You Are Not Your Thoughts (And Why That Matters)

Have you ever noticed how your mind can feel like a busy sky? Some days it’s all light and fluffy clouds — easy, breezy thoughts drifting by. Other days it’s more like a storm front rolling in — dark, heavy, and hard to see past. Busy, noisy, bustling, distracting. 

It can think so incredibly well, and so thoroughly through details, even turning on us and becoming critical and harsh. 

Although motivating at times, these thoughts can take over or become intrusive when other factors like stress, depletion or even the pressure of past hurts come into play. 

Here’s the thing: you are not the clouds. You’re the sky.

Put differently, you are not your thoughts; you are the being who thinks them. Discerning between the two can be tricky, or even be completely impossible at certain times of our lives.  

Most of us forget that differentiation, much of the time.  We get tangled up in old stories — "I’m not creative,” “I’m too old to change,” “I don’t deserve love.”

These thoughts start to feel like truth when in fact, they’re just passing weather. A storm is blowing through, but we think we ARE the storm.

That’s what happens when we live on autopilot. We let outdated rules and old patterns steer us, instead of noticing what’s actually here in the moment.

Hitting Pause

This is where awareness comes in. And no, I don’t mean sitting perfectly still with your eyes closed for hours. At its heart, awareness is simply the practice of hitting pause long enough to notice: *What’s happening right now?* and not feeling the need to react or take immediate action to change what you are noticing.

Say you feel anger bubbling up. Instead of snapping or swallowing it down, you take a breath. You ask yourself: *What’s really going on here? Is this anger, or is it sadness? Or maybe fear underneath?*

That tiny gap — the space between the thinker and the thought — is gold. It’s where choice lives.

Psychologist Susan David calls this emotional agility: the ability to feel whatever you’re feeling without being hijacked by it, and still act in a way that lines up with the kind of life you want, with your values, and with your intentions.

Stepping Back Even Further

Buddhist teachers invite us to go one step further. They say: don’t just notice the thought… notice the one who’s noticing.

It sounds a bit 'meta', but it’s actually simple: you watch your mind the same way you’d watch clouds drift across the sky. You don’t have to push them away or cling to them. They just come and go.

As meditation teacher Joseph Goldstein puts it:

“An emotion is like a cloud passing through the sky… none of them ultimately constitute a self.”

Which means: your feelings - though real - are not the whole of you.

Why This Matters

The more we practice observing our thoughts and emotions, the more freedom we find.

• Instead of reacting on autopilot, we get to choose our response.
• Instead of recycling old stories, we get to write new ones.
• Instead of being tossed around by the storm, we remember we are the sky.

It’s not about numbing out or disconnecting. It’s about creating space. Space for clarity. Space for compassion. Space to live with a little more ease.

And that’s something worth practising.

Try This: A 2-Minute Sky Practice

1. Pause and sit comfortably. Close your eyes if that feels safe.

2. Notice your breath. Don’t change it — just feel it moving in and out.

3. Watch your thoughts. Imagine them as clouds passing across a big open sky. Some light, some heavy, some fast-moving, some slow.
4. Remember you are the sky. Spacious, steady, always there — no matter what weather moves through.
5. Return to the breath. Whenever you get caught in a cloud, gently bring your attention back to the sky of awareness.

That’s it. Two minutes. A small reset that reminds you: you are bigger than your passing thoughts and feelings.

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You might also like to learn more about HOLDING SPACE, here.