Your mind is a poor reflection of the truth. It’s powerful, smart, complex and wonderful in a myriad of ways; whilst also being fallible, misleading, erratic and prone to error. This is not an attack on you. Mine is too. So if we’re going to get ourselves out of this mess then we need to be open to scrutinising things a little.
For many of us this presents a challenge, we’re so identified with our own thinking minds that we believe that voice in our head chatting incessantly, is us. And if my thinking mind is me, then surely any attempt to distance myself from it is counterproductive?
Your mind is sneaky like that. But that voice isn’t you. There is no ‘you’ sat behind your eyes looking out on the world through two holes in your head. And the more you are able to realise that, to step back and to become an observer of what’s going on in your mind, the more space that creates.
‘What I value most from my seventeen years of full-time spiritual training is that I no longer believe my every thought.’
Bjoern Natthiko Lindeblad, a monk of 17 years and author of ‘I May Be Wrong: And Other Wisdoms From Life as a Forest Monk’
Now I’d be curious to gauge your reaction at reading thus far. Maybe there’s part of you that wants to reject the idea - the same part that prides itself on being rational or intelligent; but perhaps there’s a part of you that knows it to be true. If you’re in the camp of wholeheartedly accepting it then feel free to skip ahead; if not, allow me to try to convince you for a moment.
Let’s start with the basics here - in the image below, which horizontal line is longer, top or bottom?
Despite your mind’s best efforts to convince you that the top line is longer, the truth is that they’re exactly the same length (go ahead and measure on your screen to check). As trivial as this might seem, I believe it’s a great demonstration of how your mind doesn’t accurately reflect even some of the most basic things you take to be true. If that’s the case for something as simple as this 2D line drawing, what about the messy and complex world you operate in day-to-day? When things get more complex and we factor in our emotional state, for example, then the truth can be even more easily obscured.
Take a moment to consider something that’s a source of mild stress right now. Maybe you’re overthinking something you said in a meeting earlier; or you’re worried about how busy next week is going to be. Whatever it is, just take a moment to consider what you’re thinking about it and how it’s making you feel right here right now.
Now I want you to take two minutes breathing. Try breathing in for a count of 4, holding for a count of 4, breathing out for a count of 4, holding for a count of 4. Continue for a couple of minutes.
Now it’s time to reflect on that source of stress again. How are you thinking and feeling about it now? I’m willing to bet that something has changed for you, even if only in subtle ways. But what’s actually changed? Not the situation itself. Any perceived change is simply a result of you thinking differently when in a more relaxed state. What you may have perceived to be ‘true’ two minutes ago, now seems different.
The simple experiential examples above are merely reflecting what a wider body of evidence demonstrates to be true - that there are a myriad of ways in which we know our minds are poor reflections of the truth, most of which exist for good reason.
Take the brain’s negativity bias for example - there’s a lot of evidence to show that our brains disproportionately index on negative information. As cavepeople, this negativity bias served an important role in our survival; keeping hold of the negative stuff made us less likely to drink contaminated water, to venture into dangerous territories, or to get eaten by one of the many things that would have enjoyed eating us. In the modern day however, where these kind of survival threats have all but disappeared for large parts of the population, and we’re continuously exposed to global news and opinion, this negativity bias can be highly damaging to our mental wellbeing.