The thought you want to push away?
Photo: Vika Glitter on Pexels
Try this for a moment: don't think about a white bear.
Most of us can't do it. In 1987, psychologist Daniel Wegner and his colleagues asked people to say their thoughts out loud for five minutes and try not to think of a white bear. Every time it came to mind, they rang a bell. The bells kept ringing.
Afterward, when those same people were allowed to think about the bear, it showed up more often for them than for people who had been told to think about it from the start. Pushing the thought away seemed to make it come back stronger. In a second experiment, people who were given something else specific to focus on were less likely to have the bear keep returning.
It was a small lab study about a harmless thought, so it can't tell us everything about painful feelings. But it matches what I see with painful patterns: fighting them head-on rarely causes them to quiet down.
Something to try this week: when a thought you don't want keeps coming back, don't fight it. Say your name out loud and name it: "Mark, that's the worry about work again." Then pick one specific thing to turn toward, like your breath and the next small task. All this takes just seconds.
This is a big part of my book, Built This Way: Why Painful Patterns Repeat and How to Change Them. On Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GX91KTBP/
Tell me which thought tends to come back for you. Thank you for being part of this community. I appreciate you all so much. It's heartening to know we're all doing this work together.
Wishing you abundant health, happiness, and prosperity,
Mark
P.S. This week I sat down with Susan Hobson on The Conscious Leadership Revolution Podcast to talk about why the same patterns keep repeating, and what helps when awareness alone isn't enough. There's a short guided meditation at 24:45. Watch or listen here: YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWc6TKGCA3c · Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/2cwxTLlm9DBQDQfwh9vE1N · Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/s4e29-why-you-keep-repeating-the-same-patterns-and-how/id1530978841?i=1000799575614