Mindful Rewrites - Thoughts Are Only Thoughts

Thoughts are only thoughts.

Thoughts are only thoughts and not reality...only the present is real and everything else is a story we make up about the past or the future.

Take a moment and imagine allowing a thought to fill a bubble, and then watch the bubble drift away.  Continue this practice of filling bubbles with your thoughts for a few moments, consciously constructing thoughts and imagining letting them go...practicing non-attachment to self-defeating stories.

You can also name your thoughts with labels such as judgment, anger, or fear, as you continue to send them away in a bubble. In this way, you are rewriting your experience of the present moment. Rather than focusing on fears that you are creating in your mind based on negative past experiences, you can notice and acknowledge thought patterns, and then send them away.

By sending thoughts away as they arise, you avoid further elaborations on the negative story. For  example, a young woman who was often criticized by her father when she was growing up, created stories in her mind that coworkers were judging her on a daily basis and thinking negative thoughts. This repetitive mind story caused her to withdraw. Since our brain always means to protect us, the story was serving the purpose of warning her that she needed to withdraw in order to avoid harsh judgment. By becoming aware of the story that she was telling herself, she was better able to test reality by getting opinions from others and deliberately thinking compassionately. 

Mindful Rewrite

The young woman chose to rewrite the story she had always told herself, and her mindful rewrite had a new storyline:

May I be healed
May I be at peace
May you be healed
May you be at peace

You do not need to be a prisoner of your thoughts. Let go of worn-out thinking and replace it with a new storyline based on a practice of loving-kindness.