9 1 3a

Mindfulness of Thoughts

1 6 1 70

“A thought is not a fact – a thought is just a thought.” —Jon Kabat-Zinn

2 b

2a4 Background: We often treat thoughts as if they are facts. For example: “I am no good at this,” “He’s is a jerk,” “Nobody understand me,” “I am brilliant,” etc. When we have a thought many times it can condense into a belief. A belief is just a thought or thoughts that I have a lot of the time. Beliefs can then be taken as facts. For example: “The world is flat” – enough people had that thought often enough for it to be assumed to be a fact for centuries! When we start to pay attention to our thoughts, with a gentle curiosity, then we start to think about thinking (meta-cognition) and we move away from believing that the thought is a fact.

2 b

39 Start this activity with mindfulness of the breath.

2 b

68 Allow yourself to notice any thoughts that come into your head as you are aware of your breathing.

2 b

e3 Notice, pay attention to and accept these thoughts, without judgment. Thoughts are not bad or good, positive or negative, they just are what they are – the thought that you happen to be having at this particular moment.

2 b

e9 You may become aware that you are having difficulty thinking about your thoughts – so think about that. You may be thinking: “I can’t do this very well.” Well, that’s a thought too. Allow yourself to think about that.

2 b

e3 Some people like the metaphor of allowing the thoughts to just float like leaves on a stream, or clouds in a sky, noticing each passing thought and then the one that comes after it, and then the one that comes after that.

2 b

48 A Buddhist idea is to think of thoughts as pages written on water.

2 b

af You may notice that just at the moment you become aware of a thought, it passes and is replaced by another thought. That’s what happens – thoughts come, and they go.

2 b

3e Finally, bring yourself back to awareness of the breath.

2 45

1 1 6 1 18
52 Back to Top 13