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#138. The Power in Observing Your Thoughts

by | Podcast

We can become the observer of our thoughts, and when we can step into this higher level of consciousness, we can unlock the keys to our behavior and create from a place of intentionality. We switch from Reacting to Responding.

For a full transcript and show notes, head to: www.thrive.how/podcast138

 

In this episode Kate is talking through this concept of becoming the observer, and addresses:

  • What does it mean to split from our thoughts and switch to being the observer
  • If I am not my thoughts, then who the hell am I?
  • How else we can think about the observer
  • Why this is useful, and how it can impact our lives
  • Paths we can following to begin to integrate this idea

 

 

Kate specifically mentions the following tools and resources:

 

Please note: this post contains affiliate links. 

 

Transcript: #138. The Power in Observing Your Thoughts (Kate Snowise)\

Episode #138. Observing our thoughts. There is so much power when we recognize that we are not out our thoughts, but rather we are the observer. Today I’m going to talk here about how you can become the observer of your thoughts, like why you would actually even want to do this, what on earth that means, and specifically some action steps that you can take to help you move into that space of observing. Now this topic is kinda heady, but if you can wrap your mind around it it’s also life changing.

You might need a re-listen, but I hope that this piques your interest and makes you think, hmmm, what could be down this line of inquiry. To get the show notes for this episode and links to the resources I mention during the podcast, you’ll also find a full written transcript over there actually, just in case you need to read the words afterwards rather than listen…head to thrive.how/podcast138. Let’s get going then.

Welcome to Here to Thrive. I’m your host Kate Snowise. This is a podcast for people who are ready to step up and live a happier life. It’s for those of us who are dedicated to understanding ourselves and getting the best that we can out of this thing called life. It’s a mix of psychology and modern spiritual thought, always with a focus on practical advice so that you can take it back and apply it to your own life. I don’t believe we’re here to merely survive, I truly believe we’re here to thrive, so let’s get going.

Observing our thoughts. Like what does that even mean? I’ve said it before on the podcast but when I realized, that I am not my thoughts, this was mind blowing to me. I was twenty-four and I was seeing this guy and he gave me a book to read at the time that was life changing, and that book was A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. This is the central concept that I took away from that book. That I’m not the thinking, crazy, egoic mind running rampant and automatically in my head, but rather if I can create space, I can I actually watch my thoughts. I can separate from my thoughts and step into this role if the observer.

Now as I’ve learned more over the year as about the different types of therapies, spiritual traditions, this theme of becoming the observer of our thoughts as a path to freedom, fulfillment and grace, is sprinkled everywhere. I was in my mid-twenties when I realized that there actually was a constant stream of thoughts running through my head. That there was like a voice in my head. I was so fused with my thinking that there was no separation, no awareness whatsoever. My thoughts were me. We were one and the same. Fusion is a concept that comes from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy with the antidote being Defusion. When we are fused without thoughts, we ultimately are in our thoughts. We’re immersed. There is no separation. We are tied and unaware, so acting automatically and driven by that and incessant and consistent stream of thoughts in our minds. They are the driving force. Now this is how most of us spend our lives. This is how I lived constantly without break until I was in my mid-twenties, until I recognized like woah almighty, I am thinking.

I know it sounds a little meta, but it is so powerful. I am thinking, which means I can watch my thinking. Minds blown people. Mind blown. Now with the increase in awareness around mindfulness, meditation, you might be like yeah yeah Kate, we know this…but I want you to take a moment to really sit with that. You will think automatically. That is what your brain does. But you can step back from those thoughts and observe. That. That is empowering!

So what is this idea of observing out thoughts even matter? Like what is the benefit for us and being able to do this? I have an all-time favorite quote which really sums it up for me. I put in presentations, and man I feel like this just say is why I love psychology so much. It’s from Viktor Frankl who wrote Man’s Search for Meaning and he’s a Holocaust survivor. So the quote is:

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response, and in our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

I’ll read it again. “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response, and in our response lies our growth and our freedom.” So I take this as to say between impulse, stimulus, what I would call thinking. So between thinking and response there is a space. That people. That is it. That is where our power lies, and if we can widen that gap, make that space bigger, we can bring a high level of awareness and consciousness in, then we have the power to choose. That is freedom. This is where we live an intentional life. This is higher consciousness.

