Taming The Overactive Mind

Planning ... fretting ... ruminating ... problem-solving ... all at the same time? Over and over? This isn't something that happens TO us; it's something we do. Trying to stop it becomes another thing we "have to do," which actually perpetuates the vicious cycle.

In this talk and guided meditation recorded live at the Boston Mindfulness and Insight Meditation Meetup, we take a look at the mindset that creates this pattern, and then practice several ways to skillfully let it dissolve.

Transcript

For those who do not know me yet,

I'm Ron Levine from Linefulness in Blue Jeans.

Today's topic is one that is near and dear to me,

Taming the overactive mind.

As you can see,

We have quite a few people here today,

So I think it resonated.

I don't think I'm alone in this affliction.

But I have made some great strides with it,

And I'm hoping perhaps we'll be able to take something with us today that will help each of us in turn.

From a high level,

What I'd like to do today is take a quick look at what it is we're dealing with.

Because for me,

Understanding the problem,

What's behind the problem,

How the problem works,

Is the first step towards being able to deconstruct it.

So we'll take a quick look at what we're talking about when we say the overactive mind.

Then we're going to relieve ourselves of an unhelpful misconception about how we deal with this issue.

Then we will discuss and practice some skillful ways to approach it.

So to start with,

An overactive mind,

I have found,

Like almost anything else we can imagine,

Is not a thing so much as it's a process.

So to begin easing an overactive mind,

The first thing that I find helpful is to identify what our role in that process is.

When I say our role,

I don't mean this as a blame thing.

What I mean is,

We are not passive recipients of our experience.

When things come up internally,

Externally,

We react in certain ways.

We respond in certain ways.

We deal with them in certain ways.

And that affects the experience that we are having at the time,

As well as what we are likely to do in the future.

So yes,

Life happens.

But we are an active participant in that process as it happens.

Additionally,

One of the early insights I found when I was starting to practice insight meditation was what I call the direction of grip.

We very often feel like we are in the grip of these thoughts that consume us,

This material for rumination.

We can't get away from them.

And at one point I was really observing this and realized,

You know,

Between thoughts and what I think of as me,

Only one of us has volition,

Right?

And it's not the thoughts.

So if there's any kind of gripping going on here,

It's not from the thoughts.

It's from me.

I mean it kind of has to be,

Right?

So it's important to keep in mind that direction of grip.

We have an active part in this process.

That brings us to a fairly obvious question.

Why would we engage in this process,

This overactive thinking?

Because obviously if it wasn't presenting a problem,

None of us would be here on a Saturday morning talking about this,

Listening about this,

Studying about it.

We'd be off doing other things,

Right?

I mean who the hell wants to do this on a Saturday morning,

Right?

So why do we do this?

Well I can't say why you do it.

I can tell you what I have found for myself and I have a feeling that some of this may resonate for you as well.

So first off,

Why we do anything always comes down to motivation.

We think we're going to get something out of it that is worth the effort we're putting into it.

And again,

The fact that so many of us are here today suggests to me that,

Eh,

That's not working out so well.

So what I have found is I'm your classic type A personality.

You can probably tell just by the way I talk,

Right?

I envision all of these things that I have to do as being like on this stack,

Big stack.

One of two things happens as I clear items off of this stack.

Either my fear goes down because I feel this insecurity about,

Oh,

I can't forget to get that thing done or am I going to get it done right?

Those storylines that start spinning and somehow end up with us being homeless and destitute with society hating us because we forgot to turn down the thermostat one day,

Right?

So there's this feeling of easing this fear or on the flip side,

This pleasurable feeling,

This rewarding feeling of,

Oh,

I'm getting something done.

I've got that under control.

Oh,

Do I still have it under control?

Oh yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yep.

I got it.

Well then let me check.

Oh yep.

Still got it under control.

You get that little dopamine hit.

That little bit of pressure on the mind has now been released.

We want to get everything off our plate.

But the problem with this strategy is that the stack doesn't end.

It's not like life stops throwing us things.

Even on those rare occasions where it seems like the stack has been cleared and we have a few minutes to enjoy it.

In my experience,

We just start looking for more things to do.

We are hardwired for dissatisfaction.

Our ancestors who were the most concerned about threats,

The ones who are most often looking for the saber-toothed tiger,

The ones who are most anxious,

Were the ones who survived and passed that on.

As I often like to say,

We are literally the product of tens of thousands of years of the most anxious people who ever lived.

