Label Your Way to Well-Being

My house has labels in many places. I have labels on my workbench drawers, while my wife has them on her pantry storage bins. They appear discreetly on the panels which have multiple light switches. Boxes of photos are labeled by years. The practice seems to be efficient and prevents us from frustrating searching for just the right item!

“Labeling thoughts” may seem like a weird idea but it has an important place in promoting healthy choices in a confusing world.

Thoughts are the constantly flowing river that courses through every moment of our mental existence. In ways no one fully understands, the trillions of neurons in our brain respond to internal and external stimuli to create thought commands for bodily regulation. Most of this is beneath our consciousness; we don’t think about what the large colon must do to process yesterday’s hamburger. Beyond this are the conscious thoughts and emotions that make us human.

That hamburger meal at a restaurant yesterday had hundreds of thoughts swirling during the meal. We don’t often think of digestion (thankfully!) but a normal thought process would consider the mood of the person you are with, the menu choice, the attitude of the wait staff, the pleasant memories of other meals at this restaurant, and even the frustration at making a choice based on your monthly budget limitations.

But these thoughts can get out of whack with what is actually happening. Your mind can imagine negative events. “What if I get sick? What if I can’t pay my credit card? Is that person talking about what I’m wearing? My Dad choked on a french-fry one time!” You might make bad decisions or be filled with negative emotions based on your imagination alone.

This is where Labeling Thoughts can be helpful. Labeling involves awareness that thoughts are not facts. A mental construct may not be true to the actual situation. Labeling is like holding a thought under the microscope to learn more about it. Your real identity and the real situation are separated from the thought or emotion running through your mind. This mental distance reduces the impact of the thought.

Dr. Stephen Hayes says in his book A Liberated Mind, "The goal is to get a little bit of distance from the content of the thought and to see it as a process. If you can see the thought as an event, rather than as a truth, then you can start to relate to it differently and have less of a reason to do what it says."

The heart-racing worry that someone is judging you based on what you are wearing can be labeled as a Projection Thought, not a fact of what is running through the other person’s mind. Projection is deciding what the other person is thinking–which is impossible to truly know. Labeling the nature of your own thought allows more realistic and rational thinking to emerge, perhaps to notice the other person is really absorbed in her own conversation or reflect on your deliberate choice to wear the stylish jacket so you don’t care what they think. Within a moment your concentration has returned to the juicy burger and the funny story your friend is telling. Lunch is good again.

Other than Projection, our mind can Catastrophize with disaster scenarios, try to use a Crystal Ball to know the future, shrink the complicated situation to a binary Black or White, or Personalize to assume the blame for events beyond your control.

I’ve worked in my shop long enough to not really need the labels on the drawers. That’s good. Likewise, Labeling Thoughts is a skill that develops a mental habit. We learn to quickly recognize the tendency towards Projection and take action. That’s a step toward well-being that will help you enjoy the hamburger, the conversation, and the glow of a good lunch.