How to ‘Watch Your Thoughts’

It’s all the New Age-rage —  “watching your thoughts” — and when you practice this it can be a crazy-good way to keep from flipping out or breaking into tears or eating the whole batch of brownies.

It doesn’t just keep you out of trouble, it eases the bad feelings that come with it. By watching your thoughts you can emerge from anger or upset into a place of curiosity, peace, and gratitude.

All good, right? But what the heck does it mean? And how woo-woo do you have to be to use it?

Not all that woo-woo as it turns out. I’m a Type-A, ultra- practical mom who lists ‘come up with something for dinner’ and ‘take a shower’ among her daily goals. Observing your thoughts is more of an earthbound technique than an ethereal one. Heck, if I can do it well, I’m telling you what, anybody can.

What Does it Look Like to Watch Your Thoughts

It’s really the practice of slowing down, paying attention , noticing what we are thinking before we react impulsively from those unconscious thoughts.

I used this practice just the other night when my kid dropped the entire bowl — 2 pounds of cooked ground pork  mixed with onions and water chestnuts — on the way to the table. The bowl that took me over an hour to prepare after work on a school night.

Ground pork slid down the walls, landed on the placemats, and under the table, and on the stool,  and the toe of my shoe. It  was everywhere except in the piece of lettuce on my plate.

I was immediately hot and felt a little insane. Crazy with mess and exhaustion and stress after a difficult day. Now this! But I paused just long enough to watch my thoughts. They were irrational. They were volatile and over-the-top. They were so dramatic and raging they actually intensified a situation that sure, was a pain, but was an accident that could be cleaned up in 10 minutes.

I watched those raging thoughts for just a few seconds – believe me they come fast – before doing anything. What I saw is how different those thoughts are from who I am. They were caught up in ego and rightness and anger and not one offered any solution, or any way to ease the situation.

Then I realized something else – and each time I do this it feels a little miraculous – I realized those thoughts meant nothing. They weren’t even true. And I didn’t have to act them out. I could notice them, but I didn’t have to buy into them.

That insight diffused the emotion and  allowed me to choose deliberate, conscious actions that helped me comfort my daughter and get things cleaned up. As good as this practice is, however, it did not give me one single idea about what to cook for dinner.

Sill, a situation that clearly could have gone off the rails and become more difficult if I’d reacted from my initial thought flares, did not. It actually became a way to connect with my family and now is a part of our lore.

How to Watch What You Think

This process of noticing your thoughts isn’t all that cumbersome. Here’s how to do it:

Deep breath.

Pause before you take action.

Notice the actual thought in your head.

Don’t judge. Just notice the actual thought.  You don’t have to say anything like ‘that’s stupid’ just say ‘huh, there is that thought.’

Notice what comes next.

Then choose the next best action.

When you can see your thoughts and observe what’s floating through your mind, a funny thing happens, they don’t have all that much energy. They don’t matter all that much.

This keeps you from behaving badly and intensifying the bad feelings for all. And it is also a great way to connect with the amazing in life. When you bite into that perfect sandwich, or you are having a fantastic time with a friend, or you notice the mesmerizing snow outside and you pause to notice your thoughts and feelings – you get to experience all that goodness again.

When you watch what is in your head – when you notice your thoughts – you can discard those that aren’t serving you and go with the ones that elevate your experience, and by default, those of everyone around you.

See, not woo-woo at all. A simple coping mechanism and if it can get me through a mess of two-pounds of ground pork on the floor and in the plant and everywhere else, I’m thinking it could help you too.