Fly Fishing: How to not get get hooked on your thoughts

Fly fishers know how to make special lures to catch the trout they are fishing for. They try to mimic what the trout like to eat by building or buying the lures that have similar colors and looks as trout food. Then they wave it over the water and trick the trout into thinking it is a tasty meal. After the trout bites the lure, the more it struggles, the deeper the hook lodges into its mouth and the fly fisher has its catch. Our minds are are lot like expert fly fishers. It knows what our insecurities, worries, and fears are. It is constantly casting out these lures and trying to get us hooked on these thoughts. You make a mistake at work or in class and your mind pulls out the lure “I’m so stupid, what is the point of trying.” Or your get into a argument with a loved one and your mind pulls out the lure “They don’t care about me, what is the point of me caring about them.” If we get hooked on these thoughts, we can then start taking actions such as giving up, pulling away from our loved ones, and so on. Take a minute and think of some of the lures your mind uses on you. Now the trick is to realize the process of what is going on. See yourself as that trout swimming along in the stream. You are trying to go where you want to go, swimming towards your values; the kind of person you want to be, taking actions connected to your preferred way of being. As you swim along, your mind is going to cast a lot of lures. They are going to look tasty and your are going to be tempted to bite on these thoughts, believe them, buy into them, GET HOOOKED on them. As you see these thoughts as lures, you then can decides to keep swimming towards the kind of life you want to live. You don’t need to fix, get rid of, or destroy these lures (image what you would think if you saw a fish spending all its time trying to attack a lure sitting in the water, it would be a pretty futile action). If you do find yourself getting hooked on a thought (because it will happen), notice that, ask yourself if you are getting hooked, and then ask if you an unhook yourself and let that thought just float there on the stream as you swim on.