Most of the bullshit ruining your day isn’t out there

This morning, while walking Lina, I caught myself thinking about something that wasn’t doing me any good. Nothing dramatic, just one of those thoughts that goes around in circles. I had thought it before, probably many times, and it wasn’t solving anything or changing anything. It was simply occupying space in my head and, without me realising it, changing how I felt.

Then I noticed what I was doing, and that tiny moment of awareness changed the situation completely. The thought didn’t magically disappear and whatever had caused it wasn’t suddenly solved, but I had a choice again. I could continue following it, become increasingly frustrated, perhaps feel a little sorry for myself, and allow it to affect the next hour of my life, or I could recognize what was happening and redirect my attention somewhere else.

The funny thing was that I was sitting on a bench overlooking the valley. The sun was shining, Lina was with me, and it was one of those beautiful Sunday mornings when there was absolutely nothing wrong with the moment I was actually living. Yet my mind was perfectly capable of ruining that moment by thinking about something that wasn’t happening there at all.

That made me wonder how often we do this without even noticing it. We spend an enormous amount of time trying to fix what is outside of us. We think about other people, circumstances, money, work, relationships, things that happened yesterday and things that might happen tomorrow, while somewhere in the background there is this constant commentary running through our heads. We rarely stop to question whether that commentary is useful, true, necessary, or simply an old recording being played again.

There is actually nothing particularly esoteric about this. Psychology has been dealing with what are often called automatic thoughts for decades, especially in cognitive behavioural therapy. What interests me, though, is something much simpler than the terminology. We tend to believe that gaining control over our lives means learning how to control our thoughts, but I don’t think that is where it starts. I don’t have to control every thought that enters my head. I simply have to notice it.

That sounds ridiculously simple until you try it. The next time you become angry, frustrated, worried, jealous, hopeless, or simply start feeling sorry for yourself, resist the immediate temptation to search outside yourself for the reason. Look inside for a moment and ask what you are actually thinking right now. Then ask yourself whether that thought is helping you in any way.
You might discover that you have been having the same conversation with yourself for years.

You don’t have to fight it, suppress it, replace it with positive thinking, or sit on a mountain meditating until enlightenment finally arrives. Becoming aware of it already changes something fundamental because there is suddenly a little distance between you and the thought. Instead of automatically following it wherever it wants to take you, you can decide whether you want to continue.

That happened to me this morning. I caught the thought, realized where it was taking me, and looked around. The valley was still there, the sun was still shining, Lina was still beside me, and my Sunday morning was waiting for me to come back to it.
Perhaps taking control of our lives starts with something as simple as that: noticing when we have left them.