The Joy of Not Thinking

by Tim Grimes

  HOW TO STOP THINKING THROUGH MOVEMENT AND NOISE

  “What is your philosophy of life?”

  “Think as little as possible.”

  – Charles Bukowski, Hollywood

  So, what does it really mean to think less? The world seems like an utterly screwed up place and yet we’re not supposed to be serious about it? How’s that possible, and why would it be at all desirable? Well, as we just touched on, the world seems like a screwed-up place because we believe it is. We think it is. Feeling miserably out of control comes from our thinking. If we start to understand this, it enables us to feel better. And we can easily begin by being less serious.

  Pause for a moment and close your eyes. Take a deep breath. Now, imagine what would happen if you started making loud farting noises with your mouth. And I mean loud. Or what would happen if you began vigorously jumping up and down while barking like a dog. Or if you started rolling around on the floor while giggling like a baby. Or you stripped off all your clothes and started using your tummy as a percussion instrument. Or began speaking like an eighty-year-old Polish grandmother. Or if you ruthlessly started punching a pillow while laughing like a pirate…

  That’s being less serious.

  What we’re talking about isn’t an intellectual exercise. Being less serious is using your mind and body in a way you normally don’t—in a momentarily shocking and absurd way. When you’re making sounds like a monkey while dancing around the room with music blasting, it’s hard to think seriously. The sheer physicality of what you’re doing will inevitably overwhelm you and take over in such instances, and you have no choice but to mentally loosen up.

  It sounds pretty stupid, but it works. That’s the point. Your conscious thinking is not nearly as static or fixed as you believe. Your life is not fixed like you think it is. It’s illusory. Your conscious thoughts are easily malleable, and not being serious—momentarily doing something totally ridiculous with your body—makes you aware of this.

  Our body’s normal, habitual physical behavior is often the reason the behavior of our thinking comes in predictable, annoying patterns. As adults, we’re extremely predictable in our physical behavior. Thankfully, we can shatter this normalcy by doing something abnormal with our body. By doing that, our thoughts abruptly change. We can go from feeling awful—with our same depressed thoughts running on autopilot—to feeling great within a matter of minutes, just by physically not acting serious!

  This might sound way too good to be true…but it’s not. And that’s why it’s a good way to begin exploring not thinking. If you really allow yourself to stop being serious, by physically behaving unpredictably for a short time, you will feel much better than you did a few minutes earlier. This isn’t theory; this is how your body works.

  Now, obviously, you have to test this out if you want to see if what I’m talking about is true. If you don’t try out what I’m suggesting, you understandably might think I’m nuts. You need to do your best to actually try it out for yourself and attempt to physically get going as best you can, meaning out of your normal “comfort” (re: uncomfortable) zone and really move. You should try making some silly noises and doing some playfully zany stuff. You should literally stop being serious for a few minutes, as best as you can.

  I know this isn’t what we’re used to in terms of advice for stress reduction and might even sound kind of obscene. But let me be blunt: It works. That’s why we’re starting with it. And while I love things like meditation—and we’ll go over an effective meditation exercise you’ll probably like later—the simple truth of the matter is that meditation and other exercises like it are hardly guaranteed to get you out of your own head or rapidly reduce your stress level. Especially if you meditate as a disciplined practice, as some of us have done. For instance, there are times you’ll be sitting on a cushion meditating, all rosy and happy, and the birds will be chirping and the sun will be filtering in…and then there will be all those other times when you feel like crap and meditating becomes your self-made prison. Introspective, quiet stress reduction exercises, such as meditation, can sometimes lead to mental anguish, over-analysis, and just plain lousiness.

  Not being serious, being really playful for a few minutes, never allows this. When done wholeheartedly, with your whole body, not being serious is too physical to allow you to stay in your own head. If you put a hundred percent effort into being playful for only a couple minutes, you’ll start feeling better. It’s just how our bodies function. It isn’t special, it just works! And, having tried many different relaxation exercises in my life, I’ll always take effective over special. If you feel stuck and are looking for a direct way to rapidly relieve stress and stop overthinking, being playfully unserious is probably it.

  Test it out and you’ll see what I mean. You can’t mess it up. Just stop being serious for a few minutes and play around. Here are a few general examples of fun exercises you can start toying around with:

  -Moving your body (i.e. your arms, legs, butt, neck, face, feet, fingers etc.) around in a silly way.

  -Talking in a funny voice.

  -Spinning in circles.

  -Dancing in whatever way you like.

  -Jumping up and down.

  -Making sounds like an animal.

  -Singing in a ridiculous voice.

  -Anything else that strikes you as childlike or kind of absurd…

  There are hundreds of variations and combinations of these playful actions. The options are open-ended and entirely flexible (if you would like to see examples of things you can do, check out www.stopbeingserious.com for videos). Everything emotional—both good and bad—stems from our thinking, and when we wholeheartedly play with our bodies, we get to see this for ourselves. All of a sudden, our thinking is allowed to shift from stagnation to openness, and we notice that we feel better. We feel less burdened. Our stressful thoughts seem to disappear. It sometimes even seems that all our thoughts disappear.

