Stop Thinking That You Have to Stop Thinking

When I first came to meditation I had it in my mind that I was supposed to sit down, close my eyes, and stop my thoughts. With somewhere around 60,000 thoughts a day, that would have been no small task! The longer I sat in meditation, the more frustrated I became at my inability to turn off my thoughts. I have a feeling I'm not the only person who has had this frustration and misunderstanding about the "goal" of this meditation practice.

Good news! Mindfulness practice isn't about somehow miraculously switching off our brain's constant flow of thoughts. Rather, it's about changing how we relate to this constant flow. 

Here's a video I made to explain this in greater depth. :-)

If you're interested in trying out some meditation techniques to re-boot your relationship to the thinking mind, here are a few from October's Sit With Me Archives: