A very simple concept that most people have heard before is this, “you are not your emotions.” It’s a basic tenet of emotional regulation; you are not your sadness you are simply experiencing your sadness, you are not your anxiety you are only witnessing the anxiety occur. We are observers not victims to our thoughts and feelings.
Experience is impermanent, thoughts come and go and they are impermanent. Look at all the sadness and the bliss and the boredom and the frustration. It eventually will all go away. The nature of experience is that all feelings show up and then they eventually fade away. Whatever comes into your life you have already allowed otherwise it wouldn’t be there.
The ability to take note of the distance that exists between you and your emotions is the key to experiencing a peaceful of mind. If we make it a priority to pay attention to our relationship with our thoughts and feelings we can begin to rehearse on a daily basis how to pause in challenging moments. When we highlight for ourselves that we are not all of the emotions happening to us, that we do not embody and represent depression and anger, we can then begin to distance ourselves from uncomfortable moments that might otherwise consume us.
Jeff Foster uses a metaphor to explain how to conceptualize our relationship with our thoughts. He invites everyone to picture themselves as the ocean with depth and layers, saying that our consciousness is like the ocean and our thoughts, sensations and emotions are the waves of the ocean. Even the most intense human feelings: anger, frustrations and confusions can be tolerated. These waves of emotions can appear in the ocean that you are and not define you. The waves are not against you, they are not your enemy, they are not imperfections but they are movements of yourself, they belong in you. So, if who you are is consciousness then thoughts and feelings are also movements of consciousness.
The ocean accepts all of its waves. The fact that a certain wave is present is proof that you can already contain it and tolerate it. Try to view sensations as waves constantly coming and going, disappearing and appearing all on their own. Notice thoughts appearing, memories, wants, pictures, sensation in this moment and stop to take a look at the distance that exists in the ocean that we are.