2311: [Part 1] Your Two Minds by Mark Manson on The Thinking Mind & Meditative Practice

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SUVW. German-engineered for all. This is Optimal Living Daily, episode 2311, Your Two Minds, part one, by Mark Manson of markmanson.net, and your narrator Justin Malek, reading you blogs every single day of the year. And this is one of a few shows where we narrate articles for you.

Search for Optimal Living Daily in the podcast app of your choice and follow or subscribe to listen to lots of great content being narrated for you. Now today's article is a little longer than normal, so I'll read the first half today and then finish up the rest tomorrow. So with that, let's get right to part one as we optimize your life. Your Two Minds, part one by Mark Manson of markmanson.net Close your eyes.

Wait, don't close them yet. Finish listening to this paragraph, then close them. Okay, close your eyes and try to think about nothing for 30 seconds. Ready?

Go. You can hit pause on this podcast for 30 seconds. It wasn't easy, was it? Chances are that various thoughts and images kept popping into your head.

Now I want you to try the same exercise again, except this time I want you to pay attention to which specific thoughts and images pop up. Try to keep track of them. Notice them, know what they are, and then let them go. See if you can do that for a minute Ready Go And you can pause for 30 seconds What were they Maybe that fight you had with your brother the other day or the assignment that due tomorrow but you hearing this instead or maybe a movie you saw recently or some sort of fantasy Chances are you were able to notice them for a little while but then you quickly find yourself getting sucked into thinking about them involuntarily.

If you've ever meditated, even a little bit, you're familiar with the experience you just had. You close your eyes and try to shut your mind up, even if for 30 seconds, and despite your best efforts, the spigot of thought vomit just kept pouring out. If you've ever attended meditation retreats or been involved in some movement such as Zen, like I was for a while, they talk a lot about this mind chatter that you suffered through. And the thing is, that mind chatter never stops.

It's always going on in your daily life. A lot of these Eastern philosophies aim to quiet that chatterbox of a mind that we have, and I suppose it's useful to put a little damper on it. But I've actually found practicing these sorts of techniques have another benefit, a benefit psychologists are just catching on to is starting to write about here in the West. That benefit is what I call the two minds.

When you close your eyes and try to eliminate any thoughts and fail miserably like the rest of us, obviously your mind is thinking. But if your mind is thinking, then who is observing the mind thinking? Whoa. When you did the exercise and your mind kept wandering back to what you had to do at work tomorrow, who was it that was watching your mind worry about work tomorrow?

It was your mind watching your mind. In Zen, they referred to this as the thinking mind and the observing mind, the two minds. It's been a common concept in Buddhism for centuries, and new Western therapies such as acceptance commitment therapy, ACT, or ACT, are catching on to how useful it is and how it can solve a lot of our everyday emotional problems. I break down the two minds further and then show how they can be applied to solving many of the emotional problems we deal with in our everyday lives The problem with the thinking mind is that we don completely control it Don believe me I prove it Whatever you do do not think about a pink elephant Don't think about a pink elephant holding a blue umbrella with his trunk.

Don't think about a pink elephant at all while hearing the next two paragraphs. Okay, not only did you picture a big pink elephant with a blue umbrella, but you were watching yourself think about a pink elephant while you were hearing the past two paragraphs. Your observing mind was watching your thinking mind indulge in pink elephants repeatedly, despite the fact that it was telling your thinking mind not to indulge in said elephants. The thinking mind is always chattering away while you're waiting in line, while you're in bed trying to sleep, when you tune out of conversations with people, or when your mind wanders while listening to this podcast, which I'm sure will happen at least once with me.

Full? Our thinking mind is like a dog on a leash that keeps running after things, and if we aren't used to using our observing mind, then our thinking mind drags us along with it. If our thinking mind starts obsessing about reaching level 30 in Diablo or the last episode of Mad Men, our observing mind is helpless to reign it in. The same goes for emotions, and that's actually where most of our suffering comes from, not from the negative emotions themselves, but from the fact that we're helpless from getting sucked into the negative emotions.

Most of our psychological and emotional stress happens because our thinking mind and observing mind are fused and we don't recognize the difference. People ask me all the time, how do I stop feeling so jealous? Or how do I stop feeling so angry? Or how do I not get nervous in this situation anymore?

The answer, you don't. You can't control your thinking mind. Those emotions pop up and will continue to pop up. The trick is to not fuse with those emotions when they arise.

In Zen they advise that instead of saying I angry to say I feel anger Instead of saying I nervous say I feel nervousness instead of saying I jealous you say I feel jealousy it may seem like a subtle difference but try it think of a time recently when you felt a negative emotion a lot of anger or nervousness or insecurity now instead of thinking I was angry at my brother think instead I felt anger towards my brother you had anger but you weren't controlled by that anger to be continued you just listened to part one of the post titled your two minds by mark manson of mark manson.net amazon presents jeff versus taco truck salsa whether it's verde roja or the orange one for jeff trying any salsa is like playing russian roulette with a flamethrower luckily jeff saved with amazon and stocked up on antacids ginger tea and milk habanero more like habanere yes save the everyday with amazon i'm constantly thinking about how to optimize my health what supplements to take, hours of sleep, what my diet should focus on. Superpower finally takes the guessing out of it. One simple lab test covers over 100 biomarkers, and their app gives you a complete picture of your heart, liver, hormones, metabolism, even environmental toxins. Plus, it used to cost $499.

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I'll catch you on tomorrow's episode where we'll finish up this post. So I'll see you there where your optimal life awaits.