Over the course of a given day, you likely will experience tens of thousands of thoughts. It should go without saying that it is these thoughts that make up your sense of reality and your role in it.

But here’s the thing: the vast majority of your thoughts are not only repetitious, they’re negative. We’re not picking on you. The same applies to everyone. Our species is a decidedly negative one.

This helps to explain why we spend billions and billions each year on drugs, psychotherapy, self-help, wellness programs, and other efforts to run interference with all that mental mayhem.

Unfortunately, none of these ‘remedies’ actually work – at least not for very long. And even if they eradicate one source of mental agitation, another emerges to take its place, an endless game of cognitive whack-a-mole that each year drives thousands to suicide.

So what’s an unhappy thinker to do?

Give Up On Changing Your Mind

For starters, ignore anyone who says all that’s needed is to turn that frown into a smile, lemons into lemonade, negative thoughts into happy ones. If it was that simple, we’d all be Mary Poppins flitting through the sky beneath a sea of umbrellas.

Skeptical? Try this simple exercise. Take out a piece of paper and jot down the happy thought you’ll be having exactly 5 minutes from now. Set a timer, put out it out of sight, and wait. The instant it goes off, write down the thought you’re having.

“To understand the immeasurable, the mind must be extraordinarily quiet, still.”
― J. Krishnamurti

Alternatively, make up your mind here and now you’ll never have another negative thought. Again, if we are in control of our thoughts, if we can simply change bad thoughts into good ones, why not do it now and get it over with?

Because you can’t.

A Mental Separation Agreement

There’s only one way to stop negative thinking and, ironically, it has nothing to do with consciously trying to stop it. Instead, you need to create some separation between thoughts and thinker, between them and you.

“Alone let him constantly meditate in solitude on that which is salutary for his soul, for he who meditates in solitude attains supreme bliss.” – Guru Nanak

Call it mindfulness, meditation, or self-inquiry, the goal is the same: to find as many moments as you can to sit quietly and observe your thoughts versus respond to them. By creating this sliver of separation, you’ll likely notice:

• The endless parade of thoughts appearing and disappearing into your awareness like fireflies briefly flashing into existing across a nighttime meadow.
• The negative nature of most of those thoughts.
• The body’s constant reactions to thoughts. Regardless of the thought, “your body responds by secreting hormones that impact your entire nervous system,” notes Richard Miller, PhD, founder of the Integrative Restoration Institute.
• The gradual recognition that you are not your thoughts.
• That thoughts are not tangible things. They’re literally nothing until voiced or acted on.
• A subtle, inexplicable sense of peace.

Liberation From the False Self

Slowly but surely, we begin to recognize the nature of our thinking (usually lots of mental habits started at an early age and reinforced across adulthood). Furthermore, we discover the insubstantiality and powerlessness of these thoughts (unless we react to and act on them).

By employing practices like meditation, we drag unconscious mental habits out into the open. It becomes easier to recognize undesirable thoughts and thought patterns and – like the boogeyman in the closet – neutralize their power over us.

“We don’t sit in meditation to become good meditators. We sit in meditation so that we’ll be more awake in our lives.” ― Pema Chödrön

“By being aware of negative feelings as soon as they arise, people can engage in positive remediation rather than dwelling on the negative cognition [aka thought],” says John Minda, PhD, professor of psychology at the University of Western Ontario.

Note here that you didn’t stop the negative thinking, you simply recognized it and its implications. You didn’t stop your thoughts, you took away their power.

Or as Minda and others put it, meditation “seems to help people be aware of negative thoughts, to acknowledge them, and to then move on.”

In short, we happily discover that thoughts are intangible, ephemeral non-entities that come and go of their own volition. And as the one both experiencing and now witnessing those thoughts, we take away their power.