So in summary, becoming the observer about thoughts is the precursor to so many things. It’s the precursor to self-awareness. It’s the precursor to intentional living. It is the difference between reacting automatically or choosing to respond consciously. Reacting to responding. It’s where our freedom and our power lies. All in that space. And if we can break the automatic shackles, if we can bring this higher level of consciousness in, there is our freedom! That is why it is so empowering to become the observer of our thoughts.

Because in reality, our thinking is all over the show. It’s often so unhelpful. It’s often very fear based. Negative. It’s often sabotaging us and holding us back. So often our thinking isn’t aligned with what we really want, and it’s hijacking us and keeping us held hostage. If we fused with our thinking, like Stephen Hayes would say, the guy who created Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, we don’t even realize we’re being held hostage. We just react to whatever that stream of thought in our head is. So if it’s  – “I’m not good enough” we believe it. “This is too hard” – We automatically act on that. “I should quit” “Who do you think you are?” These are just thoughts, and we can like pull the power cord out of them, if we can become the observer. They don’t have to drive us. We can take control.

Now Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Stephen Hayes, he would say we need to put our mind on a leash and ensure that there is a split between our thinking and the actions or behaviors we take. So our thinking it doesn’t have to drive a response. Our thinking doesn’t have to drive our behavior. So basically people, we don’t have to listen to, nor believe our thinking, because all of it is complete rubbish. It is simply thinking and so much of it is nonsensical and really unhelpful. I guess what I’m trying to say is the crucial element here is that we can have thoughts, but they don’t have to dictate our behavior. We, the observer can step back and make a conscious choice about the actions we wanna take to drive us forward.

That leads to the question who the hell is the observer? Who am I if I am not my mind and my thinking? Now I get it. My mid-twenties I was like ugh this just hurts my brain. But coming back to being the observer, you can look at this in multiple different ways and honestly I have a whole list of ways that I try and describe the split between thinking brain and observer, so I’m just gonna rattle on a little bit and hope that one of them does land with you and make sense.

Now Eckhart Tolle would call it ego consciousness and then simply the awareness, or the I am that can watch. Steven Hayes, the Acceptance and Commitment Therapy guy, calls the busy mind that dictator or simply the mind and he encourages us to name that pesky little automatic voice in our head. He then implies that the real you, the authentic you, the observer is our consciousness.

Now if you’re spiritual you might think of the observer as being your higher self, your soul self or your true essence. Looking at some of the ideas that are related to meditation you might consider your minds the monkey mind, that is like the hardware that we’re running. If we’re all souls having a human experience, then we running through a human body operating system, and with that comes a brain that actually restricts us in so many ways, and runs on auto pilot you know its programming. So we have monkey minds, but the true us is the essence behind that automatic thinking.

I hope something in there lands, and helps you make sense of you as the observer versus you as the thinking mind. That there are these two elements and we can bring our consciousness back a level to become the observer.

So all well and good but if you get the concept how on earth do you actually do it right? One of the ways is mindfulness, and the reason that mindfulness is so powerful here is that it widens the gap and enhances that ability to become the observer. It’s training, that’s why they call it a practice, because you’re practicing you’re training your brain and your hardware to be able to have this skill. Now apps like Headspace, they ask you to come back to the breath. They are training you to observe your thoughts and then come back and refocus. The moment of mindfulness and all of these practices is when you notice a thought and then refocus your mind on what you choose. This is the powerful bit people. This is when you are mindful, when you can observe and come back to what you choose. So mindfulness practices absolutely will help you.

Also self reflection. A journaling practice for me is really important. It gives me that space to step back from the noise of my life, and then bring myself and is the active participant who is looking at it, rather than just rolling through the motions of my days. Now therapy and coaching also provide excellent spaces to self-reflect and help us become the observer of our behavior, thoughts and actions, so that we can ultimately like up that level of intentionality in our lives and our behavior, rather than just go to default automatic functioning. So therapy, coaching, journaling, all really powerful ways to self-reflect.

