A while back now I took part in an 8-week mindfulness course.
One particular week on the course stands out in my memory.
I walked into my classroom that week to find the following words written on the whiteboard:
YOU ARE NOT YOUR THOUGHTS”
You are not your thoughts.
It’s such a simple statement, but one that landed with an explosion of excitement.
You see, I’d been working on my own personal wellbeing for years at the time. I’d been meditating and practising daily mindfulness exercises. I’d been studying positive psychology, eastern philosophy and the contemplative sciences.
And I guess I’d already experienced the above statement.
But, like placing the last piece in a puzzle, seeing it there meant everything clicked.
Why you are not your thoughts
When you learn to observe your thoughts (which is what we do in mindfulness), you start to see thoughts for what they are: just ‘words’ in your head.
Thinking words doesn’t make them a reality. Just like writing words down wouldn’t make them a reality.
Either way, they’re still just a random combination of words.
They’re neurons firing.
Or some squiggles on a whiteboard.
And the more you meditate, the more you realise how random, unstructured and often fabricated these words are.
How to ‘get it’
It takes training to really grasp the above. One of my favourite training techniques is the ‘silly voices’ technique:
You notice you’re having an unhelpful thought. Then you repeat it in your head a few times in a silly voice. As if, say, Donald Duck was saying it.
You could even sing the thought in your head in the tune of a silly and jovial song like ‘Happy Birthday’.
The silly voices technique helps you ‘de-fuse’ unhelpful thoughts because it creates distance between you and the thoughts. You’re no longer ‘fused’ with them. They’re just some words in your head.
And the more you practice this, the more automatic the realisation becomes (thanks to neuroplasticity), so eventually you no longer ‘fuse’ with the thought in the first place.
You can read more about this (and other ‘de-fusion’ techniques) in Dr Russ Harris’s brilliant book The Happiness Trap.
The benefits of realising you are not your thoughts
When you realise you’re not your thoughts, a giant door of opportunities and experience opens.
The renowned meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg explains how this works:
Mindfulness helps us get better at seeing the difference between what is happening and the stories we tell ourselves about what is happening, stories that get in the way of direct experience. Often such stories treat a fleeting state of mind as if it were our entire and permanent self.” – Sharon Salzberg
When you realise you’re not your thoughts, you start seeing the stories.
And when you start seeing the stories you can step outside of them and instead enjoy what’s actually happening.
You experience your rich and full life as it plays out.
All because…
You are not your thoughts.