Thoughts, Emotions, and an Awareness Meter

In a study led by Drs. Matt Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert at Harvard University in 2010, researchers used an App to ask people what they were thinking and feeling at random. People reported that their minds wandered away from what they were doing about half the time and that their minds wandered toward pleasant thoughts only about a third of the time. Given that two-thirds of mind-wandering is toward unpleasant or neutral thoughts, it makes sense that people are happier when focused on the present even when focused on an unpleasant task.

In my Zoom classes for families this week, I use an awareness meter and barrel of plastic monkeys to demonstrate how to work with thoughts and emotions that bubble up when we meditate.

We start with a brief guided meditation - we feel our breathing, or listen to sounds, or pay attention to sensations. Then, we ask children to share the thoughts that bubbled up and note whether those thoughts were in the past, present, or future. When a thought is about something happening now, we add a blue monkey to the chain. If it's about something in the future, we add an orange monkey, and if it's about something in the past, we add a red monkey. More often than not, few if any of the monkeys on the chain are blue. Most are red and orange because our minds wander into the past and future frequently. The chain of plastic monkeys gives us a playful, visual representation of everybody's thoughts and shows us that our minds rarely focus on the present.

When children notice their thoughts, we congratulate them. They know where their minds are, so that's a moment of mindful awareness! It doesn't matter whether their thoughts have wandered into the past or future – we drop the monkeys and go back to meditating again.