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How To Stop The Mind's Chatter:: We Want To Live or Are They Bringing Us Down?

This document discusses overthinking and provides steps to stop the mind's chatter. It notes that the average person has around 70,000 thoughts per day, and overthinking stems from fear and prevents enjoying life. Overthinking can lead to anxiety, insomnia, and depression. The steps provided to tackle overthinking include becoming aware of one's thoughts through journaling, observing intrusive thoughts without resisting them, considering the mind like a monkey that jumps from branch to branch of thoughts, and practicing mindful meditation to activate the present moment network in the brain and reduce rumination. Regular meditation can help gain control over the mind over time by focusing attention on the breath.

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159 views8 pages

How To Stop The Mind's Chatter:: We Want To Live or Are They Bringing Us Down?

This document discusses overthinking and provides steps to stop the mind's chatter. It notes that the average person has around 70,000 thoughts per day, and overthinking stems from fear and prevents enjoying life. Overthinking can lead to anxiety, insomnia, and depression. The steps provided to tackle overthinking include becoming aware of one's thoughts through journaling, observing intrusive thoughts without resisting them, considering the mind like a monkey that jumps from branch to branch of thoughts, and practicing mindful meditation to activate the present moment network in the brain and reduce rumination. Regular meditation can help gain control over the mind over time by focusing attention on the breath.

Uploaded by

Bilal
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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How To Stop The Mind’s Chatter:

What happens when the most important faculty in your life is


doing its rubbish all the time, not doing what you want it to do?

We are perpetual thinkers. It's a nonstop habit. We generate about


70,000 thoughts per day.

What are these thoughts about? Are they helping us live the life
we want to live or are they bringing us down?

Overthinking stems from a constant state of fear.

Overthinking is like dreaming during the day. You miss all the joys
of life. Imagining and being scared of what might not come.
Overthinking is hell.

Overthinking gives rise to anxiety, insomnia(hard to sleep),


paralysis, and depression.
One of the most frustrating things about overthinking is that more
often than not, it seems to go nowhere. No progress is made from
all the unwanted effort that is forced upon you. You simply end up
going in the same circles over and over, resulting only in
frustration and misery.

Here are a few steps I practiced after reading self help books and
watching talks by self-help motivational speakers on how to tackle
overthinking and be productive.

1) Awareness — Be aware of what’s going


on inside your head.
Sounds simple.
Are you overthinking? Are you thinking negatively? Admit it.
Because otherwise, you won’t change a thing. Self-
improvement begins with self-acceptance. Once you
are aware of what needs to be corrected to help yourself, you
can make a real change.

Make a thought journal beacuse By keeping a thought


journal, you will have it in written form of what’s going on
in your mind and it will be much easier to make the changes
you want to make because you will know what is actually
going on.
2) Intrusive Thoughts:
An intrusive thought is an unwelcome involuntary thought,
image, or unpleasant idea that may become an obsession, is
upsetting or distressing, and can feel difficult to manage or
eliminate.

When intrusive thoughts invade the brain they create neural


pathways that grow stronger and stronger over time. You
can’t control how these thoughts come in, they are intrusive.
But you can control how you respond to them.

 Don’t fight against them.

 Don’t try to put them away

 Don’t try to argue against them.

If you do so you are just going to make them stronger.

Instead, it’s better to practice non-resistance. Observe your


thoughts instead of grabbing on to your thoughts or pushing
them away.
3) Monkey Mind:
Consider your mind as a monkey and thoughts as branches.
Swinging from thought branch to thought branch all day long
without stopping.

An untrained monkey mind distracts us from our work, talks


us out of things we should be doing, and seeks constant
stimulation.

The mind is always chattering. The Monkey Mind gives you


it’s opinion, whether you listen to it or not is up to you.

The result of an untrained monkey mind is mental and


physical fatigue.
4) Mindful Meditation:
There is emerging evidence that mindful meditation causes
structural and functional changes in brain regions involved in the
regulation of attention, emotion, and self-awareness.

DMN involves parts of the brain responsible for thinking about


yourself  — areas that are correlated with mental illness such as
mental illness and anxiety and is seen to be more active when
people are stressed.

It directs our focus to the past and future while largely ignoring
the present.

Just as the brain has default mode, it also has a task-positive


network or TPN that is active during attention-demanding
tasks.

Only one network can be active at a time.


The TPN is responsible for present moment awareness, being in
here and now. It is the action network. When TPN is activated
we are in the present. There is no rumination, no worry, no
past, no future because the DMN is inactivated. By activating
the TPN we inactivate the DMN.

So when you bring attention to your breath, you activate your


TPN. If you find that your mind wanders as the DNM begins to
take over, activate your TPN again by bringing your attention back
to your breath.

The more you practice mindful meditation, the easier it is to bring


your TPN and deactivate your DMN.
After years of meditation, your mind’s chatter begins to slow
down. 

When you train your mind to do a simple technique like focus on


your breathing for a few minutes a day and pulling it back every
time it gets distracted, you start to gain power over your mind. If
you don’t train your mind, it is guaranteed to run wildly. Don’t be
discouraged if you can’t seem to stay focused in the beginning.
Simply stay disciplined and continue to practice.

Thank you……!

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