Hi, it's Vidyamala here. And I've been asked to answer the question, how do I find inner peace when I'm bombarded by negative thoughts and emotions? This is such a great question because I'm sure we'll all be able to relate to it. Certainly I can. In this answer, I'm going to talk a bit about evolutionary psychology, first of all, to normalize the tendency towards negative thoughts and emotions. And then I'm going to provide some practices or some tips and tools for how you can interrupt being dominated by negative thoughts and emotions and move towards more moments of inner peace.

So let's start by looking a little bit at some of the insights of evolutionary psychology, and in particular, what's known of as the negativity bias. Essentially what this is saying is that the way we're wired up to do with our evolution is to be very alert to threat, because of course we need to be alert to threat for our survival. Whereas noticing things like a beautiful sunset, beautiful flower, these kinds of things, in a sense from an evolutionary point of view, those are optional. Whereas noticing the tiger that's about to eat us well, that's kind of important. So our nervous systems are designed to be vigilant to threat as the kind of default setting.

And so I'll give you some stats on thoughts now, which are kind of shocking and also reassuring if you find your mind is dominated by negative thoughts and emotions. And researchers think that the average human being has something like 30,000 to 70,000 thoughts a day, certainly tens of thousands of thoughts a day. And interestingly, about 95% of those thoughts, we've had before. So we've got the same repetitive thoughts, looping round and round. And certainly when I watch my own mind, that does seem to be the case.

And even more interestingly, in the untrained mind, somebody who hasn't learned to work with the mind using mindfulness and compassion and to change the default setting, in the untrained mind, something like 75% of our thoughts and emotions are negative. That's so interesting, isn't it? So if you find that you've got the same repetitive, negative thoughts and emotions looping through the mind, looping through your head, then that is indeed probably the case. And that's because of your evolution, that's because of the way we've emerged as human beings with a vigilance towards threats. Paul Gilbert is a leading psychologist in the field of compassion studies. And he often talks about this kind of thing.

And he says, it's not your fault. It's chaotic in there, which again is just so reassuring and fantastic because I think many of us think we should have a different kind of mind. Why can't we have a lovely, loving mind? Why can't we be like everybody else? And we project this kind of lovely, perfect mind onto other people. And we think we're the only ones with these repetitive, negative dominating thoughts going through the mind. So far, so normal.

Yeah. We've got a mind and the mind tends to the negative and it tends to threat awareness. So then the issue becomes, okay, so that's the case. How can we cultivate more inner peace? How can we find inner peace when we're bombarded by these negative thoughts and emotions. And the good news is that inner peace is only a breath away, it's only a moment away.

We can drop into more inner peace right now. And inner peace isn't some far away fantasy state of perfection, but it's more like an attitude to the mind, an attitude to our thoughts. It's a process. And if you've got a little bit more inner peace in this moment than the last moment, that's a great thing. That's something to celebrate and you can have even more inner peace in the next moment.

What I'd really encourage you to do is to celebrate those moments where we have a taste of something that's a bit more spacious, a bit more peaceful than the normal, uh, mental state with all these negative thoughts and emotions looping through the mind. And the main thing we need to do, or the main invitation is to interrupt the chain of thinking. And we do this by coming into our senses. One of the other interesting things about the way we're wired up which I find really fascinating, is we can't be in our senses, and by that, I mean really attending to seeing things, hearing sounds, smelling things, feeling, touch, or tasting things, these the five physical senses, we can't be in the senses and lost in thinking at exactly the same moment. We just can't do that.

If we're coming into direct sensory perception, it's a bit like that fills our awareness. So there's not much space left for out of control thinking. Likewise, if we're really lost in our thinking, you'll notice that you've got very little sensory awareness. So they're, they're on a kind of scale. The mor.

Your awareness is full of the sense, the less room there is for out of control thinking and the more you're dominated by thinking the less room there is for sense impressions. So a very simple thing is simply to come into the sense. And of course the key skill here is awareness. We need to notice what our minds are getting up to. So say you wake up as it were, you can sort of come to in the moment and you think, wow.

You know, I've got a lot of negative thoughts at the moment. And instead of judging that you think, okay, that's interesting. I don't need to identify with those thoughts. I can just drop into my senses. Feel the weight of the body on the chair, rest, breathe out, and then look around you, if the visual sense is the one that you want to particularly enjoy.

Look out the window, maybe at the sky, even if it's a gray day. There can sometimes be something quite beautiful about the gray sky when we look at it with the right kind of attention. Open up to sounds. Maybe get yourself a cup of tea, a cup of coffee, some other kinds of drink or something to eat and just really enjoy the taste, savor the taste, and then notice what's happened to your thinking. And you'll probably find that the more you're in the taste or the more you're in your senses, the less dominant are the thoughts.

So that really is a very simple, immediate, um, highly effective way of breaking the chain of out of control thinking. Of course, you might find that you just bounce straight back into the same old mental states in the next moment. That's pretty normal. But the training is to notice that. We just keep noticing that without judgment.

Oops, there I go again. Okay. Come back into my senses. Oops, there I go again, come back into my senses. And what we're doing is were shifting the way our brain works.

We're actually literally rewiring our brain when we do that. And we're cultivating a brain that's more present, more embodied and less discursive. And that in itself can be a doorway to greater and greater inner peace. So hope you found that helpful. Certainly I found it really helpful just reminding myself as I talk to you.

And thank you so much for your practice and your courage, your willingness to look at your mind, to own up to negativity when it arises. And to know that there is another way of being human, there is another way of being present, open, receptive, and dropping into the body and the senses. So I wish you well as you bring all these tips, awareness, kindness into your whole life, and I hope it's helpful. And please know that all these things I'm talking to you about, I'm also applying in my own life. This is what I try to do when I notice my mind is dominated by thinking I stop.

I settle. I breathe out. I also like to feel my weight on the chair, feel my body, and then open up to my senses. And I find it really, really helpful. And the brilliant thing of course is it's always available.

It doesn't cost anything to look out the window or listen to something or smell something. And I find it endlessly fascinating. Life opens up into greater and greater richness. So I really hope that you find this as well moment by moment by moment. And remember, please, to be kind to yourself, gentle with yourself, patient with yourself.

And please remember, and I'm saying this to myself as well, please remember to be open to wonder. Just to be aware of the possibility of this very, very moment containing wonder and the kind of mystery of what does it mean to be alive. Endlessly fascinating. So thanks again for listening and I wish you all the very, very best.