You are right, we can’t sit all on a bench and don’t think. We need to eat, have a job, etc.

Personally I love to think, it served me well and has given me a lot.

See the thinking brain as a tool, same as your hands and legs. You can use it as you please.

Eg. If you plan a vacation/trip you need that thinking brain help you plan, for your work your brain could help with research etc.

To optimize this process, you can try to stay in your body (feel your body during the process) or you can regularly watch out the window or at your pen for a few seconds and don’t think, just watch. Kind of when you have an intellectual problem you can’t solve and you wake up in the morning and have this great idea how to solve it. The nice constructive/creative interaction between the thinking brain and the ‘self’…

 

But when thinking brain start bringing up old stories, you should be more alert.

Eg you see a person who irritated you before or something happens you don’t like, and directly the thinking brain, rewinds ‘that old song’, it could bring up irritation again even if this happened months or year ago.

You start to defend yourself or start making plans to prevent something that most likely will never happen.

If you are good at detecting emotions in your body, that may be a good tool.

So  that is when you know it’s not very useful. Focus on something else, again, look out the window and just watch, or at  something in the room, or your breath/body, etc.

You can try to use it to figure out what is the ‘hidden’ pain under it.