While we may rarely be in total control of our thoughts and emotions, there are some steps we can take to help set the course of our consciousness, to gain some semblance of control, and become the driver of our own thoughts. 

In this week’s post. I’m offering up some simple things you can do to guide your mind towards thoughts that benefit you. So hopefully you can start building yourself up a bit more, and tearing yourself down a bit less. 

As you may have noticed, when we get in a funk, our minds can start to really sound unlike ourselves. They begin carrying us in a direction we don’t want to go, and telling us things that, frankly, we’d rather not hear.

While some thoughts and beliefs are so deeply ingrained that they may require a mental health professional’s help to dissolve, many of them will loosen and dissipate with just a bit of acknowledging, loosening, and orienting (A-L-O for short). 

How Can I Take The Wheel?

Below you’ll find 3 things you can do to take back the steering wheel of your mind and become the driver of your own thoughts. 

1. Acknowledge

Step one to guiding your thoughts will require you to be brave. Instead of resisting or pushing down your thoughts and feelings, you’ll have to acknowledge them. 

If you haven’t noticed already, this is totally contrary to what much of culture teaches us to do. When we have felt negative emotions, sadness, anger, stress, grief, shame, etc. many of us have received messages from others telling us to “get it together.” 

Or if we had grieved or felt our pain for a moment, then we’re advised to “get back on the horse” more quickly than is natural or compassionate.

What many of us interpret this social pressure to mean is “It’ll be better if I don’t let myself feel my feelings at all.” 

This is a problem because emotions are like mass.

In physics, perhaps you’ve heard of the law of conservation of mass which states: mass is neither created nor destroyed in chemical reactions. This means that the mass of any one element at the beginning of a reaction will equal the mass of that element at the end of the reaction.

In a way, the same goes for emotions. When we push our emotions down and resist feeling them, what we’re really doing is suppressing and repressing them. 

While we may think that doing this will make the emotions dissolve and disappear, what really happens is your body uses different physical tactics to contain the emotion (short breathing, tense muscles, headaches, and other forms of strain in the body), and then that emotion is stored in the body as energy. 

It’s almost as if we are crank powered flashlights, and even though the movement and cranking of the handle has stopped, the energy still remains in the device until it is used later. 

If you’ve ever wondered why people have fits of frustration, anger, anxiety attacks, depression, fearfulness, etc. seemingly out of nowhere, it usually has something to do with a backlog of energy from emotions that people never felt they had permission to feel.

Therefore since the emotions were never processed/released from their body nor destroyed, the emotions come out unexpectedly later.

When this happens, keep in mind that it’s not totally their fault that our culture teaches us to suppress and repress! Most people don’t know any better.

This is why acknowledging and being present with what we’re feeling and thinking is so important. 

When we acknowledge and stop resisting the way we are feeling (i.e. accept our feelings for what they are and know that we can feel anything without acting on it) then we are better poised to process some of that energy. 

That way, our thoughts and actions will become much easier to manage without all that extra noise and pain constantly bubbling under the surface.

How can I acknowledge my thoughts and emotions? 

This involves genuinely asking ourselves… “What am I feeling right now?” and “what thought(s) am I having that are creating stress for me at this moment?” 

Asking ourselves this regularly, and perhaps even writing it down can help with developing a practice of processing more and repressing less. 

Another question for when we’re feeling stressed and overwhelmed is, “What am I really afraid of?” Followed by “Why?” and “What do I fear is at stake?”

When you first try answering these questions, it isn’t the time to try to give tough answers or be strong. The purpose is not to impress yourself by how little emotions you let yourself feel. The purpose is to be honest with yourself about what’s going on internally. 

Because if you can’t get to the bottom of what you’re really feeling, you’ll have very little chance of gaining control over your mind and moving on to better thoughts and feeling states. 

Something to watch for…

It can be uncomfortable to admit to having thoughts that make us feel vulnerable or small.

So sometimes our egos will hide thoughts from our conscious mind. 

This means that a part of us may be feeling pain from a thought or belief, but we’re not consciously aware of what it is.

For example, “My life is not perfect,” “I don’t know what to do,” “I’m scared this won’t work out,” “I don’t know what I’m talking about,” “I’m exhausted,” “I feel hopeless,” and “I need help.” 

I highly recommend using the questions above to try to help you uncover the thoughts that are creating pain for you. Because without a bit of inquiry, it can be difficult to figure out what exactly the thought or belief is that is bringing us pain and/or stress.

Similarly to how the first step to solving a problem is admitting there is one…

The first step to improving the quality of your thoughts is exploring and admitting what you’re thinking and feeling (even if it’s difficult!).

Tip: When answering reflective questions, I highly recommend actually writing down your answers. Even just seeing your answers written down and then asking yourself “is this true?” will help you get a clearer understanding of what’s really going.

2. Loosen

This is the part where we start working directly with the thoughts themselves. Now that you’ve acknowledged the feelings and thoughts that are coming up for you, you can begin to work with them and see them for what they are. 

There are a number of different methods people use to work with their thoughts, but I’ll introduce a simple one here that I learned in my coach training so you can easily try it out on your own. 

The following exercise is derived from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), which is a form of cognitive behavioral intervention that uses acceptance and mindfulness strategies mixed with behavior-change strategies to increase psychological flexibility. 

Cognitive Defusion Exercise

Cognitive defusion exercises are designed to address the weight of painful thoughts. When we believe thoughts like “I suck” or “I’m a bad friend” wholeheartedly, it makes it difficult for us to see them for what they are: thoughts in our minds.

To start this exercise, begin by identifying a painful thought that you would like to loosen. For example, a thought I worked with recently was “I can’t trust that it’ll work out.” 

Tip: When a thought seems long-winded, see if you can shorten it into a simple sentence that concisely describes what you’re thinking.

Next, take a moment to think the thought and just let yourself believe it fully. One way of doing this is to repeat it to yourself a few times and be present with it just to anchor it in.

Notice what happens for you internally. What sensations arise as you do this?

Then, repeat the thought again, slowly, three more times, but precede it with “I’m having the thought that…,” so your sentence will become “I’m having the thought that (insert your thought here).”

Do not rush this. 

In order for you to access the loosening effect, you must take your time, and you must try to remain relaxed and focused on this work. 

Next, we’ll take another step towards diffusion. This time, precede the painful thought with “I notice I’m having the thought that…”. And repeat that again, slowly, as many times as you need. 

This exercise is a bit meditative, so when you start using this technique, find a quiet or calm space to try it out, and perhaps take some deep breaths before you begin. 

Note: If you notice your mind committing to thoughts like “this is dumb” or “this won’t help me,” please note that those too are thoughts which may color your experience of the exercise. And those thoughts could also be used within the exercise.

Lastly, take a moment to reflect on any mental shift you’ve experienced. What did you notice while doing this exercise? If you checked in with your body and noticed any sensations beforehand, has there been a loosening or relaxing effect? 

The shift, however small, is that loosening effect. That is one of many ways we can go from “fusing” with our thoughts to “defusing” and therefore disallowing our thoughts to have as much control over our conscious attention. With practice and time, the results are incredible.

3. Orient

Now that you’ve done some work to loosen your painful thoughts, we can invite our minds to give us better/more helpful thoughts by orienting ourselves towards new thought patterns. 

If you’ve ever heard the phrase “synapses that fire together wire together,” it’s so true! The more you think a certain thought, the more likely it is to “fire” again, and therefore, the only way to create new patterns is to practice new ways of thinking about things. 

This is what orienting is all about! and it is also why I believe this to be the most powerful of the three options presented in this post. 

All you have to do is choose what you consume intentionally. 

Mark Manson, New York Times Bestselling author and blogger who always calls it as he sees it, recently released a post about a similar topic titled “You are what you consume.”

He says, “When you choose what media to consume, you are choosing your future thoughts, perspectives, and opinions. And if you choose poorly, you will think poorly. It’s not just that you are what you eat. You are everything that you consume”. 

– Mark Manson

What Manson means by this is: any kind of information we take in (including TV, books, podcasts, music, social media, advertising, pop culture, etc.) contributes to the way our minds process our reality. 

Therefore, everything we consume shapes the way we interpret our own circumstances.  

So if we want our minds to support us rather than tear us down, then we’ll benefit from doing, reading, watching, and listening to content that is uplifting and empowering. As well as content that helps us be more accepting and compassionate towards ourselves. 

Orienting also involves removing inputs that create a sense of “lacking” in our lives. Unfortunately, most advertising create a sense of lack by design. And many social media accounts perform this function as well. So if you can, it may benefit you to put limits on things that create this feeling in your life.

In short, spend more time with things that feel encouraging and supportive of who you are as you are, and spend less time with things that lead you to compare yourself to others or create a sense of lack or low self-esteem. 

And lastly, if it makes you feel shitty, try to consume less of it. 

In review

To become the driver of your own thoughts, you’ll have to be intentional: Be intentionally present with yourself, intentional about working with your own thoughts, and consume intentionally too, and over time, you’ll notice a shift.

Thank you so much for reading, and I’ll catch you next week!

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Do you have other ideas for becoming the driver of your own mind? Or did these strategies work for you? Leave a comment or send me a message to share your thoughts. For more uplifting content, check out some other posts on my blog, follow me on instagram @morgan_barbret, or sign up for the Self Love Atlas Newsletter!

Much love,

Morgan Rita Barbret