The Psychology of Wellness - Part 2
If you did, (and you really should or the rest of this isn't going to make much sense) then you probably have a little more insight into the way your mind works.
As I discussed before, when you sit quietly and watch your thought-stream ripple past, you'll find that underneath your normal veneer you're really quite a nutcase. What a mess it is inside your skull! Memories from high-school will butt up against tomorrow's shopping list. Past rejections will sting again, and imagined future accomplishments will swell you with pride. Your thoughts will bounce around like a rubber ball in a spinning clothes dryer.
This is fine. It's how your mind is supposed to work. But what we've come here to do is get to grips with the mind and use our thought patterns to make us healthier people. So, having seen yourself for the discombobulated muddle that you are, what's the next step?
Having taken some time to get acquainted with your thoughts, you'll start to see that some have more resonance with you than others. Chances are these are the thoughts that have been with you the longest, that you go back to again and again. These are Top 40 hits of your mental life.
(There is quite a lot of science behind this phenomenon. Every time you revisit a thought or memory, you are tracing a unique electrical path in your neural network. And everytime you retrace the pattern, you solidify and strengthen the synaptic connections, making it even easier to have the same thought again!)
Let's take, for example, a young woman named who has found herself steadily gaining weight since she finished college and entered the workforce. She's getting concerned about it and has tried gyms and diets for a few years, but the pounds keep creeping on. She tends to eat to much junk food, especially when she's stressed, and doesn't have the time to exercise as much as she knows she needs to.
How can she harness her thoughts to get rid of all the negative habits, lose that weight, and feel like her old self again?If we break it down, here are her 2 needs.
1. Stop eating junk
2. Start being active
In this post we're going to take on the negative part of this equation, the difficult challenge to stop doing something that you've become accustomed to. In this example, the habit of eating unhelpful foods that make you fat and sick.
Eating junk (and by junk I mean most processed foods, sweets, and beverages besides tea, coffee, and water) is largely a function of habit. For example, after her lunch this woman feels a need to have something sweet, she usually goes for a candy bar from the office vending machine. And the weekends don't feel quite right without a trip to the local bookstore/cafe for a sweet frothy beverage and some time with a good book. This has been her habit for the past few years.
Habits operate below the level of thoughts, they are more like cycles that the mindbody will try it's hardest to keep going by pushing all the buttons it can. But here's the key, a habit cannot come to fruition without a thought to execute the action.So, for example, having finished her sensible lunch of a sandwich and salad, she gets the urge for something sweet. Before that candy bar can enter her body a whole series of Top 40 thoughts has to take place, which might go something like this:
"Hmm something sweet I'll go by the vending machine do I have enough change ok I do but maybe I should just have some fruit I know I should but It's been a hell of a day and I can spend a little extra time on the treadmill so fine what'll it be today I kind of want something with some body to it I'm kind of tired of caramel something with a little crispiness to it aha KitKat that'll hit the spot."
This thought stream will happen in a few blinks of the eye and will go largely unnoticed, but don't doubt that it's happening.
This is why meditation is so key to doing this kind of work. The vast majority of people aren't even aware that their thoughts are leading them around by the nose. They just ride the stream, eat the KitKat, and wonder where the pounds are coming from. Only consistently reminding yourself that this stream of thought is there will allow you to work with it.
So, our sample woman wants to stop falling for the post lunch sweet-attack. My advice for her would be the following:
She should start watching her thoughts as she goes through this daily ritual. She shouldn't try to change anything, she should go ahead and buy the candy bar, but watch. She'll get to know the little tics and mental hurdles that have to go down before putting those coins in the machine.
Once she's become best friends with the nuts and bolts of the "buy a candy bar" thought pattern, she can start to do the one thing that will blast it apart faster than anything else.
Turn around and look at the projector!
By this I mean recognizing the thought pattern for what it is, just a series of electrical impulses firing in the frontal lobe that do not have any power over her.
The next time it rolls around, she can have an experience more like this:
"Mmm I could really go for something sweet, I'll hit up the vending machine on the way back, do I have enough change, ok, I do, oh here's that thought again, like clockwork, I'm thinking about buying a candy bar, isn't that funny how it just comes up like that, I guess I don't really need a KitKat, I have some melon in the office fridge after all..."
At this point she is in the drivers seat, and has a good shot at sticking to her diet. Saying no to an impulse becomes much easier when she sees it AS an impulse.
Now, this is where things get tricky, because the mindbody, having been deprived of completing its habit cycle, will start to wriggle. It'll toss up a whole bunch of variants on the thought pattern, usually consisting of different ways of saying "You deserve it" or "you can make up for it later." The key is to keep watching, to not slip back into the slipstream of thoughts. Don't get sucked back into the story of the movie, keep a steady eye on that projector, and have a better choice in your back pocket, ready to be plugged in.
Most people won't stand a chance at winning this battle, because they never put the practice time in beforehand. Meditation and mindfulness can prepare you for these moments. Having spent hours watching your mind wriggle and squirm on the meditation cushion, nothing it does will surprise you anymore. I cannot emphasize this enough. This kind of mindwork will not succeed if you try it on the fly. You might win a few but a habit doesn't tire easily, it'll patiently be there every single lunch until you've confronted it head on. The good news is that once it's exposed as a flimsy urge fueled thought, it will die off pretty quickly and can be replaced with a healthy habit, like an after-lunch piece of fruit.
And our sample woman, having gotten on top of the candy bar thought loop, can turn her attention to the weekend frothy beverage loop. And so on. It's exhausting work, but gets easier with practice, especially as the pounds come off.
With consistent effort at seeing the thoughts for what they are, she will have done so much more than saying craving but saying "no" to sweets. She'll have become the kind of person who doesn't crave sweets in the first place. This is the psychology of a well person, and will last a lifetime!
So what gets you? The after work beer? The movie-night cheesy nachos? The desire to get your money's worth from the all-you-can-eat-buffet? Everyone has different hang ups, but the process is still the same.
1. Watch the projector.
2. Don't get sucked into the story.
3. Make a better choice, preferably one that you've thought out ahead of time.
In the final part of this series, we'll get into those better choices, and how to slip new healthy thought patterns into the mental mix.
Until then, watch your thoughts, and get to know the Top 40 hits that you wish you could turn off!
