By Mark Quirk MSc CertLM, Healthspan coach and Registered Health Coach

Perhaps you’ve heard someone say, “Don’t think about pink elephants,” or something similar, to demonstrate how tricky it can be to not think about something that has just been suggested.

This paradox was famously explored by a group of research psychologists led by Daniel Wegner in a 1987 paper, Paradoxical effects of thought suppression, in what became known as the “White Bear” experiments.

After further research, Professor Wegner proposed the theory of ironic processes of mental control, describing the sometimes-unhelpful consequences of deliberately trying to suppress our thoughts.

The super-summary is that trying hard not to think about something can make that thought more likely to rebound – particularly when it has some emotional weight attached to it.

I sometimes describe this as trying to push unwanted thoughts (or feelings) away, only to discover that pushing them gives them something to push back against.  You might distract yourself successfully for a while, but there's a reasonable chance they'll be waiting for a quiet moment to pop up again.

This can become especially obvious during meditation, a practice many of us assume is calming.

If you find yourself trying to push thoughts away or attempting to “stop thinking” by dragging your attention back to your breathing, there’s a good chance you’ll also find yourself becoming frustrated when your mind starts thinking again.

Which it will.

It is, after all, really good at it.

The first useful realisation, therefore, is simple: you don't need to stop your mind from thinking.  That isn't the point of developing mindfulness skills anyway.

So, what is?

A much more productive approach is learning to notice your mind thinking without automatically getting caught up in every thought it produces.

This ability to step back and observe our mental activity, sometimes called meta-awareness or decentering, takes practice, but it can have surprisingly useful consequences.

Take a classic concentration meditation, such as bringing your attention to the sensations of breathing.

The intention is to rest your attention on your chosen anchor – the breath in this case.  But eventually you'll discover that you're no longer paying attention to your breathing at all.  You're planning dinner, replaying yesterday's conversation, or wondering why your neighbour still hasn't returned your hedge trimmer.

This isn't a failure of meditation, or your ability to meditate.  It's a normal function of the human mind.

Then something interesting happens.

The moment you notice that your attention has wandered into thought, you've already become aware again.  Rather than being completely caught inside the thinking, you're now aware that you were thinking.

That's the skill we're practising.

You might gently acknowledge what your mind was doing, “Ah, I was planning again” or “There's worrying,” and then you can decide what you want to do next.

Sometimes the thought genuinely needs your attention.  But most of the time, during a meditation, you might simply choose to return to the sensations of breathing.

That can sound a bit like we're trying to get rid of the thought.  But there's a significant difference between “I must stop thinking this” and “I've noticed this thought, and I'm choosing to put my attention somewhere else.”

We're allowing the mind to think rather than fighting with it.

Over time, that gentler relationship with our thoughts can change how compelling they feel. Thoughts still appear, sometimes lots of them, but we can become better at noticing when we've been caught by one and deciding whether it deserves our attention.

And that, for me, is one of the most useful things about mindfulness.

The aim isn't to have an empty mind.  It's to have a little more choice about which thoughts you follow.