#1: Don’t let your voice-over take control of your life
Do you want to try a little experiment? Close your eyes, take a big breath and count backwards from 100 to one. Really, please give it a try.
So what was it like for you? It is always baffling to me how quickly I get distracted. I know, I know, lawyers don’t like numbers but really that is not the problem here. There is no equation to write. It’s just backwards counting. As simple as it is, you will see (if you are human) that time and again you get lost, sometimes as early as 89. Your mind takes you somewhere else (side note: it might be enlightening to see where), sometimes really far really quickly: to-do list, lunch, vacation, last disagreement with your partner... What your mind does when you are counting backwards, your mind does most of the time during the day. Science tells us that we spend about 50% of our time lost in our thoughts. That seems like a gross underestimation. I feel like my mind is doing that almost all the time, not just when I am trying to count backwards. When I’m writing, when I’m taking a shower, when I am having a conversation, when I am spending time with my family…
My thoughts take the form of a little voice that whispers in my ears all the time.
It’s like me talking to me in my head. What’s not to like about that? We all do it and it sounds harmless, sometimes even funny. If you have watched season 1 of The Mindy Project or Never Have I Ever, you’ll understand. But as is often the case, reality is a bit different from Hollywood.
First of all, it distracts me from whatever I am doing. I am in my head, busy making up stories. While I am there, lost in my thoughts, I am not here, paying attention to what is going on, listening, observing. Sometimes, we may think that it is better to drift off in our virtual world made up of our thoughts. We would rather be somewhere else than caught in traffic or having a difficult conversation. But life in general, and problems in particular, do not usually get better by avoiding them. There is also this unfortunate thing called the negativity bias that gets our mind stuck on negative things, rather than in a happy place. That is when we relive old conflicts or failures (that’s called ruminating), or considering 500 ways (or more, it’s only my estimate) everything in our life could go wrong (that is called catastrophizing).
Should we let our little voice sabotage our thoughts?
The little voice also acts as a filter. It affects and distorts every experience we are having. Sometimes the stories that the little voice whispers in our ears are harmless. Many times, however, they are not. Imagine what it is like to have self-sabotaging thoughts, like “no I can’t do that” (or any of its lovely variants “I’m not good enough,” “this is too hard,” … ) popping up whenever you attempt something challenging. It’s like having a devil whispering in your ears all day long. It brings you down. Your little voice tends to feed you the same thoughts over and over again, thoughts about yourself that were formed a long time ago, handed down from parents or teachers, or based on old experiences. Your inner voice is usually stuck in the same pattern and as a result, so are you.
Let’s refocus our attention thanks to yoga
The little voice in your head will never disappear entirely but you can increase your awareness and thus manage it better. It is one of the things that you learn to do in yoga. In a yoga practice, you take the time to observe your minds, and the drama that the mind creates. You practice refocusing your attention away from the thoughts, back to your breath or the sensations in your body. You also try to challenge your thoughts. I have a very clear recollection of the moment when this started making sense to me. I was in a yoga class, “suffering” (quoting my mind) my way through utkatasana, or chair pose (you know the one where you are sitting on a chair except there is no chair), and my thighs were on fire. I was about to come out of the pose as “there was no way in hell I could continue doing it” (quoting my mind again) when my teacher said something along the lines of “sometimes you think you cannot hold for any longer but it is only your mind saying that. Just give it a try and see what happens.” I did give it a try and discovered that I could hold the pose for a bit longer. That was a giant leap. I had finally understood that I had a little voice and that the little voice was sometimes wrong and prevented me from doing things. What else was that little voice telling me that was wrong? That felt and still feels like a question worth asking. Would you agree?
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