The Joy of Not Thinking

by Tim Grimes

  If you’re feeling particularly lousy, another excellent (and slightly more extreme) exercise you can do is use a sad voice to moan and complain. I mean, say stuff in a sad voice like, “I feel bad. I’m devastated. Oh, I feel bad, I feel awful, I’m gonna die…” Feel free to whimper, groan, swear and get progressively louder as you start moaning about this awful horribleness. Really let those negative feelings out. Be as melodramatic as you want (for example: “This is the worst thing ever, I’m going to fucking die! Oh, my God! Oh, my fucking God! I’m gonna die!” Throw in some screaming for good measure, if you want).

  As you carry on with this complaining, allowing yourself to become progressively more dramatic and ridiculous, something happens. Soon, after a few minutes, you’ll realize how absolutely absurd the whole thing is in the first place. You “feel” bad—so what? You realize it’s not a big deal! There’s no real problem here, just a made up one in our head. A fun, outrageous exercise like this sets us straight and makes us see how silly getting swept away by our emotions often is.

  If we’re by ourselves, we can do something similar when we get angry. We can absolutely allow ourselves to get angry and mad, loudly cursing and getting more carried away. If we do this, surprisingly, those strong feelings of anger usually will deflate themselves quickly. Society has told us we’re not supposed to get angry in this way, but if we’re alone and get angry like this, we discover that advice is baseless. It’s good to get angry occasionally.

  We often just need to blow off steam. Expressing sadness or anger in such a way is just like any other verbal or physical activity we do with a hundred percent effort. Sooner or later, the pure physical energy you expend erases the negative overthinking that before seemed so overwhelming. We realize we usually get upset…over nothing. In short, to alleviate difficult emotions, it’s fine to first embrace them fully. They’re then unlikely to hang around for long, which isn’t the case if we try to suppress them.

  HOW TO STOP THINKING THROUGH INDIFFERENCE AND STILLNESS

  Who would you be without the thought?

  – Byron Katie

  Not thinking as much will help you live a better life. However, the degree to which it can get better might surprise you. We sometimes find that not only does our mental health improve, but other important aspects of our life do as well, like our physical health, relationships, or financial situation. These unexpected benefits can be quite profound and are worth touching upon here. I’ll also mention a few teachers whose advice on this underappreciated subject is worth exploring, if you’re interested.

  As we’ve gone over, our overactive conscious thinking is often resistant and negative—it generally makes us feel bad. Our overthinking makes us worry and feel anxious for no good reason. It also makes us too critical of ourselves as well as others. If this overthinking is reduced by being less serious—and a calmer type of thinking naturally takes its place—better things are going to happen. If we feel better on the inside, we’ll get better results on the outside. This basically seems like common sense.

  But there’s more to it than just that because few of us recognize the far-reaching power of our thoughts. Most of our problems we create for ourselves by thinking in a totally unproductive way. Émile Coué, probably my favorite teacher on this subject, summed it up well when he said, “The influence of the mind upon the body exists undeniably, and is infinitely greater than is commonly supposed.” Our mind is much more powerful than we give it credit for. And our continual patterns of thought carry far more weight than we know.

  Because of our ignorance on this topic—we obviously were never taught anything like it in school—we aren’t aware that the problems in our life often come from our steady stream of negative overthinking. They can be a direct result of that subtle, but constant, mental negativity. If that stream can somehow be reduced down to a trickle, many of our problems will go with it. So, let me share with you another paradoxical piece of advice: Sometimes, the most important thing you can do to improve certain problematic aspects of your life is not think about them.

  Since we’re so prone to think negatively—as opposed to even somewhat positively—about things that really bother us (such as our health, relationships or financial issues) it’s often better not to think about those things at all, unless completely necessary. Instead of continually pondering our stressful problems, as we have such a tendency to do, we can take a radically different approach by deciding to hardly ever think about them except when it’s obvious we have to.

  If you test this out, even for a short period of time, the results will probably surprise you. A significant emotional burden is immediately lifted off your shoulders when you stop thinking about your problems all the time. In the very least, this sense of relief will allow you to approach things more mindfully—and it will usually do more than just that. That’s because not thinking about our problems allows them to be resolved without our direct, conscious intervention.

  Ironically, by not always thinking of a rational solution, an excellent solution will often present itself to us, with none of the normal stress involved. Richard Dotts brilliantly explains and explores this paradox in his book Dissolve The Problem. He writes, “One common objection people have is, ‘I can’t just ignore my problems and do nothing about them! They will not just go away if I stop thinking about them!’ The truth is exactly the opposite. Your problems will go away if you stop thinking about them altogether.”

  This idea might initially sound ridiculous, but if you experiment with it, you’ll begin to see its practical effectiveness. We tend to have a lot of mental resistance in our head—a negativity bias or whatever we want to call it—and a bunch of negative thoughts on subjects that bother us each and every day. What would happen if those thoughts weren’t continually there? What would happen if we stopped believing we constantly had issues we needed to think about and resolve? You’ll likely find that if the majority of that stressful, problem-solving type of thinking disappears from your everyday life, external problems will start disappearing for you as well.

