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Imagine right now, that you can think of anything except for a white bear.
Go ahead, take 10 seconds but don’t think about a white bear, no matter what.
What happens? You think about a white bear.
I bet you had little to no interest in white bears until I asked you not to imagine one.
My instruction created your thoughts. Even though it was a negative instruction, your mind interpreted my direction differently.
It removed the “don't think” part and homed in on “white bear.”
Why does your mind do that?
You have a conscious mind and a subconscious mind, and they have different roles.
The conscious mind decides. It sets the intention, gives the order, makes the plan.
The subconscious mind just accepts.
Joseph Murphy, a popular New Thought minister, wrote a book about it in 1963. His thesis was that your subconscious does not reason with you, does not argue back, and does not reject anything. Whatever you hand it, it takes. It has no way of saying, “No thanks, that is bad for me.”
In other words, when you tell yourself, “Don't think about white bear,” your subconscious never receives the "don't."
So the issue isn’t how you get rid of a thought, because you can’t. What you need to figure out is what to do with one when it shows up.
Here are two ways:
Framework 1: The Three-Way Sort
Every thought that arrives belongs in one of three boxes. Usually, a thought bothers us because we have placed it in the wrong one.
Here’s how they should be sorted:
1) You can act on it right now.
If the thought is something you can act on immediately, then act on it. It might be sending an email, booking an appointment, or an even smaller task.
2) You can act on it, but not right now.
We’re hit with so many thoughts in a day, and not all of them require action this minute. If it doesn’t,write down the thought and give it a specific due date. A thought will keep knocking because it thinks you’re going to forget, so once it has a place to go, it will stop bothering you.
3) You can’t act on it at all.
This is the important box and where almost everything lives. These are thoughts that aren’t tasks or anything you can act on, no matter how hard you try, such as…
a conversation replaying from 2019
contemplations about something a friend said and what it meant
thoughts about whether your partner is still mad at you
Sorting your thoughts into these three boxes gives you clarity, and clarity is what stops you from spending your energy on things that were never going to move.
When a thought lands in the third box, you get to say the most freeing sentence there is: It's OK, there’s nothing to do about this one anyway.
Framework 2: RAIN in 90 Seconds
Some thoughts can have a real hold on you. Say you’ve sent a message and had no reply for two days, and the thought arrives: “I’ve done something wrong and they’ve decided they’re done with me”. When that happens, try this:
R. Recognize. Acknowledge the thought is there. That’s all you’re doing at this stage.
A. Allow. Let it stay for a second. You’re not agreeing with it and you’re not acting on it.
I. Investigate. Find where it actually sits in your body, whether that’s your chest, your throat, your jaw or your stomach. Get curious about it the way you’d get curious about a strange noise in your car, because it is genuinely difficult to be curious and panicked at the same time.
N. Note. Give it one word. Tightness. Fear. Wanting to leave.
Observe if something changes in you.
You don't need the thought gone. You just need to create some distance between it and you.
And that’s all!
Most thoughts expire on their own. Get some distance from it, and it will lose its hold on you. Fight it, and you may end up keeping the thought alive for years.
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