But we live in a different world now.

That strategy hasn't scaled so well.

It's not appropriate anymore.

So even on the rare occasion where there's an empty stack,

We go looking for more.

Because fear,

Dissatisfaction,

These things rise again.

And we like that rewarding feeling,

That got it done feeling,

That dopamine hit.

It's like a drug and we're our own dealer.

So the strategy that we're using to deal with our overactive thinking is not sustainable.

Because in an attempt to alleviate our own insecurities,

Our own fears,

We end up perpetuating the cycle.

Ironically,

Now adding,

Oh,

I have an overthinking problem to that stack.

Now it becomes another thing that we have to try to resolve somehow,

Right?

And the other thing is it's habit forming.

As I said earlier,

The way that we handle things shapes our experience in the present but also sets the conditions for how we're likely to deal with those same things in the future.

So we build this habit of trying to use thinking or overuse thinking to alleviate our fears or get that dopamine hit from the feeling of,

Oh,

Okay,

I've got that under control or I got that done.

And this happens at a physical level as well.

Those of you who are familiar with the term neuroplasticity,

Our brains physically alter based on our thought patterns.

It's like wearing in grooves or building these highways.

They become our defaults.

So over the years and decades,

We're actually creating these habits that wear grooves,

If you will,

Into our brains.

So this is a mental habit forming that even takes place at a physical level.

This is what we call in Buddhism suffering.

All that the Buddha was concerned with was how do we alleviate our own suffering?

And when he said suffering,

He didn't mean,

Oh my God,

Suffering,

This is the worst thing.

These days,

The word stress makes a little more sense to use.

Suffering has a lot of baggage,

A lot of connotations,

Even stuff like,

Oh,

You're not taking my suffering away from me.

I earned that or I suffer from my art.

It's got the sort of romanticized.

Nobody likes stress though.

Nobody likes stress.

No one says,

Oh no,

Give me more,

That's my stress.

This is what the Buddha was talking about when he talked about this human condition and how we generate suffering or stress for ourselves.

So how can we use our thinking more skillfully so that we're not generating suffering and stress?

Well,

First,

I want to get rid of a misconception.

I mentioned that we were going to relieve ourselves of a misconception here.

And this is actually where the taming of the taming,

The overactive mind comes in.

There's an old parable,

I think it's an old Korean parable about a woman who was tasked with getting a whisker from a live tiger.

When you see how these things are done in that story about how she got the whisker,

When you look up about how lion taming is done,

There's something very important that gets described in those processes.

There's a respect for their space and for their inherent behavior rather than attempting to dominate.

The woman in the story didn't get that whisker because she wrestled the tiger to the ground and pulled a whisker off him.

Lion tamers don't try to dominate the lion.

There's this working with,

Not working against,

Working with their inherent behavior.

So what's the mind's inherent behavior?

Well,

It thinks.

That's what it does.

Prove me wrong.

At any given moment,

We are taking in so much information,

Sensation,

Perception,

Our mind automatically filters out what it thinks we don't have to be concerned with at the moment.

We interpret,

We compare against our past experience,

Our judgments,

Our desires.

All of this is happening at every given moment.

So in what alternate universe does I need to stop thinking make sense?

That's a domination strategy.

And if that strategy worked,

Or if there was a magic word or a phrase that would accomplish that,

I feel fairly confident that one of us here would have discovered it by now.

But it doesn't work.

It doesn't work.

Why?

Well,

It's not working with the mind,

It's working against it.

It's working against its inherent behavior.

And the mind,

By the way,

Of course,

Is us,

Right?

We're talking about it like it's a separate thing.

It's not.

It's all part of this one system.

One of the things I realized very early in my practice was if you fight yourself,

You've already lost.

Because that's what I was doing.

That's how I ended up the way that I was that brought me to this practice.

I was fighting myself.

Unbelievable civil war for almost 10 years.

And here's the funny thing,

We're not just working against the mind when we say,

I need to stop thinking.

I need to stop thinking is a thought from the mind.

So we've already lost the ballgame.

It just doesn't work.

And also keep in mind that our motivation,

As I mentioned earlier,

What's our motivation here?

At least in my case,

Typically fear.

Typically fear.

And that's from a felt sense and no amount of telling ourselves from an intellectual level to stop feeling that is going to work.

So how do we change our thought patterns?

How do we change our role in this cycle?

First thing we do is reframe.

