Have you ever been completely obsessed with a thought? Something’s bothering you and you just can’t stop thinking about it. It keeps you up at night and it consumes all the extra time in your mind.
It’s happened to me many times. I wake up early with a particular thought and I just can’t let it go. And because I’m thinking about it at nauseum the thoughts evolve into worry, paranoia, and eventually I’m down a rabbit hole and I don’t even know how I got there. In the end, the thoughts have created a story in my mind that is not even necessarily true. I’ve created this whole other negative scenario based on what ifs and maybes. Regardless, the thoughts are unproductive, solve no problems, and get me nowhere but irritable and depressed.
Maybe it’s just me.
Or maybe not.
A friend called me up to tell me about these obsessive thoughts she was having that she couldn’t shake. She said, “How do I get control over these thoughts?” “How do I control my mind so I don’t spend the time and energy on these thoughts anymore?” Almost grasping for straws to come up with something for my friend who was really struggling, I suggested replacing those nagging thoughts with another thought. Something more positive like an affirmation.
I mean that’s basically what we do in meditation, right? So why couldn’t it work here?
In meditation, it’s not really about having no thoughts. It’s actually about choosing to direct thoughts to one particular place: a mantra, your breath, a candle. So why can’t we do that when we are obsessed with a particular issue, concern, or worry? It becomes a meditation with the eyes wide open. I mean that’s really the goal of meditation; to be able to control your thoughts even when you’re not in the lotus position, eyes closed on the floor.
After giving this untested advice, I had the opportunity to try it out for myself (go figure).
The next morning, I woke up unable to control my thoughts and going down a crazy rabbit hole into a wonderland that wasn’t even real. I took a deep breath. I made time to formulate an affirmation that was the opposite of the obsessive thought that had been consuming me. And every time I noticed myself going down the rabbit hole again, I repeated the affirmation instead.
And ya know what? It kind of worked.
Just like meditation, it wasn’t perfect. But the act of bringing my thoughts back to the replacement affirmation took me away from the negative thought and towards a more positive one.
I’ve been meditating for years and I know meditation is intended to help me gain control of my thoughts and actions. But I guess, at least recently, I’ve been thinking the practice of meditation itself will lead to that automatically without much effort from me beyond the 20 minutes of silence. But in reality, I need to practice the act of meditation (replacing random thoughts with a specific chosen thought) consciously when I want to redirect my attention; like when I’m obsessing over something negative.
With a little bit of conscious effort, maybe we can minimize the train of obsessive thoughts. It might take minutes or hours or days. But it’s worth the try. Don’t you think?