  I mean, should it really be a surprise that when we predominately think serious and negative thoughts about something that bothers us, it doesn’t just affect our inner emotional state but also the actual state of our health? Or affect the state of relationships we care about? Or our financial state? If given time, such prolonged worrisome thinking affects all aspects of our outer reality. We can let go of a lot of that stressful overthinking just by being less serious and knowing that it isn’t always necessary to think about a problem in order for it to be resolved. Drop the belief that you always have to think about it.

  Few of us are relaxed enough to not ever think seriously about our problems, but with practice, we can get much better at it. It’s easy to cut down the amount of time you spend brooding over your perceived problems—you just decide to do it and follow through with it as best you can. If you find that difficult to do, a helpful tool to make it easier is to schedule a “worry time” once or twice a day and attempt to only allow yourself to worry about your problems during those short, allotted timeslots (i.e. like 10 or 15 minutes at a time). This tool can become especially effective if you also use some of the other suggestions we’ve already gone over. Fully allowing yourself a short, specific time to worry each day can dramatically reduce the amount of time you actually spend thinking and worrying about your problems.

  Likewise, understand that when something important is needed to be thought about in detail, and acted upon, it will usually appear obvious to you. You’ll feel and know you have to think and act on the issue at this point, and you very likely will because it feels right to do so. Again, when something important actually needs to be done, it seems obvious most of the time! You’re not going to deny (or second-guess) doing something that seems obvious. But it should also be obvious—especially after having read this guide—that most of your thoughts about the problems in your life are not necessary to act upon. They’re usually just made-up, en
tirely negative, worst-case mental meanderings and mirages. We can become far more indifferent towards them.

  Most negative thoughts shouldn’t be treated seriously, let alone acted upon. We should be less reactive towards their presence. It’s like spending all week worrying about going to a doctor’s appointment. We’re only actually with the doctor for ten minutes, but we worry about it all week! And then he tells us everything looks okay and to come back in six months. Do you see how much unnecessary worrying we did? It seems silly in retrospect. Well, if you consider it, you’ll probably realize that almost everything is like this mentally when it comes to things that bother us. As Mark Twain joked, “I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.”

  The majority of our worries are delusional. We spend so much time thinking about entirely hypothetical negative situations. It’s okay to stop. Neville Goddard, another great teacher on this subject, advised, “To dissolve a problem that now seems so real to you all that you do is remove your attention from it. In spite of its seeming reality, turn from it in consciousness. Become indifferent and begin to feel yourself to be that which would be the solution of the problem.”

  How would you “remove your attention” from your problem and “turn from it in consciousness”? You simply stop being so serious about it! Drop the belief that you have to think and worry about it! Do your best to stop thinking about it in your normal, rational, stressful way. Yet another advantage of doing this is it frees you to imagine what the solution to your problem could possibly feel like, as Neville touched upon. By dropping rational thought, you can imagine the wonderful feeling that an ideal resolution to your problem would bring; that huge sense of relief.

  Evoking this fulfilled, relieved feeling can be rather simple when we’re not overthinking. We usually call it daydreaming. But it’s not really dreaming whatsoever, once we begin to understand the creative power of our thoughts and imagination. While it seems impossible to daydream positive outcomes to problems when we’re overwhelmed by our thoughts, it can become an enjoyable activity when we’re mentally relaxed. Being unburdened from our rational thinking enables us to pleasantly play with our imagination like this, if we want.

  But, regardless of whether we decide to play with our imagination, it should be clear that trying to improve difficult situations by constantly thinking seriously about them only adds to our stress level. Again, the paradox is we don’t actually have to think about these problematic situations all that much. We spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about potentially awful future events, all of which are just made up in our head. And it stresses us out. Indeed, many of us decide to think about problems all day long and face the consequences of our persistent negative attention on these topics. Not thinking helps you go beyond all that. It takes you past your normal (un)comfort zone. If there are no thoughts, what is there to improve anyway? Nothing! Everything is perfect already just as it is—we just think it isn’t.

  Being playful and unserious allows you to not think and be in this present moment where nothing needs changing, where there are no real problems. If your bothersome thoughts about a particular situation don’t disappear, at the very least you become far more indifferent towards them, and they lose their emotional power over you. This indifference is very important, as Neville mentioned in the quote above. It allows you to have a sense of calmness even when negative thoughts are raging inexplicably in your head and you don’t like your outer circumstances.

  You can cultivate and deepen this sense of calmness from a meditative state, learning to let go of problems that bother you through sheer indifference. I said I wanted to share a meditation exercise with you, and here it is. It’s very simple. It will seem too simple for some of you at first, but that’s okay. As with being unserious, the simplicity is what makes it work well, especially when practiced on a regular basis.

