Is mindfulness about controlling our thoughts or suppressing them? What even is the difference? Are they even possible things to achieve? Are they even worthy of us trying?
In this episode, I lay out the differences between these two approaches to dealing with our thoughts. But more importantly, I describe a third option for approaching our thoughts that is actually easy and way more effective for generating lasting happiness and peace from within.
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0:09
Welcome to path to peace with Todd Perelmuter,
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where he shares the lessons he's learned. spending nine years living with gurus, monks, and shamans,
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across 35 countries and five continents.
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Join in the journey as he brings some healing wisdom for living your best life.
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The path to peace, love, health, and happiness starts here
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Hello, and welcome to path to peace with Todd PerlPErelmutermutter. I'm your host, Todd PErelmuter. And today, the question is, what is the difference between suppressing your thoughts and controlling your thoughts? And that's such an important question.
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Because we know from experience, that actually you can't control your thoughts. If someone says, don't think of a purple elephant, you think of a purple elephant.
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And while you can suppress your thoughts, we also know that it doesn't really help that we're just stuffing them down, but they're still they're bubbling under the surface waiting to explode, whether it's an anger and temper, or depression and anxiety, or a panic attack, or even heart disease, or cancer, or some other illness.
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From all of that an unprocessed trauma and negativity that we have buried within us, it doesn't disappear. We're just burying it deeper and deeper, and making it harder and harder to evolve, and grow out of it. And so I would never tell anyone, they should try to control their thoughts, or suppress their thoughts. Because both lead to bad outcomes.
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The best thing we can do is learn to focus our minds, focus our attention.
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Think of it, like you're walking down the street, there is someone screaming hateful things on one side of the street, there is a violent man with a knife on the other side of the street, and in the middle of the street is a beautiful flower.
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So to control your thoughts would be to try to simply look away from the hateful person. But you're still hearing everything they're screaming, you're fixated on it, even though you're trying desperately to look away. Because that is what is grabbing your attention.
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You could try to stuff the guy wielding a knife into your pocket and try to ignore it in that way. But it's just going to cut up your leg and do all sorts of damage. The only option is to learn how to focus your mind with intention. And we can do that. By using the flower. We can choose what we focus on. We can't ignore what we're focusing on. We can't suppress what we're focusing on. But we can choose what we focus on.
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And this is the practice of meditation. Learning to focus our mind whether it's on your breath, or your body, or a mantra, meditation is the act of focus and training our mind in focus. So when scary thoughts come in our mind, we don't ignore them. We don't stuffed them down. We don't try to shut them up.
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We simply bring our attention to our breath, or our surroundings and we become present where thoughts just become the background. When we're fully present. Thoughts don't take up so much of our brain space. We can think of it like the ocean. If we just see the waves, and maybe they're turbulent waves. Maybe they're crashing and they're stormy waves.
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And if we only focus on that, then that's all we know. But if we expand our perspective and realize that there's 99.9% of the ocean beneath the waves, and that this ocean depth is peaceful and calm and still and quiet, then those crashing waves become insignificant.
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And so the key is expanding our perspective and learning to control our focus, not our thoughts.
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Thank you so much for listening. This has been path to peace with Todd Perelmuter. Peace and love.
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