How to navigate mental traffic jams

Our thoughts—some 60,000 to 80,000 per day, as studies suggest—are like bumper-to-bumper traffic with vehicles tailgating one another and getting nowhere. At least not anytime soon.

Rush-hour traffic, day in and day out, leaves us stressed and traps us in a mental gridlock. We find ourselves stuck, unable to move forward or backward. As it is on the road, so it is in the mind.

While we can do little about traffic jams, we can, however, control our tailgating thoughts by slowing down, taking a breath, easing off the mental accelerator, and giving ourselves the space to think more clearly and make better decisions—one conscious thought at a time.

Eknath Easwaran, the renowned spiritual teacher and author, eloquently offers a remedy in his book Love Never Faileth: "Through meditation and the enthusiastic observance of its allied disciplines, such as slowing down and keeping the mind one-pointed through the day, we can learn to do something that sounds impossible: when thoughts are tailgating each other, we can slip into the flow of mental traffic, separate thoughts that have locked bumpers, and slowly squeeze ourselves in between."

Easwaran, who founded the Blue Mountain Center of Meditation in California and the inspiration for this post, adds, "It sounds terribly daring—the kind of stunt for which professionals in the movies are paid fortunes. Yet most of us critically underestimate our strength. We can learn to step right in front of onrushing emotional impulses such as fury and little by little, inch by hard-won inch, start pushing them apart. This takes a lot of solid muscle, in the form of willpower; but just as with muscles, we can build up willpower with good, old-fashioned practice."

At a time when our lives are filled with mental traffic jams, slowing down can aid us in ways we can scarcely imagine. It teaches patience, infuses us with a rare inner calm, and helps us gently steer through the chaos—both in bad traffic and in everyday life.

© Pocketful of Happiness / Photo: wal_172619/Pixabay