Dr. Peter J. Weiss

In the last cou­ple of posts we’ve been talk­ing about hav­ing an open mind.  It’s one of the most impor­tant con­cepts in grow­ing and chang­ing for the bet­ter, includ­ing devel­op­ing a new health­ier lifestyle.  But like I’ve said it’s not that easy.

We tend to iden­tify with our thoughts and our roles.  We think that we “are” our beliefs.  Why is that?  Why can’t we change our think­ing like we change our clothes?  No one will say I am “dif­fer­ent per­son” tomor­row than I am today because tomor­row I’m wear­ing a new suit.  Yet if I were to make a major change in polit­i­cal par­ties, reli­gious affil­i­a­tion, dietary habits or other sig­nif­i­cant life mat­ter, peo­ple might well say, “Pete’s a dif­fer­ent per­son that he used to be.”

But of course you know this isn’t true.  In your own expe­ri­ence you have changed your mind on issues over your life­time, yet you are still you.  You are not your mind.  You have a mind in the same way as you have a heart and have a liver.  I credit Eck­hart Tolle author of  “The Power Of Now” for help­ing me to under­stand this.

It’s quite lib­er­at­ing not to be attached to your thoughts.  If your thoughts and ideas are not ben­e­fi­cial to you, sim­ply let them go and adopt new ones.  It takes prac­tice but it can be done, and real­iz­ing that you are not your mind can be the first step.  I heartily rec­om­mend Eck­hart Tolle’s audio CD “Liv­ing A Life of Inner Peace” which has helped me immensely in this regard.

You are also not the role you play in your fam­ily or in soci­ety.  Our habits of speech help keep us iden­ti­fied with our roles.  For exam­ple the state­ment “I am a doc­tor” is much dif­fer­ent than say­ing “I trained to prac­tice med­i­cine.”  One labels me, defines me and boxes me in as “a doc­tor.”  In fact these labels are so strong that occa­sion­ally when I say “I’m not a real doc­tor any­more,” peo­ple will argue with me about it.

This is impor­tant because many roles come with def­i­n­i­tions in our heads.  In my case model think­ing might be some­thing like, “A doc­tor acts like this and never does that.  I’m a doc­tor, there­fore I must act like this and never do that.”  Never mind what I might think is best for me, because “I am a doc­tor” and so I must behave and even think in a cer­tain way.

Take some time and con­sider how strongly you may have built your iden­tity around your ideas, belief sys­tem or life roles.  Start tak­ing down that iden­tity to build a new one.  You are not your thoughts.  You are not your mind.  You are not your roles.  You are larger than that.