Breaking Your Thought Patterns
- David Price
- Jul 9
- 5 min read
Simple but not easy! Good article from psych today on how to break out of habitual thinking patterns. Are you following a script, some of which isn't working for you?
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Smash the Teleprompter
How mindfulness can break the script of habit.
Updated June 26, 2025 | Reviewed by Margaret Foley
Key points
The thinking mind acts like a dictator, rushing in to tell why you’re behind and what you should do instead.
Mindfulness interrupts mental autopilot, pulling you away from the teleprompter in your brain.
Labeling feelings weakens their grip, keeping you focused on present-tense reality.
I’ve been watching this British detective show called Death Valley. You know the type: long coats, lots of rain, crime scenes lit like a Coldplay video—but there’s a line from the show that’s stayed with me: “No one behaves out of character.” The detective says it with the dry certainty of someone who’s seen it all—but not in a cynical way. More like a naturalist identifying a bird. People, he insists, are just a series of habits.
The longer the habit, the deeper the groove.
Which made me think of my longtime Buddhist teacher, Sylvia Bercovici. Sylvia, a former student of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, is an anthropologist, psychotherapist, wise teacher, and a deep student of the mind. Sylvia taught me, along with a loyal group of students, about the Tibetan Lojong slogan “Don’t be so predictable.” The idea is that we should interrupt our habitual tendencies instead of mistaking them for something intrinsic, something solid. That’s what Lojong is: mind-training slogans designed to undercut the well-worn tracks we call “me.”
And Lord, do I have tracks. Every morning, I read from my internal teleprompter: compare myself to others, steel myself, strategize, resolve, berate. I look at other women’s book rankings (no names), feel inadequate, scold myself for not getting up earlier, and then jab myself with a psychic cattle prod. All before 9:05. It feels like motivation, but really it’s more like a hallucinated PowerPoint I’ve never even considered not obeying.
The Script Is Not the Self
Propanchā is the Buddhist term for what happens when the thinking mind takes over and starts generating stories, commentary, judgments, and imagined futures. It’s not a conscious process. It feels like “me.” But as Sylvia said, “You’re not experiencing the moment—you’re experiencing your commentary about the moment.”
The Satipatthāna Sutta—the Buddha’s original teaching on mindfulness—offers an antidote.
Mindfulness, despite what recent marketing tells us, is not a goopy cream Gwyneth Paltrow sells in a jar. It doesn’t involve taking ayahuasca or putting a eucalyptus leaf in your bra. It simply means placing one's mind on the present-tense reality.
The fourth category is where things get deep. This is where we begin to notice the big habitual patterns—the subtle stances we’ve rehearsed for so long they’ve faded into the background. They feel like truth, but they’re really just strategies—old coping moves we've practiced until they became invisible. Like lines in a play we never auditioned for, yet somehow know by heart.
My Morning Mindfulness (Attempt)
Lately, I’ve been trying to apply mindfulness of feeling in the mornings. Just labeling what’s arising—“unpleasant,” “neutral,” “pleasant”—without getting swept into a story. Noticing the guilt about getting up late, the discomfort of the chair, the twinge of envy. And when I flash on it, I can see it all more clearly. The scolding inner monologue pauses. I don’t go spiraling off into reviews and rankings. I just come back.
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And it is a coming back—to the body, to the breath, to the moment. “Bare awareness,” Sylvia calls it. Awareness before it gets elaborated. Before it becomes a mental stew of memories and predictions and self-criticism.
The False Authority of Habit
Sylvia sometimes compares the thinking mind to a “benign dictator”—it rushes in, confident and helpful-sounding, telling you what everything means, why you’re behind, what you should be doing instead. It sounds like it has your best interests at heart. But it’s reinforcing the schema—a kind of psychic architectural plan that you’ve internalized without realizing it.
These schemas—which Sylvia links to both Buddhist psychology and modern psychotherapy—are unconscious maps. They guide our perception and behavior, but we rarely examine them. That’s why the detective in Death Valley was right: People don’t act out of character. Because most of us don’t know how to break character. We’ve been playing the same role for years.
Recently, on my podcast Fifty Words for Snow, which I cohost with Emily John Garcés, I interviewed John Ekizian for an episode called “Armenian Ardor.” John shared a word he and his best friend Aaron use: scripted. It’s their shorthand for all the moments in life that feel inevitable—the patterns that repeat so reliably, they might as well be written into the fabric of who we are. Aaron forgets his keys? Scripted. John spills something on himself? Scripted. John's mom announces she’s not making stuffing for Thanksgiving, only to make it anyway after a round of pleading? Also scripted. But instead of despairing, John sees it all with affection.
Best "scripted" friends John Ekizian and Aaron Walton
Source: Used with permission/John Ekizian
What struck me most was how scripted makes space for grace. There’s something deeply intimate in knowing each other’s patterns and choosing to meet them with humor instead of irritation. John said the word helps him acknowledge the deeply habitual behaviors—his own and others’—with good nature. And isn’t that a kind of mindfulness, too? Recognizing the groove without falling into it headfirst.
Because seeing the script is halfway to rewriting it.
Breaking the Teleprompter
The Lojong slogan “Don’t be so predictable” is about interrupting the trance of your own self-concept.
The scary part is going off-script and improvising. It means letting go of the comforts of pattern, even the painful ones. It means risking unpredictability. Feeling raw. Showing up to the moment without your usual defenses. But as Sylvia reminded us, “The objective isn’t spiritual penance. It’s joy.” The goal—if we can call it that—is to be fully present, which means being fully alive.
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So I’ve been trying. One morning at a time. Noticing when I slip back into the script. Noticing when I don’t. Labeling the moment—unpleasant, pleasant, neutral—and watching the grip loosen. It’s not a revolution. It’s a return.
Because maybe freedom isn’t a dramatic break. Maybe it’s a subtle shift—a half-second flash in which you see the teleprompter for what it is…and you look up.
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