Have you ever tried to stop thinking and found that it only made your thoughts louder? Like trying to quiet a barking dog by yelling at it? That’s the paradox of the mind: the more attention we give to our thoughts — especially the unwanted ones—the more they multiply.
Turns out that attention is the fuel for thinking. It’s what keeps the mental engine running. Like oxygen to a fire, attention feeds thought, gives it life, and allows it to grow. Without attention, thoughts lose their energy, their fuel source. They may still pop up, but they don’t have staying power. They come and go like clouds instead of storms.
This isn’t about controlling your mind. It’s about understanding your relationship to it. Most of us grew up thinking we are our thoughts, or that we have to follow them wherever they lead. The good news is, that's not true. We can step back, notice them without feeding them, and redirect our attention elsewhere.
Think about anxiety or racing thoughts. What makes them feel so overwhelming? Often, it’s not the thoughts themselves, but how much attention we’re giving them, and how they make us feel. We revisit them, analyze them, try to solve them, brace against them. All of that — though often well-intended — keeps the anxiety engine running.
Now here’s the cool, quiet truth: when we gently remove our attention from thought and place it on something neutral—our breath, the feeling of our feet on the floor, the sound of wind outside — we create space. We start to loosen the grip of thought. The mind can still do its thing, but it’s no longer center stage. We’re no longer trapped inside the storm; we’re watching it from a distance.
And from that distance, peace becomes more available. Not because the thoughts have vanished, but because we’re not tangled up in them. Attention becomes our superpower — not to fuel thought, but to lovingly unhook from it.
The next time your mind is spinning, try this: don’t fight your thoughts. Don’t even try to change them. Just gently move your attention somewhere else. Stay there. See what happens.
You might just find that peace wasn’t something you had to create, or locate — it was something that was already there, underneath all that thinking.