These are stressful times. With the holidays, the global pandemic, passionate politics and everything else that’s going on, your mind might be anything but quiet. In this episode Janine and Shannon discuss the benefits of quieting your thoughts and provide some strategies to try. (Spoiler alert: The secret ingredient is breathing!)
Discussion topics include:
- How quieting your mind isn’t about emptying your head of thoughts, but rather about turning down the volume on them
- Brains are brains and they’re designed to have thoughts.
- Avoiding perseverating on your thoughts
- It’s not just thinking negative thoughts that is problematic; you can also latch onto thoughts that have no impact
- How it takes energy when you get caught up in thinking about things that don’t matter much
- How daily yoga helps Janine quiet her mind
- One mind-quieting strategy: Turning your attention specifically to something else (like breathing)
- Box breathing, which can calm your nervous system
- A question to ask yourself, “What’s next?”
- How our brains think worrying about something counts toward taking action, when actually it usually prevents you from taking action
- How our bodies react to worry as if the thing you’re worrying about is actually happening
- How if you are worrying about something you are not in danger
- Shannon’s awesome flow chart for responding to worry
- Some visual metaphors for letting thoughts pass through your mind
Here’s the flow chart Shannon drew of how to respond to worry:
Links:
- Info from the Mayo Clinic about how breathing exercises are helpful to manage stress
- Shannon’s blog post, Happy Changes for Happy Stillness (keep an eye out for her reference to passing parades!)
When I tried to meditate in the past, I would get all bent out of shape if a stray thought made its way into my mind. Now I just say, “Oh, there’s a thought,” and it goes away. I like the idea of a metaphor. I think I will picture a thought as a single bird, then when others come its way, they all turn on a dime like a flock of starlings and float away.