Self-reflection is your most valuable meditation tool.
If you’ve ever tried meditation, you’ve probably encountered the “monkey mind.” It’s that part of your mind that refuses to shut up, can’t just relax and let go, and is always looking for problems, even where there are none. Trying to exert control over the monkey mind usually emboldens it to run further amok. In fact, research on cognitive control finds that trying to suppress the monkey mind often triggers rebound or ironic thought processes — as in when someone tells you not to think about something like a white bear, you find that you can’t get the image of a white bear out of your mind. Trying to suppress thoughts makes them pop back up even stronger.
A common remedy is to give the monkey something else to do as a distraction, like repeating a mantra or affirmation or doing some elaborate visualization to keep the monkey occupied. But the monkey is still very active, it’s just playing with a specific toy.
Another method that might seem counterintuitive at first is to watch your monkey mind in the mirror. Although the mirror won’t reveal your actual thoughts, the mirror will show you how your thoughts are affecting you — with exquisite accuracy. The mirror reflects just how unruly our minds are — and that our default is to look for…
