Relating to thoughts

The goal of mindfulness is not to get rid of thoughts. Thoughts are part of our human experience. Many people who begin practicing mindfulness comment about distractions created by thinking. In response to this experience, people sometimes attempt to control or silence all thought. But trying to stop all thoughts is much like to stop hearing. We can’t blame ourselves for that which we cannot control-so please let’s be gentle with ourselves. The practice of mindfulness is one of non-violence with respect to ourselves, our habits, our thoughts, our feelings and our bodies. Training the mind is different than fighting with the mind. When we train the mind, we’re literally practicing kindness.

We are not our emotions

We tend to be very moralistic about our emotional life. It’s good to have these feelings; it’s bad to have those feelings. But the truth is there’s no such thing as having the wrong feeling. They are simply feelings. We feel pressure when someone asks, “How are you doing?” We feel like we are failing if we don’t say “good”. We attach so much meaning to the feelings we experience and believe that our emotions say something deeply about who we are. But our emotional life is not a commentary on who we are-it’s simply the pattern of feeling that arises out of a million causes and conditions-family history, evolutionary history, the events of the past day, or month, or life. Our emotions are not us. We must care for them and do our best to respond skillfully to life-but we are not our emotions. As we understand this, some of the self- consciousness about what we feel begins to fade way.

Emotional patterns

Moment by moment, life either softens or hardens the heart. Can we find ways of opening to experience that transform even difficulty into opportunity? The body can be a signal of our well-being during the day. It helps us stay more self-connected. Many of us have an easy time recognizing our strong or difficult emotions, but find it rather harder to notice some emotions. Sometimes positive feelings can be more difficult to notice. Sometimes they are more subtle, and since they don’t create an alarm. “There’s a problem!”-we may not notice them.

Some of the emotional patterns we all notice in ourselves are:

• Distraction
• Seek physical comfort (food, alcohol)
• Withdraw
• Spin into negative moods
• Heart rate increases
• Seek validation/being heard by others
• Naps
• Feel shame or guilt
• Victim mentality
• Look for approval
• Blame yourself for what you are feeling

It’s easy to be judgmental or harsh about these patterns. We may want to get rid of them. Only by noticing and allowing what’s present will we understand what’s happening. And once we are aware of our every thought and emotion can we take steps to improve the quality of our lives by making a simple switch to change every negative emotion or thought into a positive one. All this observation happens when we look at ourselves through the lens of kindness.