You are not your thoughts
Always remember that you are not your thoughts or feelings, you are the still awareness that lays behind them. This is an incredible way to reshape the way you see yourself. From a surface level it may be hard to comprehend, it appears to take away your sense of identity and attachment to yourself, leaving you somewhat isolated and vague. If we are not our thoughts and emotions then what are we?
This is something that I try really hard to do, it's an idea that you don't have to completely adopt in order for it to be effective. You can partially utilise its benefits in times where it seems appropriate. But it can be hard. Attempting to assimilate and enforce it is also hard. The notion has been popularised by Echkart Tolle, particularly in his book 'The power of Now'. A book that I thoroughly recommend.
A good way to practice this is too attempt to watch your thoughts and emotions. Start with thoughts because they are less visceral and more superficial. Be aware of them, what crops up in your mind at different times and how you automatically react to them. Try to never take a thought as a certain truth, maybe it is. The thought "Fire is hot" is a certain truth that is helpful, but there are plenty of unhelpful perceived truths that your brain can come up with.
Your emotions and feelings go one step deeper than your thoughts, they impact you both psychologically and physiologically. I'd imagine that having a high level of expertise in things such as mindfulness after years of practice in it could lead this level of self awareness and self control. But for the average person, this is understandably hard. So I think I'll park this part for now and come back to it at a later date. Once my understanding of the concept has deepened and I have more empirical evidence.
The main thing I hope you can take away from this blog is that it's more than possible that 90% of your thoughts are bullshit. It's as simple as that. They crop up through your overactive monkey brain and no one is ever really told that they're not true, or that they can be unhelpful. This can cause an internal combatative dialogue that is not beneficial. Eventually people work out to not take their thoughts to heart, but from there the information doesn't progress any further than that.
The best way to analogise this is to imagine the wind blowing around you. When the wind blows and you feel it. That is like having a thought and accepting it in some way, or at least giving it power over you. Then there is the wind that blows somewhere else around you, it is obviously there but you just can't feel it. This is similar to watching your thoughts and evaluating their validity before letting them impact you. Or in terms of the analogy, stepping in to the wind.
You are not your thoughts, so do not let them define you. It will hopefully save you from experiencing some negative emotion in the future.
Until next time,
Ox