Slow down and engage your senses (DW#714)
Our brain is very good at at telling stories using words. They are language machines and very fast ones at that. Our thoughts are just stories that we (our brains) tell ourselves so that we can make sense of our world and our experience in it.
Now since so much information and input is coming into our brains from our environment at any given time, our brain must process these inputs super fast to make sense and keep up. This is why it seems to be racing at a million miles per hour. And it can be exhausting, especially if we trying to switch off and rest.
The good news is that we can slow down this thought train with a simple strategy and that is to focus on the imagery rather than the words.
For example, your brain is remembering the conversation that you had with the rude person in the parking lot. You are replaying this event and thinking of all the things that you should have said and could have said instead of what you did end up saying.
How do you slow this down?
Get your other senses involved. In your mind’s eye, notice where you were in the parking lot, who else was around? Which cars were parked next to yours. What were the sounds in the area? Was there a smell of any sort? What did the car handle or the steering wheel feel like?
Do you get the picture? You can do this anytime your thoughts are running away with your mind. By doing this, you’re taking up room in your mind that your brain would otherwise dedicate to racing thoughts. Of course the thoughts will keep interfering from time to time. When you notice this happening, simply come back to what your senses are noticing and observing.
When you talk yourself through a scene in your mind, it’s much easier to slow down and control the pace. And a slow mind is a relaxed mind.
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