Observer Seat

What’s your first impression of the following series of thoughts?:

“discomfort”

“that tiktok i just watched”

“insecurity”

“hungry”

“feeling of hands on legs”

“tightness in my hips”

“car just drove by”

“frustration”

“frustration”

“frustration”

“want icecream”

“are they mad at me?”

“lost focus”

“why do i lose focus”

“anger at myself for losing focus”

“frustration again”

Clearly we should go heavy duty Jungian analysis on these thought’s ass and look at them through the lens of the multiplicity of the psyche.

Some are physically sensory, emotions, some are simple desires… you must be clearly witnessing several complexes surfacing at once where some mirror eachother and have a clear, deep relation to your ego-ideal that must be dialogued in order to get to the bottom of this.

Or maybe, and bear with me here..

Maybe it’s just a collection of random useless thoughts with no inherent value whatsoever.

Maybe you are constantly getting a militant blitzkrieg of total bullshit from your mind all day long nonstop that doesn’t need to be paid attention to.

I’m not hating on the prior methodology, I love and am a huge proponent of a good dialogue.

But not everything needs to be paid attention to.

The list above actually came from an easy labeling meditation exercise I call The Observer’s Seat.

No, I didn’t invent it. It’s a pretty standard practice.

The point here is to observe anything showing up without judgement.

Just observe.

This is a method of recognizing how fast your mind can bring thoughts, ideas, emotions, etc. to you and gives you the opportunity to sit in the seat of the observer.

Here in this seat you get to decide which of these thoughts is important, and which is not.

Why?

Because your mind will never stop talking to you.

You’re going to get these lists of thoughts, emotions, and observations all day long, forever.

And something I’ve found personally, is that a regular practice of labeling thoughts (like through this exercise) gives you the capacity to recognize when you are falling into the trap of letting lists of random, useless stuff pull you away from what you’re doing.

And for those of you who are completely closed off to this idea as if it’s some form of suppression, like all of your thoughts are important.

First off, get off the high horse, you’re human just like everyone else reading this.

Second, give it a try, and if you can write down the first 50 things that come to your mind and send them back to me here with any semblance of honesty and tell me that all 50 of them were important, I’ll bow down to you and your impeccably remarkable (and inhuman) mind.

For the rest of us mere mortals who want to operate at a higher level, acknowledging that our minds have the tendency to offer up unnecessary information and thoughts, this is a fantastic practice.

The more you do it, the more you get to ask:

“Thank you mind, I appreciate that input, but could I have another? Maybe one that’s actually relevant?”