  The exercise works like this: When we’re playfully unserious, we’re so physically active we don’t care if bad, stressful thoughts are there—because we don’t believe them. We know they’re not real. They’re illusory projections. Similarly, when we’re very still—essentially doing nothing—we notice the same thing. We can focus and sink into these physical feelings of deep relaxation when we’re comfortably still and not care about our thoughts. We can feel into our natural sense of well-being and fulfillment by becoming so physically at ease.

  So, consider this meditative exercise to be mainly physical. That makes it both effective and easy. You don’t have to think or worry about the mental component. For practical purposes, assume there isn’t a mental component. That means you can’t mess it up. Just sink into the sense of relaxation you feel whether you’re sitting in a comfortable chair, lying down in bed, or whatever makes you comfortable.

  Those crazy negative thoughts and emotions can come when you’re like this…and you don’t have to care. You’re indifferent to them. You’re neutral and non-reactive. They’re there. So what? Physically relax your body and forget to worry about them. Let the physical ease of the situation be your only guide. Don’t worry about adding anything. Don’t do anything. Let the thoughts come and go; they don’t matter. Just stay relatively still, and sink into the physical relaxation—that nice, peaceful feeling of comfort—for as short or long a time as you want.

  You can’t mess up being still, as long as you don’t think you’re messing it up. So don’t think! But it doesn’t really matter what you think anyway. Just stay physically still, as relaxed as you can. The thoughts come and go, and you know they don’t matter. There’s a lot of power in this physical stillness, just like there’s a lot of power in very active physical movement. In both cases, we can just cut down the mental seriousness of the situation with our physical behavior, whether it’s by being very still or very active. We just gently cut down, cut down, cut down…easy peasy.

  The concept of “vibing out” like this is so far removed from our normal everyday behavior. Our cultural influences. What we’re supposed to do. We usually have it in our mind that there has to be a serious mental focus. That we’re supposed to do something. You’ll notice that even when you’re not really doing anything, you’re still trying to do something else at the same time. Like when you’re waiting in line at the store. Or sitting on the bus. Or eating a sandwich. We can’t just relax and do a very simple activity like this. We get caught up in our mental minutia. We pull out our cell phone because we can’t stand the thought of not doing anything for a few moments. In turn, when we try to mentally relax, we find that we can’t because we’re so obsessed with our thoughts of what to do next, what we have to do. It’s a mental trap we’ve created for ourselves.

  Vibing out is different because there are no problems. And there is no next. We acknowledge that we’re doing nothing. And this acknowledgement is potent. It destroys the mental concept that we normally have: That we should be doing something. So, we’re sitting down. Or we’re lying down. We’re physically as relaxed as we can be, and we’re very aware of our thoughts, of our feelings, of what’s going through our head, through our body.

  But we don’t engage with it in an active way. We don’t entertain it in an active way. We say, “This is all here—and I’m doing nothing with it.” It’s not a rejection or a strong denial of feelings or thoughts. That would be too forceful. Likewise, it’s not a celebration of good thoughts or happy feelings. That, again, would often involve too much effort. This is just negation. A neutral kind of negation. And it’s done by indifference. It’s an indifference to the feelings and thoughts going through your mind and body.

  And you cannot fail in this indifference.

  If you find yourself getting swept up in a series of thoughts—you start thinking about what you have to do in an hour or later that evening; you start planning out things mentally in your head or thinking about what somebody thinks of you; or you start feeling anxious or stressed, or whatever—it doesn’t matter. You just notice it, and you don’t try t
o suppress it. It’s too difficult for most of us to suppress anything like that, especially consistently. There are so many thoughts all the time, so many feelings all the time coming up. You can’t suppress things forcefully and expect it to actually work. All we do is notice and say, “Whatever.” Nobody ever says, “Whatever.” No one just shrugs and says, “Ah, whatever.” To quote the Zen monk Kodo Sawaki, “A thief breaks into an empty house. There’s nothing to steal and there’s no one to catch him.” That’s kind of what we’re talking about.

  So, this type of meditation isn’t going to feel special or spectacular, usually, and it’s not going to feel bad either. You might think this sounds kind of bleak, this do-nothing, indifferent awareness. But when you become indifferent like this, you also become in touch with something that’s beyond your normal conception of yourself. The “bigger you” arises, and it’s just plain better than whatever we consciously can hold in our rational mind. As H. Emilie Cady eloquently wrote, “Be in a state, mentally, of trustful passivity, and see God’s saving power.” That’s true abundance. It’s here with us, right now. And vibing out allows us to see it.

  Indifference, the way we’re talking about it, is meant to be “the peace of God, which passeth all understanding” because a deeper sense of happiness and joy often isn’t euphoric like we think it will be. If we’re to describe it with words, which is difficult, true happiness often seems more like profound, peaceful resignation and total acceptance. Vibing out, meditating like this, you align with that. And this alignment usually isn’t overly ecstatic, as some New Age and religious teachers can make it sound. And, of course, it’s not particularly amped up or anything, like some motivational teachers talk about in terms of conjuring up good feelings. It’s just intimately connecting with what you already are right now. And we do it naturally as long as we don’t think much because it’s beyond rational thought.