Instead of,

I need to stop thinking,

We redirect our attention.

It's the pink elephant effect.

If I say don't think of a pink elephant,

I'm going to think of a pink elephant.

If I say,

Hey,

You know,

Go look at that cute kitty over there.

Probably not going to be thinking of a pink elephant.

Something I've always really liked about the Buddha's teachings is that he taught there were six senses.

The five that we all know and love.

And the sixth one was the mind.

Thinking.

It was included as a sense media.

Every bit the way that we think of sight,

Hearing,

And so forth.

What does this imply?

Well,

It implies that like the things that we can see and hear and taste,

We can observe these thought processes.

We can observe our perception.

We can observe our interpretation.

We can observe our reaction.

Take some practice.

We can observe our reaction.

We can observe our responses.

We can see what the mind actually does.

As one of my early teachers likes to say,

See how you're actually living.

How are you actually living?

Well,

Here we can see what the mind is actually doing.

And as we continue to see the process of our motivation play out,

Of trying to clear the stack,

Trying to relieve ourselves of this pressure on the mind,

Like,

Oh,

What about this?

What about this?

As we continue to watch that process of that play out,

Instead of getting caught up in the storylines,

The content,

Just that light of attention that we shine on the process is enough to begin making changes all by itself.

And it makes changes on a couple of levels.

First,

It begins to make changes to the storylines themselves because we can't observe the storylines and be writing them at the same time.

And we're writing them.

Just like that direction of grip,

We're gripping those thoughts.

We're writing these storylines.

I mean,

Who else is doing it?

I'm not writing yours.

You're not writing mine.

So simply bringing attention to the writing of the storylines,

The development of the storylines alters the process.

But it also does something else very important at another level.

It also starts to break down that meta storyline,

The storyline of the storylines,

The one that says,

Oh,

If I continue,

If I continue to write all these storylines and weave all these storylines together and take care of that stack and do that thing,

If I keep doing that,

That will somehow eventually bring me peace.

We start to see through that.

We gain,

If you will,

A disillusionment.

A disillusionment.

Say,

Oh,

You know what?

How's that really working for me?

What we begin to do in this process is we start shaping our neuroplasticity rather than being shaped by it.

In the Buddhist world,

This is karma.

Setting the conditions to alleviate our own suffering or stress.

We develop a new mental habit here in the present that sets the conditions for the same to happen in the future.

And we end up developing a new now sustainable cycle because it allows us to gain a little bit of breathing room,

Learn more about the process of how the mind is working,

Which then allows us to further deconstruct the process,

Which then gives us more insight and on and on.

So now we have a sustainable cycle rather than the unsustainable draining cycle we had before.

This practice of observation is simple,

But it is not easy.

We didn't get the way that we are overnight.

And we're not going to unlearn these dysfunctional strategies that we have learned overnight.

It takes time.

The good news is,

In my experience,

You don't have to do this stuff for years and years just to get a little bit of relief.

Not every sitting is going to be this amazing,

Magical sort of event.

You know,

The angels coming down from the heavens.

Usually if that's what you're looking for,

That's a quick way not to get it.

And that's not really the point.

Does that happen sometimes?

Yeah,

Sometimes.

It's a side effect.

It's a byproduct.

What we're really trying to do is simply learn about what's happening,

What we're doing with it,

And what strategies actually work.

And it really is just that simple.

It's just a matter of sticking with it,

Giving it the space to play out,

And watching.

And what I've found in my experience is simply doing that,

It's kind of enough.

It's kind of enough.

Because then we start to really experience at a felt level.

Again,

Not from an intellectual—we already know at an intellectual level that this stuff sucks.

This whole thing,

This sucks.

That's why we're here.

We've got that.

We've got that.

Yet somehow we can't seem to cross over into actually deconstructing the problem,

Alleviating the stress.

What I've found is understanding the process and seeing it play out,

And in some ways how ridiculous it is.

Sometimes we just laugh at ourselves,

Like,

Holy crap,

I've been doing that for how long?

What?

That process,

We get to really feel,

Really feel what we've been doing,

What the effects are.

And at that point,

In my experience,

I don't really have to put out a whole lot of effort to stop doing it.

I mean,

It just kind of happens.

It just kind of happens.

So let's practice for a bit and get this process started.

I'd like you to imagine that you are suspended from the ceiling by a string attached to the top of your head.

It's a nice cue to sit up straight without adding any extra tension.

