- We can work towards having control over our inner world by increasing our ability to control what we pay attention to
- For many of us a powerful thought, reaction, or feeling can arise and completely take us over
- This is often disruptive, exhausting, and time consuming. We can feel like the thought or feeling is in control of us.
- We can dramatically increase our ability to take the intensity out of our thoughts and feelings which gives us more control over our inner experience, actions, and reactions
- To do this, we want work to control what we pay attention to, rather than trying to control what comes up for us.
- With meditation we can strengthen our ability to select where we place our attention and energy, rather than having our thoughts or feelings decide for us
- We can also learn to tolerate our thoughts and feelings without having intense reactions to them
- This is NOT learning to “block” feelings, experiences, or thoughts by “tuning them out”.
- This is also NOT sitting with a blank mind or a relaxation exercise.
- There will be more instruction to come on how to do this, but the goal is to increase your ability to have thoughts, feelings, and take in experiences while still remaining in the driver’s seat of your life.
We can’t control what happens to us, and “what happens to us” includes our thoughts and feelings. We can develop strategies for how to manage them, but ultimately the thought or feeling that arises for us is as much out of our control as the actions of the person down the street.
One of the most powerful things we can learn to do to help us manage our mental health is to strengthen our ability to control where we place our attention, and to increase our ability to tolerate our thoughts and feelings. The more skilled we are at this, the better we are able to manage difficult internal thoughts and feelings when they arise, and the more control we can have over our actions and reactions.
Most of us do not have an intentional relationship with our internal world. We feel a strong emotion, or have a strong reaction and that takes over our attention. Our internal world can then distract us from our external world – making it difficult to focus on an activity, project, person, or event.
There will always be overwhelming moments in life. Most of us can’t learn to take all the power and intensity out of those moments, even with meditation. Sometimes, we will still be distracted by intensity in our internal world, or events that disturb us in our lives. However, we can dramatically reduce our susceptibility to the intensity of these experiences by increasing our ability to control where we place our attention.
With meditation we learn to develop a spotlight around whatever we’ve chosen to focus our attention on. Like a spotlight, the stronger our ability to control our attention, the more we can focus on what we’ve chosen to focus on, and the less energy and attention is given to what we’ve chosen not to pay attention to.
The specific skill that I’ve seen enable many of my clients (and others) is a particular kind of meditation where we are working on observing our thoughts, feelings, and sensations without reacting to them. This skill, like a muscle, requires practice. The good news is it can take as little as 30 seconds a day for you to dramatically increase your ability to control your attention.
Future post to cover HOW to do this.
Notes:
1`. Chelsea Handler’s book, life will be the death of me, covers her journey through therapy and how her use of mindfulness (and therapy) changed her life.
2. I want to be clear: meditation is not intended to numb you, or desensitize you from painful experiences in your life or events in your community. We are not sticking our heads in the sand and “ignoring”. When we control our attention the goal is not to “block things out” (that would be avoidance). There will be more posts to come on how to do this!
3. Jon Kabat-Zinn ‘s book “wherever you go there you are” is an excellent introduction into mindfulness and meditation