Turning Off Your Brain
Darius Foroux had a brilliant set up for a piece about unclogging your brain that opens with this thought:
I want to ask you a question. How many hours per day do you think?
“I never thought about that.” So let me get this straight. You’re thinking all the time, and yet, you never think about how much time you spend thinking.
That sounds like an addiction to me. I know, because I’m addicted to thinking too.
He points out that you can’t stop thinking in the same way that you can stop overeating by not consuming more food or working yourself towards burnout by taking a break. You can’t stop thinking for long stretches of time and give your brain a little vacation.
I don’t think (think!) his steps for not overthinking would work for me, but it did make me think (there’s that word again!) about the fact that we can’t stop thinking. We can’t stop taking in information and processing information, even if we’re fully in the present moment. When we’re lying on the beach, listening to the waves, we’re still thinking about the sound and how much we like it and how hot we feel and how hard it’s going to be to get the sand out of our hair later and…
Back to the sound of the waves.
I’ve had a break through with meditation. I couldn’t do it; couldn’t calm my thoughts and focus on my breathing for longer than a breath or two. So I decided to mentally build myself a place to go. A room. An imaginary room.
I spent a lot of time perfecting it. Two walls are floor-to-ceiling glass so I can see outside. I’ve decorated the room. Sometimes I even leave a drink or cookies for myself in the room. I mentally go there every morning during the time I set aside for meditation. I sit down and think about myself in the room. My brain gets to keep thinking; just not about the things that are stressing me out about my day.
I love spending time in my mental room, watching myself read or eat a cookie or stare out the window. It’s a brief vacation every morning.
6 comments
I like the idea of a mental room for meditation. Very creative!
Not quite sure what to make of “overthinking”, or what he means with clogging or unclogging your brain. Isn’t it somehow like breathing? You do it naturally, and you adapt to circumstances? Like when you run you start breathing faster (or when you catch a cold it is harder than normal)
When you are on the beach you can think freely, when you work you focus your thoughts?
I’m acutely aware of how my brain is always on, mainly because I’m shifting my mental work a lot over the course of the day. There are some areas that are mentally exhausting (interview preparations and thinking on my feet) and others that are less so. It’s the shifts that’s made me become aware, like breathing during exercise vs breathing while resting at night.
I would argue that your imaginary room is a form of meditation. Instead of observing thoughts, you’re shifting the focus to those that calm your mind. I think this is insanely beneficial and a smart alternative (I do something similar with knitting and walking).
Oh, your meditation room sounds so lovely! What a great idea. Unfortunately, thinking about overthinking is stressing me out! I would love the ability to just shut it all down, like TV snow, for even just 5 minutes. Almost like a powering down so I can restart (with updates).
I love your room meditation idea. My brain definitely needs a job to do while I’m relaxing. That’s why I usually focus on what I can see, feel, hear, smell, taste in the present moment. If I visualized a room it would be a hogwarts tower. Today it would be snowing with a roaring fire going 😄
I can see my version of your room. With your chocolate chip cookies in it, of course.
I wonder how many times I say or think “think.” Just here in the comments section of your blog, I bet it’s at least 5x a week.