I’m Addicted to My Thoughts.
My biggest struggle to meditate as a creative. +7 Ways to overcome it.
I struggle with meditation.
It’s nice and relaxing when I’m able to get into it and I know better than to get upset with myself when my mind drifts but my brain still does a lot of distracting.
I recently realized my biggest struggle with concentration is a creative FOMO.
We’ve all heard of shower thoughts, those epiphanies that strike when your mind drifts.
It’s the want of epiphanies that breaks my focus the most these days.
I’ve been able to let go of the social anxiety; the wondering about other people. Most of the time I can keep my mind from wandering to the next meal or my finances but what gets me are the rabbit trails of creation.
I’ll be meditating and suddenly I’m planning my next article or dreaming up a new poem or the way I present my work to people.
Whereas I can dismiss fantasizing about the next meal as a distraction my brain has a harder time letting go of creative thoughts.
They seem practical, they’re about work and the things I am doing to reach others, to fulfill my passion in life.
But that’s how addictions work, they tweak the reality of the situation to excuse a behavior we don’t need.
Yes, inspiration is fantastic and thinking over my articles and my business is important but not during the 15–30 minutes I am using to build my concentration and relax my mind.
The fear is that I will lose the train of thought and whatever lightning strike brilliance that was to come from those thoughts will be gone, forever out of reach.
More than likely this isn’t true and an increased amount of focus which can be cultivated through meditation will only help me execute my thoughts into actions.
So I’ve been working on my thought FOMO and here are some things that have helped me.
Task lists
When we keep all the things we need to do in our head the brain is constantly trying to remember our list. If you have a fear of forgetting, this means your brain will keep repeating the information.
A task list allows you to put the information down so you can meditate and focus on that breath.
This helps me when it comes to putting down thoughts about my business and all the things I need to do that day.
Notes
Just like task lists, notes help us trust that what we’ve dreamt up is secure. I outline a lot of my articles on my phone’s note app.
I’ll write up social media content, the outline for my email list, even a line or two of poetry when I’m walking around. This saves these thoughts from spinning around in my head when I’m meditating.
At times I’ll even allow myself to break from a distracted meditation to jot down the thought that popped up.
I try to reframe from this because what I really want to teach my brain is that it has the memory and resources to remember an important thought and can simply let it go.
Sometimes though the FOMO is too strong and I realize that I can either spend the next 15 minutes worrying about losing a thought while simultaneously trying to lose it or I can write it down and return my meditation.
Actively working on memory
If the fear is about losing an important inspiration then anything we do to increase our memory will help put the fear of lost memory to rest.
Memory games and exercises are perfect for building our memory. I recite the Orphic hymn to Mnemosyne, goddess of memory, and have added on a few paragraphs to help increase the memory challenge.
I have a buddy who I swear would have forgotten his name if other people didn’t routinely call him by it.
We were talking about his memory years ago and I challenged him to work on it through puzzles and games. He started memorizing all the ways to solve a Rubix cube.
A few months of that and his memory was noticeably better.
From a nutritional point of view memory and attention can be affected by acetylcholine. Increasing choline found in eggs, nuts, and legumes can help ensure we have the neurochemicals necessary for memory.
You can also supplement with huperzine which is known to affect acetylcholine although I caution you to be careful when you do this. Start small and see what happens.
Try the nutrition and exercise first and if you still need a boost try the huperzine at a small dosage and keep notes of the effect.
I don’t use it anymore but it did help me with Chinese and I have seen it help clients.
Cultivate specific spaces
The brain is an organ of habit, it gets used to specific activities being done in specific environments.
This is how we can go-go-go throughout the day and as soon we get home feel our energy crash because the brain knows this is a place we rest.
The effect of the environment and its habituation in the brain is so strong it even affects the way chemicals act upon us.
Give me a beer today and I can taste the hangover on the second sip. Put me back together with friends at a wedding (the only place and event I actually drink anymore) and my alcohol tolerance reverts back to college.
This is actually something that leads to overdoses in the addictions community. People will be used to specific environments where their tolerances are higher and as soon as they enter into a new place the body doesn’t respond to the chemical the same way.
We can flip the script on this though and put the brain’s habituation to good use.
Try and meditate in the same place each day. Your body and mind will know “this is my meditation place.”
If you want to make it mobile try using a mudra, a positioning of the hands, you can go full Buddha with a teacher’s mudra, thumb to index finger, rub your thumb on your palm or create any hand position you like.
This will create an association between meditating and the specific activity that allows you to tell your brain “we’re meditating” wherever you are.
You can play with the other senses too. Listen to the same playlist list or put on a particular scent.
If you’re mindful about your environments and how you build associations you can create one environment for meditation and another for inspiration and brainstorming.
This gives the signal to the brain that the two activities are different and there is a time and a place for both.
Blessing the thought
One of the things that has helped me is that rather than dismiss the thought or inspiration I’ve been blessing it to grow (if it’s any good).
It’s wu as f&*#^ but it seems to be helping and science has shown that our ability to self charm is a very real thing from placebo effects to the brain’s reduced response to stress when it feels its in control.
For me, someone who pays a lot of attention to the unconscious and our symbols, the difference between dismissing a thought and blessing it to take root creates a vastly different effect.
One feels like it’s cutting down my source of inspiration, the other feels like it’s giving it room to grow which then, in turn, gives me room to get back to my breathing.
Building a relationship with the Muses.
The more we can trust in our source of inspiration the more we can trust that the really good ideas will come at the opportune times.
As I cultivate more self-awareness and a better relationship to the realms within I’ve been losing some of my FOMO. I trust that the inspiration will return if it’s important. I’ve learned the unconscious doesn’t let me drop the ball on my inspiration that easily and so it is becoming easier to let things go and to focus on meditating.
What about you?
What gets in the way of your meditating? What are 2–3 things you can do to change that around?
Love and share.
I’m starting something new. Writing every day as I put my random thoughts down on binary paper.
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