It happens all the time. You want something and it doesn't happen. You want to learn a new skill, get a good grade, loose weight, write a poem, find a partner... and somehow you can't.
When you are mindful you can use the awareness to become an observer of your own thoughts. Without mindfulness you are only a participant in your automatic thinking processes. A thought comes and you create another thought that might create some feelings which result in behavior. When mindful you can switch to an observer mode and only look at your thoughts without getting involved. When you can do that you can also examine the quality of your thoughts.
Think about it like two birds sitting in a tree. One bird is building a nest and is constantly flying back and forth to collect twigs and arranges them into a nest. The second bird is sitting on a branch above the nest that is being built. It is just sitting there, observing what is happening. It's not building anything nor is it flying up and down. It's just there.
The first bird represents your active being, the participator, busy with building a self-image. It is the part of you that engages with the world. The second bird is the part inside of us that witnesses life as it unfolds with a 360° panoramic view. It's observing yet neutral and still.
When you are mindful you can purposefully switch between the participator and the observer. How will that help in getting what you want? You can switch to observing the thoughts that surround the thing that you want and create space for deliberate action. What are your thoughts saying? What is the quality of those thoughts? Are they serving you? Or are they working against you? Once you become aware of the thinking patterns that are connected to what you want and notice the discrepancies between what you want and what you think, you can intervene by selecting the thoughts that actually serve you and cut those that work against you. This will facilitate doing what you need to do in order to get what you want.
Let's do a thought exercise. Let's say you want to lose weight. What are thoughts that do not serve your goal?
- I can't do it
- I love eating
- My body is too weak to exercise
Now change the thoughts:
- I can do it
- I can eat more healthy
- My body can do some sort of exercise and it will get stronger
Constantly switch between doer and onlooker and tweak your thoughts so that they serve your goals. Repeat this over and over until you condition new thinking patterns that support what you need to do to get what you want.
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