And if you are feeling any tension right now,

That's completely fine.

That is completely fine.

The same way that we are going to practice bringing the light of attention onto the processes of the mind,

We can do the same with the body.

And in fact,

We will practice that just a bit in a moment.

For now,

It's enough to say that if one of the processes happening in the body is tension,

Then we can do with it what I was just mentioning a moment ago,

Not fight against it.

Notice it and see what it's actually like.

And if you're not feeling any tension,

Well,

That's just great too.

I also like to notice what is in contact with the floor,

The chair,

Whatever's holding you up right now.

So there's a sense of grounding.

Something is supporting us.

We've got the support at the bottom.

We have a gentle lift at the top.

And whatever is happening in between the two.

And all we have to do for the moment is shine the light of attention on it.

We will breathe in and out completely.

And we can begin to bring our attention to our breathing.

And again,

Just like with any tension in the body,

We don't need to change the breathing,

Shape the breathing,

Struggle with the breathing.

There's no meditative breath we need to achieve.

Our meditative breath right now is simply the one that is happening as we are watching.

It's not about whether it's long or short or deep or shallow.

It's simply noticing it as it is right now.

Our job is simply to shine that light of attention on it and see how it is.

It's not about whether it's long or deep or shallow.

It's simply noticing it as it is right now.

You may find it helpful to pick one particular spot where you can feel the air coming in and out or passing over.

Sometimes I try to notice the deepest point where the breath happens to be hitting.

Not in the interest of trying to make it go further than it is.

Simply because that task is a really great way,

I've found,

For coming out of the mind a bit,

Gaining a little bit of space.

It's a single focal task located in the body.

Oh,

Where can I feel this inhale?

This one's right here in my chest somewhere.

Can I zoom in a little further on it,

On the next one?

Where's this one?

This one actually reached the top of my stomach.

And what about the other one?

Well,

This one,

Not so much.

It's not about where it's reaching.

It's about the process of seeing if we can notice how far it got just to see,

Just to gain a little bit of breathing room,

No pun intended,

From the mind.

Again,

That pink elephant effect.

Not saying,

Stop thinking,

Saying,

Hey,

Let's direct the attention over here.

Let's notice that for a few breaths.

We're nearby.

One nice side effect of noticing the breathing,

Working with the breathing like this,

Is that observing tension that might be present in the body.

Again by simply working with these things,

Giving them space,

Noticing their inherent behavior,

Working with them instead of against them.

That sets the foundation,

Sets the conditions for the body to relax a bit.

Maybe sooner,

Maybe later.

But that in itself also has an effect on the mind.

It's difficult to have a calm mind and an agitated body,

And vice versa.

That's another cycle.

I think we've all found that trying to tame the overactive mind through thinking isn't very fruitful.

But when we come to the body part of the cycle,

I've found that to be much more useful.

Now there are also practices that we can do with the mind.

And we'll go through a few of these briefly.

For those times when we're having a whole bunch of thoughts coming at us,

One of my favorite techniques and one I present very often because it seems to resonate with a lot of folks like it does with me,

Is the conveyor belt technique.

I see myself as watching all of my thoughts going by on a conveyor belt.

And I know I want to grab some of them.

Remember that direction of grip.

I want to grab some of those thoughts.

I want to look at them and write those storylines and analyze.

I don't have to do that right now.

I know from experience every single one of them is gonna be back again.

That is not an issue.

They will be back.

That's okay.

Right now we can just see that they're there and let them go.

Let them go by.

And if we notice how badly we want to pick one up,

How much one of them is calling to us,

Well that's really just a thought on the conveyor belt too,

Isn't it?

Just like I need to stop thinking is a thought.

All just items on this conveyor belt that we can watch while we're anchored on the breathing.

Okay.

Okay.

If we notice that we've fallen into a thought pattern,

Or if the sound of my voice has brought you to realize that you have fallen into a thought pattern,

That's fine.

Other thoughts will come out of that like,

Oh,

I can't believe I let that happen,

Or geez,

I'm not doing this right,

Or maybe just,

Oh,

Okay.

Those are all thoughts too.

And those are all just items on the conveyor belt as well.

No different from any of the other ones.

You're welcome to continue with the conveyor belt technique.

I'll offer another.

If we're noticing that the same thoughts are coming up again and again and again,

I find the labeling technique very helpful.

Slap a label on them.

Could be very general.

This is anxiety.

This is anticipation.

This is joy.

