My thoughts do not
mean anything.

Here’s what I notice: I give an incredible amount of authority to whatever happens to be passing through my mind.

If I think someone is upset with me, I start behaving as though they are. If I think I’m falling behind, the whole day can take on the feeling of failure. If I wake up with that vague sense that something is wrong, I can spend the next several hours looking for evidence.

And usually I find some.

That’s the tricky thing about thoughts. Once I believe one, I start seeing through it.

This lesson feels a little different from simply saying that some of my thoughts are inaccurate. That would be easier. I could sort them into good thoughts and bad thoughts, reasonable ones and ridiculous ones, and keep the ones I like.

But this seems to be asking me to loosen my attachment to the whole stream of thinking for a moment.

That’s harder.

Because I’m very accustomed to treating my thoughts as mine. They feel personal. Important. Sometimes practically sacred. I’ve thought them, after all. Surely that gives them some credibility.

Except I know how quickly they change.

At 8:00 in the morning I can be sure I need to have a difficult conversation. By lunchtime I’ve decided it isn’t worth bringing up. By dinner I’ve rehearsed the conversation six times and become irritated with someone who has no idea we’re fighting.

That does make you wonder how much authority the thoughts deserved in the first place.

The anxious ones are especially convincing.

Something is wrong.

You need to figure this out.

She’s pulling away.

You shouldn’t have done that.

You’re going to regret this.

They arrive with such urgency that I rarely stop to ask whether I need to follow them anywhere. I just climb aboard.

And suddenly I’m ten thoughts down the road from anything that actually happened.

I think this is where the lesson becomes useful in ordinary life. It gives me permission not to solve every thought.

That sounds almost embarrassingly simple, but I don’t live that way very often.

I tend to think that if something enters my mind, I need to understand it, answer it, fix it, defend against it, or make a decision because of it. Especially if the thought makes me uncomfortable.

But what if I don’t?

What if a thought can pass through my mind without becoming an assignment?

I can think, She doesn’t like me, and not spend the afternoon reviewing the friendship.

I can think, I’m failing, without immediately gathering evidence against myself.

I can think, Something bad is going to happen, and let that be a frightened thought rather than a prophecy.

I can even have thoughts I don’t particularly like about other people without deciding they reveal some terrible truth about me. Irritation, jealousy, judgment, resentment—the mind can produce all kinds of things before breakfast.

I don’t have to make a personality out of every one of them.

There’s some relief in that.

And to me, this isn’t about becoming careless with my thinking. Some thoughts point to something practical that needs attention. I may remember an appointment, recognize a problem, realize I owe someone an apology, or notice that something in a relationship needs to be addressed.

Fine. I can deal with what’s actually in front of me.

But that’s different from believing every running commentary in my head is showing me the truth.

I’ve had thoughts about myself that I believed for years simply because I repeated them often enough.

I’m too sensitive.

I’m not good at this.

I always mess things up.

I need people to like me.

At some point they stopped sounding like thoughts and started sounding like descriptions.

Maybe that’s worth questioning.

Not by replacing them with another set of perfect thoughts. I don’t think I need to stand in front of the mirror declaring that I’m spectacular until my mind finally agrees.

I can do something quieter.

I can notice, There’s that thought again.

And leave it there.

No trial. No argument. No five-page explanation of why I shouldn’t feel that way.

Just a little less belief.

When my mind gets loud, I can notice what it’s saying without immediately making it important.

Maybe the thought passes.

Maybe it comes back ten minutes later. Probably it will. Some of mine are extremely persistent.

Still, I can meet it differently.

Oh, this again.

And then return to what is actually here.

The conversation I’m having. The person in front of me. The work that needs doing. The cup of coffee that has somehow gone cold while I’ve been mentally solving my entire life.

I don’t need a perfectly quiet mind today.

I’d just like to stop treating every thought as a reliable narrator.

That feels like enough.