Minding Your Mind

The Practice

Our brains are thought factories. All day long, our minds churn out observations, ideas, instructions, worries, and silliness and pull us back and forth between the past, present, and future. Much of the time, our mind’s chatter is benign and we do not pay a lot of attention to it, like when a radio is playing softly in the background. However, from time to time our mind serves up an emotionally charged thought (like when a commercial is playing loudly in the foreground) such as “I cannot wait for that birthday party this weekend!” or, “What if no one sits with me at lunch?” These thoughts tend to grab and keep our attention and before we know it, our emotions have revved up in response. When we get “hooked” by emotionally charged thoughts, we tend to act more impulsively in response.

This is not always a problem. Jumping for joy when you remember an upcoming birthday party can be a fun, spontaneous acknowledgment of a thought! However, if that joyous jump occurs in the middle of an English test, it’s not so helpful. Similarly, if the thought, “What if no one sits with me at lunch?” really hooks you, you might be inclined to avoid lunch that day, thus missing out on a chance to potentially connect with peers.

That is why it is so helpful to start building awareness of your thoughts, or to learn to “mind your mind.” When you are aware of what radio station your mind is tuned to, you are more able to take a step back and decide if you want to engage with that program or not, which gives you a lot more control over your actions.

The Language

While students of any age can build a minding your mind practice, younger students are still developing the cognitive skills to reflect on their own thinking. Because of this, exercises vary considerably for younger and older students.

Pre-K to Grade 2

• Thoughts are the words we say to ourselves. Two people can have different thoughts about the same situation! Can you think of two different things people might think about X situation?

• Gamify it - play charades with your student in which you give them an example situation and they act out the feeling they might have and then say a thought they might have in it. Bonus points if other students come up with different ways of thinking about the situation!

• Look for opportunities to get curious with your student about thoughts characters have in books or shows. How do those thoughts seem to impact the character’s emotions? Their behaviors and choices?

Grades 3 to 8

• As you have probably noticed, your mind is a busy thing! It chatters away all day, saying things that are sometimes helpful, sometimes neutral, and sometimes unhelpful, like when it criticizes or discourages you. In those moments, it can be helpful to acknowledge your thought by saying something like, “I’m noticing that I’m having the thought that I’m going to fail this test” or, “Thanks mind, I know you’re trying to watch out for me but I’ve got this.” This can help create a little distance from the thought which allows us to refocus on the task at hand.

• During stressful times, our minds can get extra busy. We can’t turn our minds off, but we can learn to not get caught up in them. Let’s spend the next three minutes just watching our minds. As each thought comes in, imagine it as a leaf floating down a stream. It may move quickly or it may hang around for a while—that’s okay! The goal is just to practice noticing the leaves, without getting caught up in them. (If you like this practice, there are some great “Leaves on a Stream” guided mindfulness videos on youtube!)

• Stressful thoughts can make it very hard to focus on work. We’re going to try something that may feel a little strange to help you get some space from those thoughts so that you can refocus. As you work, each time you notice your mind saying something unhelpful like “you’ll never figure this out!,” put a little check mark on your page. At the end of the assignment, we’ll be able to see how many times we noticed a thought then refocused on our work.