Our minds have a queue of thoughts. Mindfulness can help determine what fills the queue.

In yesterday’s blog post, I talked about meditation and the app Calm. I have come to be a firm believer in the power and the benefits of meditation. It helps to identify and calm our thoughts, but this got me thinking about mindfulness during my yoga class today.

It seems to me that our minds just operate on a queue of thoughts that we seem to think are important. And these thoughts are always consistently fighting to get to the top of the queue. Our conscious mind operates with the thoughts that are at the forefront of our minds, but there are other important thoughts that keep fighting to get to the top of the queue.

Let me take yesterday’s yoga class in NYC for instance. It was a busy day so I had a lot on my mind to think about. During yoga, I was focused on what I was doing, but I constantly had other thoughts pop into my mind of things that had to do with my day.

It seems to me that this is the way our mind works. We think about something and that’s the top of the queue. But the other items in the queue see to work their way up and sometimes beat out the thoughts that are at the top of the queue.

I don’t think we can ever necessarily stop this process, but what I have found is that we can start to control the items in the queue and slow the process down so items jump to the top slower.

During my yoga classes today, I started to notice that I can actually influence my thoughts; I can keep my thoughts about the present moment near the top of the queue with mindfulness. Rather than thinking about thoughts that involve what “I have to do with my day”, I can start to focus on ideas about what is going on in the same room.

I can focus on how the yoga teacher is teaching and I can focus my thoughts about how I might improve my yoga practice. But I can also notice when my thoughts start to drift away from these thoughts involving the present moment.

That’s the thing about meditation, it’s not about controlling your thoughts. It is about identifying the thoughts that you are having. Those thoughts that are forming your queue of thoughts; then controlling what enters the queue. And if a thought enters the queue that is not about the present moment, you let it pass and move onto the next thought; rather than letting that thought consume you.

So again, I will say that I believe meditation is powerful. And it is powerful because you can start to identify the thoughts entering your mind and control the ones that you believe are important. Often the most important ones are the ones that are part of the present moment, so meditation and mindfulness teaches you to let all of those other unrelated thoughts pass through your mind. Keep your thoughts on the present moment and you will calm your own mind.

So give the Calm app or any other mindfulness app a try and let me know what you think about meditation. Also what do you think about this idea that our minds are a queue of thoughts? I’d love to hear from you.