A client and I were speaking recently in her session about the negative self-talk that was running through her mind ahead of a gig she had coming up the next day. In between sobs, she talked about how she couldn’t get it out of her head and that she was terrified of having to sing this gig. She then mentioned that renowned opera coach Warren Jones often calls this negative voice a “pig” and that he advises his artists to learn to “keep the pig in the pen.”
Inspired by this metaphor, I’d love to explore two popular ways of dealing with negative self-talk and then propose a third way that, from what I’ve seen, is more effective with much less effort and more in line with how we work as human beings.
Option #1: We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Pen
Some people figure there’s nothing they can do about the pig, so they turn their effort instead to fortifying the pen. They might think, “If I build the biggest, strongest, thickest, tallest pen ever, that wild, unruly pig will never get out!” So they learn all sorts of techniques and tricks to keep their negative thoughts at bay or lessen the emotional charge of the thoughts. Some might meditate or practice mindfulness; others might learn various “thought-stopping” exercises or anti-anxiety techniques to do anytime they even begin to feel the pig getting out of control. The idea, in their mind, is that with enough work and practice, they will eventually keep the pig locked up, never to see the world outside the pen again.
But as we all know, life happens and, despite our best efforts, the pig still eventually gets out—a lot. Perhaps it finds a crack in the wall. Maybe it sneaks out when we’re not paying attention to managing our thoughts. In any case, there’s no wall we can build that can truly keep the pig in forever. Those negative thoughts always find a way to show up.
Option #2: Turn Pigs into Cute Puppies
Another popular way of dealing with the pig is “Well, I don’t need to build a stronger pen—I just need to change the pig!” You see this approach often in cognitive behavioral therapy and positive psychology, as well as other self-help modalities such as the Law of Attraction, The Secret, and affirmation work. The idea here is that if we challenge or neutralize the negative thoughts and replace them with positive ones—or if we find the right affirmations, mantras, and positive intentions—we’ll eventually become positive people who never have negative thoughts and who vibrate in alignment with the positive energy of the universe.
But, of course, that’s an exhausting full-time job! And no matter how hard we work at changing our thoughts and deliberately thinking more positively, negative thoughts will still show up. Additionally, you’ve probably had times where positive thinking didn’t make any difference in how you felt—or actually made you feel even worse!
Now, let’s pause for a moment. If you take a closer look, you’ll see that these two options involve a lot of “doing” and effort. And that might even make sense in today’s world where “empowerment” is the big buzz word and we’re constantly told that “if it’s to be, it’s up to me.” Another reason I believe we often turn to “doing” by default is because it gives us a sense of feeling in control, like we’re “making” ourselves better.
But here’s the thing: if we think it’s up to us to make sure our unwanted thoughts “stay in the pen” or that it’s on us to “change” the pig, it’s easy to see how one could get really discouraged when the thoughts inevitably pop into our heads. We might begin to feel like a victim of our own inadequacy. “Maybe I didn’t work hard enough.” “Maybe I did the techniques wrong or did the wrong techniques.” “If only I had meditated/affirmed more.” Or, even worse, “There must be something wrong with me because I can’t control the thoughts.”
But the truth is we can’t control what thoughts come into our head or when they leave. That’s true for everybody; we’re all up against the same thing. It’s not a matter of not working hard enough, not doing the right things, or being broken—it’s a matter of being human.
Now, it might sound kind of depressing that we can’t control our thoughts. But here’s the good news: we don’t have to. We only think we need to because of a simple, innocent misunderstanding of how our minds work. In my own life and in working with clients, I’ve discovered something really cool—once you clear up that misunderstanding, you begin to see that there’s a third option that’s disarmingly simple.
Option #3: See It for What It Is
When my client told me about Warren Jones’ pig metaphor, the first thing that occurred to me to say to her was “The solution doesn’t lie in trying to keep the pig in the pen or doing something to the pig. The answer lies in knowing it’s a pig.”
As I spoke, you could see the light bulb go off in her head as she saw for herself the simple truth behind my words. She immediately began to settle down and get more relaxed and quiet than she had up to that point. You could literally see terror, grief, and frustration fall away from her. As we explored that truth more and wrapped up the session, she was laughing, beaming, and talking about how excited she was to head to the airport in a couple of hours and do that gig.
How did that happen? Well, she saw something that I share often with my clients: “Your power lies not in doing, but in knowing.” When we know how our mind works, we begin to see our thoughts in a new, truly empowering way. We begin to see that thought is a formless energy that is by nature transient and fluid and takes many forms. And, contrary to popular belief, thoughts are much more random and arbitrary than we’re taught. They aren’t as personal as we tend to believe they are. Our mind is much more like a random thought generator than a news feed of deeper truths about who we really are or what we really think.
When we truly see the nature of thought for ourselves, our thoughts no longer have the weight they used to. It stops making sense to try and do something about them, because we know that, like clouds in the sky, they will pass on their own if we let them.
In the same way, when we know that we’re listening to a pig, we’re not going to take what it says so seriously. We realize that just because the thought is there doesn’t mean it’s true, real, or even what we actually think. As a result, we won’t worry so much about managing the pig or building up strong pens to hold it in.
We know sometimes it might sleep quietly, sometimes it might try to break out of the pen, and sometimes it might escape and run around wild—in the same way that our thoughts will randomly come and go or sometimes not even bother us. But no matter what, we know it has no power to hurt us. And it stops making sense to try and change the pig, because to paraphrase a popular saying, “No matter how much lipstick you put on a pig, it’s still a pig.”
Consider this metaphor that I think points in the direction of the power of knowing rather than doing. If you’re like me, you’ve been to the cinema at some point and gotten scared watching a movie. Perhaps it was a horror movie or just a scary scene. Your heart races, your breathing speeds up, and you might even start squirming in your chair.
But you know you’re sitting in a movie. You know on some level that what you’re watching is all acting, that it’s not real, that there were no real bullets in that gun or that that person isn’t really alone in the dark woods at night because there’s a whole film, makeup, and wardrobe crew watching off camera. But even though you know all that, you still feel scared, right?
Now, I bet it doesn’t occur to you to jump up from your seat, run toward the front of the theater, and fight the bad guy on the screen! It probably doesn’t occur to you to run screaming out of the cinema to escape the monster, either. In fact, it probably doesn’t occur to you to do anything to try and “fix” your feelings in the moment because no matter how scared you feel, you know you’re watching a movie. You see it for what it is. You know as soon as that scene changes or the movie ends, you’re not going to feel scared anymore.
That doesn’t mean that sometimes we won’t get tricked or that we’ll always remember we’re listening to a pig. It’s the nature of thought to look real. We might still get scared of our thoughts from time to time in the same way that we still get scared at the cinema sometimes even though we know we’re watching a movie. But when we can see it for what it is—when we know we’re watching a movie, that we’re listening to a pig—it just doesn’t become that big of a deal anymore when we do get scared.
We know that as terrifying and compelling as our thoughts may look in the moment, they’re a passing energy we don’t need to listen to or do anything about. They’ll be gone in a minute if we let them pass. And when we can take managing the pig off our plate, we’ll have more space and freedom to show up and live more fully in the world, both on stage and off. And we’ll be a lot cleaner and less exhausted from not trying to wrangle the pig anymore.