Could be very specific.

Oh,

I'm thinking about that thing I have to do tomorrow again.

Oh,

And there it is again.

There it is again.

As we give it a label,

An identification,

And reapply that label every time it comes up,

A couple of things happen.

We gain a little more familiarity around it.

And we also begin to see just how often,

I mean really see just how often it comes up.

And I've found that to give rise to a feeling of,

Should we say disenchantment?

Just wow,

Like seriously,

You again?

Every time we apply that label,

We see how much mental real estate is being consumed here and gain a little more familiarity with it.

And in my experience,

That sets the stage for us to begin to see a little more of what's behind it.

Like in my case,

Seeing the fear playing out behind clearing that stack.

That's where the real shifts start to take place.

When we develop that clear insight that shows us where the stuff's really coming from.

You may continue to work with the conveyor belt technique or the labeling technique.

Another one that I use often when I'm not just having a lot of thoughts happening,

But a lot of high energy thoughts,

Particularly if there's a lot of anxiety happening and the body is very keyed up.

That's usually when I work with the surfing technique.

I imagine that the swirl of these energetic thoughts is like being in whitewater rapids without a boat.

And they're pulling me down,

Throwing me this way and that way.

And I'm struggling against them.

Again,

Working against them.

And it's not working.

Just like it doesn't in any of the other scenarios I've mentioned.

But when I start to work with it,

Move with the energy,

Well then the waves start to lift me up,

Start to carry me.

I can actually start to ride them.

I may not be in control of where they're taking me at the moment,

But at least I'm not drowning.

Not struggling,

Not drowning,

Not generating my own suffering,

Stress.

And at some point I get comfortable enough,

I get skilled enough with riding the energy that I can actually jump off onto a riverbank.

And from there might even be able to climb up to a ledge and look down at the rapids that I'd been drowning in earlier.

And it's not that they're gone.

They're still there.

They're still loud.

They're still rushing.

Still energetic.

But I've gained a little distance.

And that all started from working with the energy,

Feeling the energy as it is,

Learning about it,

Saying what is this actually like while anchoring on the breathing.

And the last technique that I'll offer today is one that I usually use once the mind has calmed down a little bit.

I call this one the movie theater technique.

If you imagine you're sitting in a movie theater,

Movie hasn't started yet.

Just a big blank screen.

But you know eventually something's going to show up on that screen.

Just observe that screen.

And when something does show up,

A thought,

You catch it very quickly because you were waiting for it.

And as soon as you do spot it,

You notice.

And maybe at that point you apply a label to it or you watch it go by on the conveyor belt.

But I found it to be a very effective technique for noticing thoughts very quickly as they arise.

Including the thought of,

Oh gee I shouldn't be having any thoughts.

Including the thought of,

Oh I lost the breathing I can't believe I did that I'm terrible at this.

Including the thought of,

Am I doing this right?

Including the thought of,

My practice should be like this,

Should be like that.

All thoughts,

All storylines,

All okay.

All okay.

As long as we don't make a problem out of them.

As long as we simply notice them as the thoughts that they are.

Continue to learn through observation and developing techniques like these that allow us to work skilfully,

Work skilfully with a mind that thinks.

Reviews

Amazing very informative. I loved it.
!!!!!!! B

Very helpful . Thank you so much for your wisdom .❤️🙏

This is phenomenal stuff...context and practical guided techniques..LOVE IT.

Thank you so much for sharing this. It helped immensely at a very low point in my life when nothing else was working 🙏🏾
These are tools I will come back to often. Not fighting against my thoughts was a huge insight for me and it freed up so much tension

Thank you❤️

This was extraordinary ✨ I’ve heard what we resist persists, but I never thought about it in relation to my thinking. This reminds when my son did martial arts and he was trained to use the momentum of his attacker against the attacker. A whole new way to ‘go with the flow’ thank you for reintroducing me to me beautiful brain ✨🙏✨

Thank you for this. It was wonderful. I used to teach the projector 📽 one & I was told it was very helpful. Personally I prefer the wave one as it feels more exciting. The labelling I have always resisted until now. It felt too much like being organised at work. But since I had an accident in India & got a head injury, the organising of the thoughts into containers is what I really need now. Everything got thrown all over the place, so I know it’s time to properly get the mind filing cabinet 🗄 more in order now. I’ll come back to this. It was very reassuring.

It was very helpful. Thank You!!

Very clear, direct and helpful!