Turning Down and Tuning In
Forced in a room full of uproar, it’s difficult not to hear the baby screaming and crying across the way.
Or the old man snoring in your ear. Or the blaring music leaking from the teenager’s headphones. Oftentimes when put in a similar situation to this, we narrow in on the noise, causing it to seem even louder than it would be otherwise. I never understood the quote “we place the value on each aspect of our lives.” I never thought that placing value on certain aspects could be something done freely, more so an automatic function of our minds. As it turns out, though, just as when we become irritated the mother won’t attend her screaming baby and the crying grows louder to us, whatever we place our focus on in our minds and allow in, becomes louder.
When focused on the screaming baby, the snoring and blaring music tends to fade into the background, and the same would be true if you shifted your focus to one of the other noises. With each and every thought we dwell, ruminate, obsess over, or merely allow in to begin a cycle of such soon becomes more than just a collection of thought. An example that I’m sure we’ve all experienced: we go on with our day as it normally would, and suddenly, a thought of a distant moment when we had greatly embarrassed ourselves shows up. Soon, we are filled of embarrassment all over again and begin to fall in rumination of why it happened, how it could’ve been prevented, etc. You spent your whole day enjoying it as it were and suddenly your focus was shifted and made a moment of mistake contain value simply by thinking about it and dwelling deeper into it. As psychologist/economist Daniel Kahneman would put it: “Nothing is ever as important as it is when we think about it.”
Maybe a few minutes of mere embarrassment doesn’t seem too damaging at face value, but the impact of rumination of the thoughts we allow in possess a far greater impact than we believe. To be clear, before I continue on, not allowing a thought in one’s mind isn’t simply not obtaining the thought whatsoever, rather it is acknowledging the thought when it presents itself and taking control by shifting your focus to something else to prevent rumination; take control of the thought before it takes its control over you. There is a cycle, beginning with these thoughts we allow to take its control. When we allow this disrupting process of rumination in, it soon becomes how we speak. Our minds take in account how we speak and what we say so we can align our actions in a harmonious way. These actions soon turn into our habits and as I’ve truly experienced myself, old habits die hard. Too soon, these habits of ours transform into our destiny of us.
For example: Let’s say you absolutely love social media. Even when you aren’t physically logged on, you’re mentally logged on, constantly thinking of what you’ll post next, how to organize it, what the caption will be, what filter you’re going to use, who might “like” it, etc., etc. As these thoughts go through its cycle, it will soon land you into a habitual routine of constantly checking your social media account to check in on these aspects you obsess over in your mind. You’ve placed a [rather high] value on these aspects and to you, they are loud and feel as an exceedingly important aspect to your life. This will cause you to become self-absorbed by repeatedly gazing at your own account wondering what to post next, how to organize it, etc. This may or may not cause one to also become self-conscious.
Sound like a fairly specific example? Well, that was me several months ago. Everything in my life surrounded Instagram. I had anxiety almost every day to take pictures of everything and anything that could possibly be pleasing to the eye. I spent a majority of my time logged onto my account physically and mentally dwelling into the appearance of it all the way to the amount of “likes” I received for each post. It’s safe to say that my values were beyond subpar and superficial.
With our minds, it’s far easy to accept any thought that is handed to us, especially when we aren’t mentally “awake” to shifting our focus. As any other muscle in our minds, we must train it and exercise it in the most beneficial way to become stronger. It only takes roughly two minutes to focus on another aspect until the urge of rumination is diminished. But we must remember that this is a constant exercise. Our minds practically have a mind of their own that we have no access to. No matter how many times it hands you a thought, you must always turn down its volume with a better thought. Oftentimes, this will rid of the thought completely after constant shift of focus. But even the slightest of giving in to rumination will set you back to the cycle of habit. Proper meditation has helped me with this greatly.