  At first, this can come as a big surprise. And that’s to be expected. We’ve rediscovered something about our mind/body relationship that we’ve usually ignored since childhood. By vigorously moving our body around, even for just a short period of time, we can directly impact our thinking in a positive way. It’s not possible to be seriously worried about something when we put our complete effort into being physically playful. By behaving like this—whether through our movements, voices, or gestures—we eliminate the excessive stress that has built up in our mind. We’re still the same responsible, caring person we were before, it’s just that, all of a sudden, we no longer feel stuck with our anxious or depressing thoughts.

  None of this is hard. In our present culture, it might seem crazy, but for most of human existence, it probably would have seemed normal. “Words, the Bushmen say, are only useful for teasing one another,” Bradford Keeney relates in The Bushman Way of Tracking God. “In teasing, we are less likely to get stuck in any particular belief, attitude, or form of knowing. This makes the Bushmen as different from the rest of the world as anyone could imagine. When they see our books and are told how we use them to teach us about life, they fall to the ground laughing, saying we are crazy. They are being kind. They really think we are spiritual idiots.”

  The Bushmen still connect with God—or the universe, or our deeper nature, or whatever you want to call it—through physical movement, just as numerous indigenous cultures have done throughout human history. This physical/spiritual connection was likely a fundamental part of many hunter-gatherer societies, as it still is with the Bushmen today. But in our modern “civilized” society, most of us don’t ever even acknowledge it.

  We’ve forgotten about the relationship between our body and mind. Instead, we complain about our body’s perceived limitations—which are often just made up mental projections that we believe—and totally miss the bigger picture. We think ourselves sick because we’re unaware of the inherent freedom we possess. We don’t move, we don’t sing, we don’t jump—it would seem crazy to do th
at. So, instead, we sit, we think and we spoil. It’s a form of accepted madness, but it’s madness nonetheless. Our mind/body relationship is usually compromised for no good reason.

  Not being overwhelmed by your thinking will allow you to see this for yourself. We realize, when we stop being so serious, that the problems we have don’t really exist. They’re all made up in our heads. Without the conscious thought of a problem, there is no problem. Nothing is real in the way we normally think it is. It’s just thoughts passing by, with no deeper meaning to be found behind them.

  The relief from this realization can be enormous and provide us with a deep level of comfort: We may have many, many perceived problems; our lives may seem extremely troubled and messy, but at the end of the day, we’re full of shit. Life is a mirage, created by our thinking. We can take solace in that. And that’s why I strongly encourage you to at least briefly try being playful to see where it takes you. What you find might shock you.

  As adults, we’re basically not supposed to act this way. Not that it’s bad—it’s just so far out there people don’t even know how to register it. However, if we do it, our lives open up. I see I’m free, right now. I see that my thoughts of individuality are actually false and that there ultimately is no real self there, no separate person! Of course, it sounds pretty New Agey when described like this, but it also happens to be true. You only suffer so deeply because you think you suffer. Without thinking, there is no you, and that’s that. It might sound esoteric, but you can experience it right now by rolling around on the floor like a dog.

  Let’s stop being serious, shall we? This simple truth is so good and easy that we convince ourselves it has to be bad instead. Not many of us are like a Kabbalist I once met, who said, “I just remind myself that life is always much, much, much better than I think it is.” And he was right.

  I don’t know why we don’t live more from this kinder viewpoint—whether the origins of our discontent are personal, cultural, genetic or whatever—but we continuously strive and are serious. And it’s helpful to recognize that the vast majority of this striving is optional. Our thoughts get in the way of us actually living. We’re soldiers fighting an unnecessary war. Life is not what we think it is. It is beyond our ordinary thinking. Our rational, problem-solving mind is only a small part of everything that is happening right now. If we think we have the answers, or need the answers, we’re wrong.

  We have this innate capability to think less by having fun with our body and voice. We shouldn’t forget about it. It gives us a real sense of freedom compared to what we’re used to. Usually, we let this energy just sit there and do nothing with it. But the energy is there. We can easily access it, if we like.

  So, ease yourself into being less serious, less in your head. What’s nice is we can playfully work on it in private. No one else has to ever know what we’re doing, unless we want them to. For instance, to quickly reduce stress, you can go into a room where no one will bother you, put music on your headphones, and gradually begin moving around more and more. Dance around and enjoy yourself! No one is watching you. Or go into the bathroom, look in the mirror, and start making funny faces. Or go to the car and loudly sing along to music you like. Pick something fun like this that you can easily do.

  If you find that you feel awkward when you start doing a playful exercise like this, keep on doing it. Initial awkwardness and feelings of embarrassment are completely understandable and expected—simply ignore them and work through it by continuing to do what you’re doing. Gently escalate the playfulness, no matter how negative your initial mental chatter might be. If your thoughts start telling you what you’re doing is stupid, it means you’re on the right track. Just keep moving and soon those thoughts will disappear.

