Enjoy this excerpt from Chapter 10 of Why Our Minds Wander: Understand the Science and Learn How to Focus Your Thoughts .
People tend to want to change their behavior without changing themselves. They are scared of the change for good reasons: if they truly want change, they will become a different person. Many people are not ready for that – they say they are but they cling to their identity as if their life depended on it. If we want to tame our minds, though, we must be ready to question ourselves. Thoughts are not objects we can dispose of. They are like organisms living within us, and if we let them go – even negative thoughts – we may feel like a part of us is dying.
Are you ready?
Most people think about working on their mind wandering only if it starts to make their life very difficult – at the beginning of the book we heard about Bobby with his concentration issues. The wandering mind is like breathing – if you are breathing fine, there is no need to change your breathing pattern. If you have asthma or a breathing problem because of anxiety, it is time to work on the issue. Remember Jane with her persistent thoughts about her political beliefs? She unconsciously clings to the thoughts because they are part of who she believes herself to be, and ceasing to believe them would mean the death of her identity. If she is desperate and genuinely ready to change, she is finally ready to work on herself and her negative mind-wandering patterns. For this reason, the techniques I present in this section also help deal with negative thoughts we want to let go of. It takes effort to curb mind wandering so the motivation must be strong.
This book will not provide you with a miracle method. It will give you the tools and support to change yourself if you are ready. I have applied all these tools myself and can testify to their efficacy. I have not reached the pinnacle of inner peace, but I believe I am much better off than when I started. It is a lifelong journey.
The mind as a tool
In previous sections, we have seen that the mind is a tool to study mind wandering. We asked people about their thoughts and feelings and made conclusions about the function and dynamics of mind wandering. We must tame our minds and teach ourselves to detect and analyze mind-wandering episodes. Mind training and mind taming are central themes in the approaches that follow.
Mind wandering as a virus
We mentioned earlier that mind wandering might be supported by virus-like processes in our brain and mind. For example, say you have a pervasive thought, “I want to go on a vacation to Hawaii on a boat,” and every time you encounter something in your daily life that reminds you of that, be it in the media or talking to a friend, you will think of your desire to go to Hawaii on a boat. For example, you might have that thought every time you hear the words ocean, boat, island, etc. When your mind wanders, you also daydream about that vacation. This thought, although positive, is hijacking your mind and, to some extent, making you unhappy (the thought tells you that you are not happy now and will only be once you take that vacation). Once you have realized that dream, these words will no longer trigger that thought.
The example above was generally positive, but the same could happen with a negative thought, such as, “I feel I am overweight because I eat too much ice cream like my uncle.” The trigger words will be uncle, eat, ice cream and overweight. As shown in the diagram below, these words are associated with my body perception, so thinking about myself or how others perceive me will trigger the thought. Whenever I think of myself, my uncle, how I look, or about eating, the negative ice cream thought pops into my mind.
This vicious cycle is purely mental but can also become physical. The thought is stressful for us and could lead to anxiety and then to emotional eating of ice cream. The diagram below shows a mechanism where the thought is coupled with behavior. We think the stressful thought. We eat to suppress negative emotions. Consequently, we gain weight and have more negative eating thoughts. This shows how the thought can sustain itself through our behavior and our body.
In the brain, these thoughts are supported by sustained patterns of brain activity. For these word/ concept associations to be stable, they need strong connections. If one node (group or area of neurons) is activated, the rest of the related network becomes activated. For example, if the node “uncle” is connected to the node “ice cream” and “overweight” and the node “me” then any activation of one of the nodes will lead to the activation of the others. This association is supported by strengthening connectivity between multiple brain areas (memory, planning and emotion). Of course, this is an oversimplification, as millions of neurons in disparate brain areas may be involved in sustaining these thoughts, so millions of connections get strengthened. However, the picture is clear. The more you think about a negative thought, the more it casts a web of connections in your brain and mind to stabilize itself.
How do we get rid of these thoughts?
The figure above shows the dynamic of a pervasive negative thought. So, what should we do if we wish to change this? Imagine I ask you not to think of a pink elephant for five minutes. Whether you want to or not, you will think about the pink elephant (or the fact that you should not think about it) multiple times over the five minutes. All thoughts are like the pink elephant, we cannot simply wish them to disappear. If we do that, we must think about them: to stop thinking about the pink elephant, I must think about it which defeats the purpose. The more we do not want to think about the pink elephant, the more we do. One way to succeed is to “reappraise” the thought, understanding that these thoughts are either false or that they are hurting us and our bodies. We know the thought is bad for us on some level, but we have not realized how bad it is – this realization must come as an “aha” moment. Only then can neural mechanisms take place to suppress the activity because it is no longer supported by one of its nodes (the node “I genuinely believe this” or the node “this is part of who I am”). Usually, it takes dedicated practice to decrease the grasp of a negative thought to an acceptable level.
EXERCISE: REAPPRAISING A THOUGHT
The first step to reappraising a thought is to become fully aware of it. To do so, follow these steps:
- Take a small piece of paper, and write down the pervasive thought that is upsetting you. For example, “My partner is not considering me.”
- Now place the paper and a pen in your pocket and for the rest of the day, write down a bar every time your mind wanders onto the pervasive thought.
- When doing this, do not count mind wandering that occurs within five minutes of the previous count. Also count the thoughts you have voluntarily, for example, if your partner says something, and you have the, “My partner is not considering me,” thought in response to this interaction.
If possible, continue the exercise over several days. Even within one day, though, some change may happen: our mind is lazy and prefers not doing exercise of that sort. Your mind might decide its less effort to not have the thought than to have to write it down. Even though you cannot decide not to have the thought – do not think of the pink elephant – giving yourself extra work when you have the thought could be enough to have it decrease in intensity and frequency.
The other key result of this exercise is that you realize how much you have the thought and the time you are wasting in having it. You also understand that the thought is not part of you, because you do not want it. This supports your mind to simply decide to let go of the thought if it comes with a conscious realization that this is not you: if the thought pops up in your mind, the counteracting thought will pop up, “Not again, go away, thank you.” It is no longer part of you and you do not identify with it. It has lost its grip.
If you would like to learn more about mind wandering, other big questions surrounding it, and techniques for dealing with overwhelming thoughts, check out Arnaud Delorme’s book Why Our Minds Wander: Understand the Science and Learn How to Focus Your Thoughts (available now on Bookshop and where books are sold). You’ll find easy techniques to develop the skill of mind wandering to improve your mood and foster greater creativity.
