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Mindfulness
How to Treat Your Mind Better
Like your morning coffee or yoga practice, mindfulness can be a powerful tool.
Posted August 26, 2024 Reviewed by Monica Vilhauer Ph.D.
Most of us don’t think about how we think. Most of us don’t shine a black light on our daily thoughts. We just allow them in and we can drown in them. Sometimes they consume us, control us, making us tense and anxious, keeping us in a panic state.
When this happens, we’re pulled out of the present and start to live in our heads (in the past or in the future).
That is not actually living. It’s just worrying a lot.
Step 1: Awareness—Shine a Black Light on Your Thoughts
Notice your thoughts. Don’t judge them. Just practice noticing them. Also, notice the feeling in your body when you have those thoughts. Notice. Notice. Notice.
Watch your thoughts as if they were drifting in a snow globe.
Step 2: Question Your Thoughts
Many of our thoughts are marked by faulty logic and stem from fear. We dwell on the past and worry about the future. We exaggerate, jump to conclusions, and play back memories through the old lens of who we used to be. We create stories because we are afraid. Over and over and over again. Until these kinds of thoughts become our default, our knee-jerk way of thinking. Thinking this way becomes more than a habit. It becomes a way of living. Or actually, not living.
All we’re doing is waking up, drinking too much caffeine, and doing lots and lots of thinking. Break this pattern by questioning your thoughts. Is there truth in them or are they tainted? Put your thoughts on trial. Know that thoughts are not facts. They’re just thoughts. They will come and go. Don’t get attached to them and allow them to get so heavy and negative that they drown you.
Step 3: Notice Recurring Patterns in Your Thoughts
Can you discern patterns in your way of thinking? Do you jump to conclusions? Do you struggle with all-or-nothing thinking? Do you assume that another person is thinking something about you when they’re not? What are the circumstances when you do that? What feelings trigger this type of thinking? And more importantly, how do the patterns distorting your thinking manifest in your behavior?
Do you break up with your partner because they forgot to text you within an hour? Do you sabotage opportunities because you don’t think you can do something without any real proof that you can’t? Do you try to fix things for people who didn’t ask you to just so you can believe you are valuable?
Treating your mind better means understanding how it works. Once you start to understand how your thinking affects your behavior, you can take action to correct both your thought patterns and your behavior. Everything starts with understanding. Without it, you will just go through a lot of motions. Once you really understand your patterns and their impact on your everyday life and choices, you will know what you need to work on.
After you do these three steps—becoming aware of your thoughts, questioning your thoughts, and finding the patterns in your thoughts—you’ll be able to pull back and see what’s going on. You’ll no longer believe that bad things happen because you’re unlucky or defective. You’ll understand that this thought is distorted and a reaction to false beliefs about yourself. Once you see the process, you can choose to fix it by stopping it.
When you notice your distorted thinking or false beliefs or fear, instead of reacting, you can evaluate. You now know that there is a different path and you can choose to take it by responding differently. By doing so, you give yourself a new experience, and the more new experiences you give yourself, the more you create new tracks.
You know that eating a healthy diet and getting regular exercise can transform your body. The hard part, of course, is actually doing those things. It’s the same with transforming your ingrained thoughts, distorted thinking, and false beliefs. Those old habits of thought run deep, and you can’t change them just by reading something or willing them to change.
As I mentioned earlier, transformation takes daily practice. The goal is to get to a place where you start to notice a difference. And you have to believe that your new practice will work or you won’t do it.
