need to view my thoughts and emotions the same way as I would read a book.
All these thoughts, feelings and emotions that go through your head are all words in a big book - the book of you. Become the reader of your own book. Seeing it from this perspective has helped me observe myself more efficiently. When you're reading a book, you don't read a sentence over and over again, you just move on to the next sentence. The same should go with thoughts. Instead of clinging to negative thoughts and repeating them, just move on to the next one.
In a book, repeated themes and feelings set the tone for the story. If the author constantly describes scary places, people and actions, the book will be classified as a horror or a thriller. If the author constantly writes about romance, love and friendship, the book will be a novel. When you're reading a novel, let's say you're 200 pages in, you expect it to continue being a novel, you don't expect the theme or the genre to change. Just like you wouldn't expect a thriller/horror book to suddenly become very romantic.
Same goes for your subconscious mind, when you constantly think negatively, or always expect the worst, your mind is programmed to continue to think like that. It won't suddenly have a change of heart halfway in. You have to make a conscious effort to rewrite your mind: replacing the negative thoughts with positive ones. Let the negative thoughts and emotions go, see it as the end of a chapter in your book, and start writing a new one. Don't let your subconscious mind write your book for you. Remember that this is YOUR book, you can write it any way you want.
@Cheeney, I really like this metaphor. Makes a lot of sense. If you haven't seen it yet, do a search on narrative therapy. I think you'll find it really interesting.
@GlenM Thank you! I just looked up narritave therapy and you're right, I do find it very interesting. I'll definitely spend some time reading up on the subject.
These are some nice points. I appreciate that you've chosen to share your perspective with us :)
@MonBon Sorry that I haven't responded earlier MonBon, I just saw this! Thank you for your nice comment
Definitely going to try looking at it this way, I've been finding midnfulness difficult to get into, but as a bookworm this resonated with me! Thank you for sharing. :)
@alexa2 Thank you for your lovely comment! It's hard to get into, yes, definitely. A tip I might give you: try to make it a daily habit. Habits are hard to form, so the first few weeks will be difficult, but when your brain gets used to it everything becomes much easier. It's comparable to learning a new instrument. Doing 30 minutes each day is much more effective and useful than spending a lot of time trying to make up for lost hours on a sunday.
