You’re not going to stop the train but we can shift the track.  As someone with ADD I realized that I spent a lot of energy on trying to control the thoughts themselves, like when they would come, when they would go.  I realized that in my entire life I can’t recall a time when I didn’t have something racing through my mind, usually multiple things at the same time.  I am not exaggerating when I say there were literally moments I couldn’t keep up with my own brain.  Completely unrelated things all running at the same time.  I share this because I so often compared this to multiple trains running through my mind at the same time.  Honestly that’s how the behavior of stopping the trains started.  I couldn’t stand that my thoughts not only came and went so fast but that I couldn’t follow enough of them to make a decision or hear anything really coherently in my head.  I think that’s why writing helped—it would at least sort of kind of narrow my focus.  Regardless, it took me my entire adult life up to this point to look at this differently: I can’t stop the train—the thoughts will ALWAYS come, and really that’s a good thing because if those thoughts stop, we’re dead—but I can shift the track.

Yes, it’s similar to what I talked about with steering our ship by directing our sails, but this is more important than that.  This is the channeling of energy.  It’s not just the focus, it’s the learning and harnessing the ability to not get run over by our own thoughts.  When we shift the track, it can be as simple as changing perspective.  All we have to do is understand these thoughts aren’t out to harm us and they can only harm us if we allow it.  Our thoughts are nothing more than markers, indicators of where we are—more like a guidepost.  If we are consistently thinking something not aligned with what we feel or if those thoughts creep up, then it’s a reminder to pause and see where that’s coming from—are we in an environment we aren’t used to, are we stepping into something uncomfortable?  If that is the case then we need to take it as a good sign that we have the ability to pause and redirect the course of those thoughts—and no matter what, we don’t have to believe them. 

The other part of this that feels more complicated to explain (for me at least) is that the idea of stopping the train seems to come with so much force.  Like we have the ability to stop our natural functions, one of the very indicators we are alive.  At the same time, we do need to be aware of how to direct our thoughts so there does seem to be an element of control.  And still at the same time we have to discern how to go with the flow and allow—to lean into what IS.  I think the reason this is so complicated is because we are trying to equate a feeling to an action.  We know what it feels like to be in flow and to steer the direction, to make choices.  But we can’t actively describe how we do it.  It’s a feeling, not an action.  It’s a presence and an interaction with energy.  A decision and acceptance.  The point of working with our mind and our feelings is never about forcing them to go a certain way, it’s knowing how to discern which thoughts we entertain.  And as we make those choices, the focus becomes clear.  It’s not about stopping anything, it’s about what we choose to entertain with our responses.  THAT we have control over. So don’t make the goal be about stopping anything-make it about understanding and learning to follow the feelings we want.