Watching your thinking or noticing the process of thinking will help you become mindful about your thinking.

When you step back and notice the thoughts that are going through your head, you are teaching your brain to stay ‘in the present moment’ rather than ‘living in your head.’

To being with, think of your mind and its ideas as:

• Sounds and words (rather than the truth)
• Stories and ideas (rather than serious, important stuff)
• Bits of language (that may be true or not true)
• Mind chit-chat (that is often not wise or helpful)

You can help your brain shift away from believing the thought, from paying attention to it, from analyzing it or from feeling threatened and scared by it.

You can start to train your mind to pay less attention to these thoughts by changing your brain’s perspective.

Try thinking of your thoughts as:

• Fish swimming around and around
• Clouds drifting across the blue sky
• Bubbles rising up and popping at the surface
• Cars driving by
• Leaves floating down a restful stream
• Waves breaking onto the shore and then being sucked back into the ocean
• Groceries on a conveyer belt

What you can do

Practice this skill of standing back from your thinking and watching the thoughts come and go. You can label these thoughts by simply saying to yourself, “Thinking, thinking.”