Let’s start by thinking back on our life bus metaphor. So once again, imagine your life as a bus taking you on life’s journey. You are the driver of your bus. You want to go places and do what is important to you. Throughout your life, various passengers have boarded your bus. These passengers are your thoughts, feelings, and memories. Every time you have an experience, new passengers get on your bus.
You like some of the passengers on your bus. These passengers might be happy memories or positive thoughts. Some passengers you feel neutral about. And then there are passengers that you wish had not boarded the bus. These passengers can be ugly, scary, and nasty.
So, you are driving your bus of life with all sorts of passengers on board and you have decided what direction you want to move. But the passengers on your bus are getting rowdy. It is hard to drive in the direction you wish when they are shouting. These passengers might say hurtful things or bring up memories you do not like.
Often when this happens, we try and get rid of these passengers. We might struggle and fight. Maybe we try to distract ourselves or avoid thinking about them. Perhaps this works briefly, but those passengers keep getting rowdy. Often these efforts to get rid of our passengers just gives them control over our bus.
The passengers on your bus are your inner states, so you cannot get rid of them. But when you try to deal with your passengers or get rid of them, you stop your bus. You are not moving in the direction that is important to you.
You may also try to make deals with the passengers; you will give in and do what they tell you if they agree to keep quiet in the back of the bus. This may feel a little easier than fighting with them, but it means the passengers control your bus’s direction.
By fighting and struggling with the passengers or giving in to them, you, the driver, are not in control of your life journey, and, likely, you are not heading in a direction important to you.
So what can you do instead of fighting the passengers or letting them take over?
These “passengers” are your real experiences – thoughts, emotions, etc. They are real, and they impact you.
We like to think we have a lot of control over the thoughts that come up in our head. For the next ten seconds, I want you not to think of a white polar bear ….
What happened?
Maybe you could not think of a polar bear for a moment, but it likely was one of your first thoughts. If it wasn’t, how did you know you were not thinking of a white polar bear? It is because some part of your mind was comparing every thought you had to a polar bear, to make sure that was not what you were thinking about
We have little control over our spontaneous thoughts, and the passengers on our bus will do things we do not want them to do.
Now, I want you to think about a chair. Maybe it is the chair you are sitting on or a chair in the room with you. Bring this chair to mind with as much detail as you can. What colour is the chair? Is it hard? Soft? You probably have a pretty good mental image of this chair. But can you sit in it?
While sometimes our thoughts closely resemble reality, it is important to recognize that our thoughts are just that … thoughts.
Our thoughts are not the same as our experiences. They can resemble our experiences, but they are always just thoughts.
So, we have now established that we have little control over our thoughts and that our thoughts are just thoughts. But how do we deal with the noisy passengers on our bus?
I want you to imagine that you have a wastebasket in your hands. That wastebasket holds all of the disruptive passengers. All thoughts, experiences, feelings, and sensations that you do not like, are in that basket. While life might be easier to walk around with your wastebasket empty, you cannot take things out of it. You can choose to walk around with your arms stretched out far. Trying to keep the things you do not like as far away from you as possible. But you can imagine that after a while your arms are going to get tired. Or you can choose to make space for these things you do not like.
When we embrace our experiences, hold them close, own and validate them, they are a little easier to carry with us. Remember, your experiences are not you. They are things that move through you or sit within you. You are big enough and strong enough to hold them. If you choose to make some space between you and your thoughts, you can do so using a simple trick. Recognize your thoughts for what they are. Just thoughts. So instead of thinking “I wish X never happened to me” replace that with, “I am having the thought that I wish X never happened to me.” It seems like a small change, but recognizing your thought for what it is and creating some space can give you the freedom to move toward your values.