The third element I would just say educate yourself more around this concept. Dive deeper. Ultimately knowledge starts in the mind as a concept that kind of makes sense and I’ve personally found that if you put in the effort, and it can take some effort people, it begins to almost like fall down from your heat and take root in your being, and this for me is when you live the concept and where the power really obviously lies. It’s one thing to kind of understand it, it’s another thing to integrate it. So for me education around these ideas, continuing to kind of like marinate in them, and entertain these kind of theories and spiritual teachings, helps me so much. It helps me get it, and so that they really can land in me and if you kind of think of it like a seed of knowledge that lands and then ultimately has the ability to start growing, that to me is integration. So education yourself, entertain this idea more.

Of course if you gonna do that you should start with Here to Thrive. If you actually go back through the back catalog, look for Andrea Featherston’s episode which is number 62. She talks about deconstructing mindfulness and it might help you conceptualize this in another way. Other ideas for you…I mentioned Eckhart Tolle at the start, and that was kind of like my starter drug into this understanding. His book, A New Earth, ohh, it’s so worth a read if you haven’t read it already. One of my all-time favs still. Now he’s a spiritual teacher but not religious in any way. He’s also one of Oprah’s favs and she really helped popularize his teachings. But if you listening to me rattle on in your ear right now tells me might like audio, so it’s worth looking for the full program they did which they have on Apple Podcasts. If you just search A New Earth it will take you to those lessons. Now you do need to read the book as well to get the most out of that, because it does refer a lot to the teachings in the book, but I did this program back in 2008 when they did via simulcast and I found it really really powerful. It was a great way to really integrate and help those teachings and ideas but like I say it can be very lofty really land with me.

Another resource, if you tend towards the more nerdy psychy stuff like me, love it, you might appreciate going down the avenue of looking at Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) so I am just reading the book by Steven C. Hayes at the moment. He was that researcher/psychologist who conceptualized Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. His book is called A Liberated Mind. It’s really good. So I will link to that in the show notes or you could thrive.how/podcast138.  So thrive.how/podcast138 to get links to those resources if you can’t find them quickly right now by your phone.

In summary where are we at? There is so much power in becoming the observer of your thoughts. Recognizing that thinking is simply thinking. That you don’t have to be held hostage by your thoughts, but that you can step back and move into your essence. Every single one of us has this busy automatically thinking monkey mind, that will run around on auto pilot influencing our behavior unless we bring this higher level of awareness to our thinking. Now when we’re stuck and that monkey mind reality, we’re reactionary, but we do have power. We have the power to choose, and as Viktor Frankl says, that’s where our freedom lies. That’s where we move from reacting to consciously responding to life. And this level of self-awareness is the beginning of living with a higher consciousness and more intent. It’s worth it. It’s worth investigating this more. It’s worth putting the effort in, because there really is so much power between that thought, that space there, and our choice, and we don’t have to believe everything we think. We can simply just let it be and recognize that thoughts will be thoughts, but thoughts aren’t us.

Thanks Here to Thrive listeners. I have the awesome Rob Bell coming to talk to us next time. He’s got a new book called Everything is Spiritual so kind of ties into this a little bit. I’ve been really appreciating your reviews, and I saw one the other day that was just, so cool, to say “I’ve done something that I’ve never done before and I’ve gone and left a review for Here to Thrive on iTunes because that’s how much it is meant to me.” Thank you. To all of you listening really this does help the show. It helps the show be seen in the podcast apps. It helps the automatic, what do we call those things? Logarithms? It helps those automatic computer processy things work out which shows are worth showing to other people. So this is one way that you can help other people find the show. it also really just you know it warms my heart to know you’re actually out there and listening. Podcasting can kinda seem a little lonely at times, so it makes me feel just so grateful to know that this is landing and that you’re hearing me, so I appreciate it. Those ratings and reviews mean a lot. Ohh so excited to bring you Rob Bell. He’ll be here next time. Have some really fun stuff lined up for the end of the year as well. So stay tuned. Subscribe if you haven’t already. Tell your friends, because I mean you know, a podcast that is shared, that’s kinda like sharing joy right? We we we can say that about Here to Thrive. Like if you she Here to Thrive that would be sharing some positive good stuff and arghhh, the world could do with some of that right now so um, yeah tell your friends. In the meantime, I hope that this gave you some food for thought, and keep thriving. Keep thriving.