By Elizabeth Herman | Posted: October 16, 2019
What happens when you tell yourself what to think? Does your mind cooperate and follow your own instructions?
Try this exercise: There’s a big pink elephant floating in the room. Stop thinking about it. Don’t think about the monkeys in the corner jumping up and down, either!
These animal images will come back to you the more you try to resist them. They persist in your mind, partly because resisting them is a form of thinking about them. Forgetting about that resistance, letting them be there for a bit, will allow them to fade away naturally.
The mind rebels against our resistance
When I was giving introductory talks about the Art of Living philosophy on mind and meditation, I would use the images of the elephant and the monkey to illustrate how you can’t really force your mind to think only about what you want. The mind wanders about and often alights stubbornly on whatever you would like to resist.
You may notice that once I told you not to think of the elephant and the monkey, it took some time before those images disappeared from your mind. In fact, every time I mention them again, the images return, so it gets harder and harder to put them out of your thoughts.
In the same way, by trying to be happy, we can make ourselves more miserable! Just as the mind doesn’t go where you want it to go, especially if you tell it to only think positive thoughts, our emotions don’t always obey our direction either. Trying to be happy all the time can instead make us stressed and upset.
A naturally wandering mind
An acquaintance of mine in school said he would not sit for meditation unless there was a lit candle that he could focus his attention on in the room. Apparently, he felt that the candle would anchor his mind to something so it wouldn’t wander out of his control, and that gave him a sense of safety.
For relief from stress, the natural tendency of the mind to wander out of control isn’t something to be feared, but embraced. In certain situations like school and work, we need our thoughts to stay focused on the tasks at hand, and perform those tasks with a one-pointed understanding of their importance. But, we can’t keep up this degree of mental focus all the time.
Have you noticed that if you stand in one position for a long time, your body will start to ache and muscles become exhausted? The same is true with the mind. If you keep it on the same concept for too long, you will become either very bored or fall asleep, or unexpected, unpredictable, and unwanted ideas and memories will invade your train of thought.
But if you keep moving from thought to thought, and rest from them naturally as needed, your mind will feel more relaxed and energized. In meditation, we give our mind a chance to rest and go wherever it wants to. This relieves the stress of always keeping our thoughts and attention in the same place.
Resisting sadness doesn’t work
By resisting sadness all of the time, you can make yourself depressed. What you resist will persist. Similarly, when I decide to stick to a diet of only raw vegetables, my desire for pizza, ice cream and french fries grows.
In the same way, if I constantly think about how much I want happiness, and try to avoid and resist any genuine feelings of sadness, it will pull me further into whatever I lack and self-pity will overwhelm my thoughts. When I try so hard to be happy, the efforts tend to result in artificial feelings that don’t provide lasting rewards.
In contrast, if I go find someone who needs food and feed them, it will bring me waves of joy, because my thoughts shift towards bringing happiness to others. This takes my mind off of everything I lack, and I no longer obsess on my own needs. I can forget about my own lack of control over my life and all it’s missing, and partake in the genuine contentment of the grateful person who I just helped.
Incubation
Creativity theory tells us that the best insights into solving any problem come after taking your mind off of the problem. This stage of the process is called incubation, and it often occurs just prior to a crucial realization or discovery.
You can use incubation to allow happiness to enter your life, when facing any challenge or issue. By taking your mind off of whatever you’re working on, you can make more progress towards generating effective solutions and ideas to address the challenge or issue.
So if you want to be happy, stop trying to be happy! Stop thinking about happiness altogether, and go do something that seems completely unrelated. This will allow your mind to naturally incubate whatever is truly needed.
Silent meditation is one way to incubate the best kind of awareness and understanding, by allowing our mind to stop concentrating, and to relax, rejuvenate, and rest.
You can learn this process through a Sahaj Samadhi Course or Happiness Program offered by Art of Living near you. I hope you overcome your own efforts and find true and lasting joy!
Elizabeth Herman writes, offers writing support to clients, teaches, and volunteers for a better world. She has a PhD in Rhetoric, Composition and Literature.
