I’ve been a big fan of positive thinking for years, but I’m starting to think there’s a better way. Go on a little trip down memory lane with me, will you?
In the fall of 2008 I felt stuck in a job that made me miserable and I thought that I had absolutely no way out. I hired my first life coach, and she guided me toward the work of Byron Katie.
It was the first moment I got a glimpse of the truth: I didn’t have to believe every thought that went through my mind.
Shortly thereafter, I signed up for Martha Beck’s life coaching and program, and throughout 2009 got deeper and deeper into understanding that my mind wasn’t telling the truth and that I could question my thoughts and change them to better ones.
For more than a decade now, I’ve worked on improving my thoughts. Not always consistently, but it’s certainly always in the background.
Mantras, positive thinking, gratitude, vision boards, and on and on.
But here’s the thing: Positive thinking doesn’t always work.
It’s a truly beautiful thing, as is learning to question your thoughts, but in order to do it you have to work all the time.
You have to work at noticing what your mind is telling you. You have to work at questioning the thought. You have to work at coming up with a new thought. You have to work at saying the new thought over and over.
And that’s where I got tired. I got so, so emotionally tired of constantly trying to bombard myself with positive thoughts that I finally broke. I got angry, I cried, I felt like I just had to give up on this whole dang self improvement thing.
And then I picked up my copy of Power of Now.
I’ve had this book on my shelf for probably that entire decade I spent trying to change my thoughts, but I just wasn’t ready to read it. Until I was.
Going beyond positive thoughts is the next step. It’s the next level of consciousness, I think.
When I say going beyond positive thinking, here’s what I mean: You stop trying to change your thoughts at all. Instead, you just notice them and realize that you are not them. You are not your mind. You are the awareness that can watch the thoughts as the cross your mind.
Eckhart Tolle does a great job of explaining this, so if it resonates, please go read Power of Now, but I’ll try to do it justice in just a few sentences: Your mind needs identity. It loves to identify as a conservative or liberal, as a vegetarian or paleo eater, as someone who has a great sense of fashion or as someone who doesn’t care what they look like. It loves to identify as a baby boomer or a millennial (or in my case, an xennial), as a wife or a mother, as someone who keeps a tidy house or someone who is a slob. As someone who is successful or, even though this sounds crazy, as someone who is a failure.
This is really what the ego is—constantly trying to find an identity. Your mind wants to be right. Your mind wants to be loved. Your mind wants to solve problems, but often just creates them.
Once you see this, that the primary job of your mind is to find an identity to grab onto, and then to talk all day long about why that’s good or bad and what you should or shouldn’t be doing, you can release it. You don’t have to be sucked into your thoughts all day long. In fact, any time you notice your thoughts have run away with you, it’s time to take a step back and separate, to come back to right now.
So although making your thoughts into positive ones is more helpful to your sense of well-being than being dragged around by negative ones all day long, it’s still tiring to be attached to your mind all day long. It’s easier and more fulfilling to completely separate from your thoughts, period.
Step one is to realize you are the one you can see/hear your thoughts, not your thoughts themselves.
Step two is to start watching your thoughts and see them as the gibberish that they are. No need to try to change them—just watch them.
In case you’re thinking, “But I need my thoughts! My mind is what helps me get everything done!” Yeah, your mind is the one telling you that. And yes, your mind is a great tool. You do need your mind in certain situations, but for the most part, it’s just mucking up your life.
Just try it. Just watch the thoughts instead of becoming them. Don’t spend your day forcing yourself to think happy thoughts, spend your day watching what thoughts come by and then let them go and come back to right now. Right now is the only thing that really exists.