  I’m an informal person who’s done this kind of stuff for years, and I still sometimes feel self-conscious when I start doing it. Even in private! That’s because it’s out of our normal comfort zone. But after a few minutes of moving around or making funny noises, you won’t feel awkward—because you can’t. Your body will be working too hard for this awkwardness to remain. Just giving full effort to what you’re doing makes it so that most of your mental stress has to disappear within a minute or two.

  It can be very helpful to listen to music you like while doing this. Get lost in the music, and let your body take over. If you’re in a confined space or in poor health, your movements can be small. Big or small, as long as the movements you make are done in earnest, they’ll be effective. And you can always make up for a lack of movement by making louder and more playful noises. This playfulness can become part of your daily routine and incorporated in any way you like. There are endless ways of exploring and expanding upon it as you go along, and the results will often exceed your expectations.

  HOW TO STOP THINKING THROUGH SELF-TALK

  Thought is limitation.

  – Lester Levenson

  It’s important to emphasize that there’s nothing wrong with getting angry, upset or scared. These are normal feelings for a reason, and those emotions often aren’t as profound as we think they are. Such feelings can surface with no apparent explanation, and we don’t always have to be so reactive towards their presence. We can better accept difficult feelings by being unserious towards them and seeing that they’re not necessarily a big deal. Again, we see there’s nothing at stake in the way we think there is—so we can stop constantly pretending otherwise.

  However, it’s often easier said than done. But, on the other hand, consider this: Have you ever really suffered except when you took your thoughts seriously? I mean, have you? If we reflect, we see we only continually suffer because we take our thinking so seriously. We’re in our heads. We think we have to be serious. Simply be aware of this, and then start gently working with it, playing with it.

  Even when our body is ill, if we’re sick and physically in pain, the real continuous pain is being caused by what we’re thinking about when we’re in that state. Our thoughts—and not our bodily issues—are what are keeping us in perpetual distress. Our body knows what to do in that situation much better than our conscious mind does, but that rational mind of ours still tries to constantly interfere. Stop it! Stop being serious! Don’t think! Don’t think!

  Get real. Keep those negative thoughts away from seriously judging your body. They have no right to judge it like that. Those thoughts are almost all just flotsam and should be treated as such. Do your best not to buy into them. Negative thoughts might be there, and that’s fine, but you don’t have to empower them and play into their seriousness. Those negative mental judgments about your body, if you take them seriously, will make your physical suffering worse—while positive thoughts will likely help improve your physical condition. Think positively about your situation as best as you can, if at all possible. This seems obvious, but we have a tendency not to do it.

  Again, overthinking is what really makes us feel bad in such a situation. Don’t buy into the logical arguments the voice in your head makes when you feel physically drained or in pain. Attempt to be unserious and notice the thinking for what it primarily is: Bullshit. Talking out loud to yourself can be very useful here, as well as in any other situation where the voice in your head just won’t seem to shut up.

  Self-talk—speaking out loud to yourself—enables you to see the duplicity of your inner talking. The overthinking in your head can be erased by speaking out loud about how ridiculous and unnecessary that thinking is. By vocalizing your problems to yourself—whether problems with your thinking or your problems in general (which are all in your head anyway)—the bothersome thinking often disappears.

  Talking out loud to yourself can be especially effective if the tone is informal and unserious. For instance, you can be off the cuff and say stuff out loud to yourself like, “Jeesh, buddy, you’re sure acting like an asshole today, the whole day long you’re yammering about all this stupid stuff that makes no sense at all. You’re ruining my day with this crap; I’ve had enough of this,
yadda, yadda, yadda…” You can go on and on, talking to yourself in an informal, uncensored way like this for several minutes or longer (you can even do it for hours on end).

  Another good self-talk option is to speak very slowly and gently to yourself. Speak out loud slowly but authoritatively, pausing between sentences to maximize the effect, saying things like, “Alright, it’s time to cool down…everything is fine…there’s no need for all this…my mind’s running, but I can see right through it…these thoughts mean nothing…I feel the peace underneath everything…I am that peace.” Continue to speak out loud in this slow, soothing manner for as long as you want. It’s as if you’re hypnotizing your inner voice to quiet it down.

  Don’t be afraid to explore different ways of speaking out loud to yourself; the above ideas are just general examples to get you started. You can speak out loud to yourself in so many different ways and tones—calmly, sarcastically, inquisitively, sternly, lovingly, softly, loudly, quickly, slowly, etc. There are numerous options! Find out what works best for you by experimenting and you’ll soon discover that your inner voice usually can’t compete with your actual voice. I’m reminded of old cartoons when I speak out loud to myself—the devil on one side of my shoulder and the angel on the other side. The devil is our overthinking inner voice, while our out loud voice is the angel. So, talk out loud to yourself when you feel bad!