Quiet Your Noisy Mind

Quick Win

Does negative mental chatter make it hard to enjoy the moment? Use this technique for wrangling negative thoughts.

Try This Today

• Notice and observe. The next time you notice a running commentary in your mind, pause and notice your thoughts and any feelings they trigger. Try to observe your thoughts and feelings neutrally, without judging them.
• Allow and accept. Resist the urge to distract yourself from the thoughts by shifting your focus. Instead, turn your attention toward the thoughts. Make space for them — again, without adding any judgment — and accept them.
• Open your mind. Without pushing your mental chatter away, let in new thoughts. Give all your thoughts — negative, positive or neutral — a nod of recognition and watch them pass. Noticing the transient nature of thoughts can help you feel less controlled by them.
• Reframe. If you’re stuck on a particularly negative thought, try labeling it and reframing it so it’s less a statement of fact and more a statement about present experience. For instance, you can reframe the thought “Life is meaningless” as “At this moment, I’m thinking that life is meaningless.”
• Make space for possibilities. Encourage new thoughts and ideas to percolate and focus on something positive and tangible — like the smell of coffee wafting up from the warm mug that’s cradled in your hands.

Why

If your mind seems to gravitate to negative thoughts, welcome to being human. The “negativity bias” is thought to be a holdover from early in human history, when dangers and threats abounded. In mindfulness exercises, you practice acknowledging thoughts and feelings without getting bogged down by them. Research supports the mental health benefits of mindfulness. In a study of 68 adults ages 18 to 55 living in Munich, those who engaged in a mindfulness practice — a five-minute body scan at bedtime — for at least 10 days in a row experience less negative thinking and lower stress than a group that did not do the scan, according to a 2023 report in JMIR Mental Health.