The Elephant (and Dragon) Paradox
The challenge starts like this:
Don't think about elephants!
Bam! Too late. You lose.
You pictured an elephant. Or Dumbo. Or some other pachyderm from your own cultural background. Maybe you pictured a whole herd. Shame on you.
In psychology, this exercise is used to show that we don't always choose our thoughts. An idea can be planted in your brain without your consent, the same way thousands of thoughts are planted every day by the people around you, by the media, by the outside world. You have less control over your mind than you think.
But for a few years now, I've been learning to build up an immunity.
Let's be clear: if you talk to me about elephants, I'm going to think about elephants, like everyone else. But if we held a contest, and there were a machine to measure this kind of thing, you'd see that I can stop thinking about them much faster than you.
That's my superpower: not thinking about elephants for too long.
It may sound trivial (dumb?), but this ability makes for a happier life. Less anxiety, easier relationships, a lighter way of being in general. But before I explain why, let me show you how. Because it's very simple.
To stop thinking about elephants, all you have to do is:
- Allow yourself to think about elephants,
- Accept being interrupted,
- Never celebrate.
Let me explain.
The first step seems counterintuitive, but it's perfectly logical: if you try to stop yourself from thinking about elephants, you check every thought to make sure there aren't any in it. You see the paradox: it's the checking that keeps the idea alive. Even if you manage to move on, the comparison brings the elephant back.
To get around the trap, the goal is to accept the next idea, whatever it is, without judging or comparing. Elephant? Fine. Tiger? Car? Cheese? Great. Everyone's welcome. That's what I call "accepting being interrupted": by shutting down the anti-pachyderm checkpoint and taking in whatever comes, no questions asked, you restore the natural thread of thought, the famous "stream of consciousness," which, when you don't hold it back, never lingers too long on any one subject.
The third step is the decisive one:
Not celebrating means not trying to check whether you've succeeded. And so not rejoicing over a possible victory. Because the same paradox would kick in: to confirm the victory, you'd have to compare your current thought with the forbidden one. And boom: there's the elephant again.
That's the deeper meaning of "moving on": no longer feeding the memory you're avoiding. Not comparing the present with the past you no longer want. Agreeing to be somewhere else, entirely.
Why does this make life easier? Because what works for elephants works for anxiety, for jealousy, for anger. For example, here's my three-step recipe for getting rid of anxiety:
- Allow yourself to be anxious,
- Accept being interrupted by another emotion,
- Don't try to celebrate the end of the anxiety.
Here again, the last step is the one that matters: after the battle, you'd like to rejoice over the dragon's death. To shout that there was a monster here and you slew it. Except all it takes is saying its name for it to come back: wherever you look for anxiety – even to check that it's gone – you'll always find a little.
Hence the importance of moving forward, of moving on without looking back.
After that, it all depends on what you want out of life: to exist as the Great Dragon Slayer in a world infested with them? Or to live as an ordinary nobody in a world where they don't exist? Because both are possible, and the choice is entirely yours.