If you don’t run your mind, your mind runs you (or something like that)

“If you don’t run your day, your day runs you” 

These were the parting words of wisdom that my yoga instructor shared as class wrapped up and we all began to leave the studio.   

And then she added, “you can pretty much substitute any word for “day” and it’s true - if you don’t run your <blank>, your <blank> runs you”

I began to think about that.  

Yes.  There IS something true about, if you don’t run your mind, your mind runs you.  

It’s kind of the essence of mindfulness. Mindfulness allows us to have more agency over our mind - our thoughts, our mental reactions, our stories, our worries, our judgments.  We move from being a puppet to our mind to having a more empowered relationship with our mind.  

The important nuance I might overlay, though, is we need a much gentler relationship than is suggested by the verbiage of “RUNNING” your mind.    The word ‘running’ to me suggests force, an exertion of will, perhaps even a bit commanding and overpowering.    

For me, the trajectory of my practice (from before I knew better through the past few years of a daily meditation practice) has been something along the lines of:

My mind runs me => I wake up and realize I have choice => I struggle and fight with my mind (“stop doing that”)  => I begin to practice relaxing and stop fighting => My mind does its thing and I am unbothered by it 

A more elegant timeline?  First we follow it, then we fight it, then we let it be.  

I begin to realize I don’t have to fight it, NOR do I have to engage with it, believe it.  I can let the ruminations, the list-making, the critiquing happen and I can stay here.  Solid in my body, balanced and centered.    

I share this trajectory because I remember as a beginner, I used to believe that, if I were successfully meditating, these thoughts would go away (all those pictures of meditators look like they are peaceful with no thoughts, right??)   And, yet, that is very rarely my experience - I sit down and the thoughts flood me.  

I now know that a hope of stopping the thoughts is too lofty of a goal for me.  It’s not about having the thoughts stop, it’s to stop believing them, stop reacting to them and stop fighting them.  

Let them come and go.  

Yes - definitely much easier said than done.   But, with practice, gently and daily, by sitting still and noticing how random, how intermittent, how fleeting thoughts actually are - I continue to have momentary spaces where the mind is thinking and my being is not following them.  

The mind won’t stop.  But I can practice being unbothered.  

If you aren’t bothered by your mind, your mind can’t bother you.