Have you ever woke up in the middle of the night with your mind reeling over and over again with something either inconsequential, or perhaps a troubling question that you just cannot seem to get a grips on during the day. You lay there and you play different scenarios in your mind. One solution seems plausible, but then another chattering aspect of the problem chimes in to add something more to the mix.

As you lay there, you may or may not come up with a solution. But whatever you may or may not come up with, it is certain there are only so many hours in the night, and you will have to get up in the morning, so you decide you better get to sleep. Then the mind chatter begins again, and sure enough, you get sucked in and begin a dialog with thoughts that aren’t going anywhere.

Finally, you recognized what has happened and look at the clock. As you lay there watching the clock tick away the hours, you begin to bargain with yourself. You think; if I go to sleep right now, I will get 4 hours of sleep. Then the mind chatter begins, and you get sucked in again. Nothing new to add to this insanity, but it is this insanity that has your full attention. After awhile, you may come up with what you think is a brilliant solution, but in the morning as you examine your solution you realize that this is one of the most absurd ideas you have ever come up with.

Once again, you look at the clock. Now you have 2 hours left before you have to get up, so you make another bargain. I am just not going to listen anymore, but within a couple of minutes you are right back in the midst of the mind chatter again.

As one hour drags into another one, about a half hour before you have to get up you fall into the deepest sleep of the whole night. When the alarm goes off, you are so groggy it feels like you left something in dream land and you need to go back and get it. It actually takes you half the day to be able to function properly. What’s up with this?

I have observed mind chatter on other occasions besides the middle of the night. When someone has done something that my ego believes has offended it, this encourages mind chatter. The mind chatter really never culminates in a solution that works out for the good of anyone concerned. In fact, what I hear is how my ego thinks I should handle the situation, and I know this would not end well for me These solutions are so idiotic and many times so full of venom, if these solutions were used, they would degrade everyone involved.

If mind chatter is such a waste of time, why is there so much internal time invested in it? I know that once a person is engaged in mind chatter, it is like a hamster on a wheel. The mind just goes round and round, as if it is fixated on the same issue. This seems to be an aspect of our brain that is stuck and keeps firing the same sequence of events stored in memory over and over again. The question is why?

If we are intellectual beings, shouldn’t we be able to rationalize a solution? It is true that some people have a chemical imbalance that causes this problem, but mind chatter is not a condition that is only relevant to people with a chemical imbalance. Mind chatter is a global phenomenon that crosses all religious, national, and racial boundaries. From a mind chatter perspective, we are all clearly on the same page, which is being slightly insane when mind chatter strikes.

Mind chatter is an unreasonable attempt to resolve a problem without the means to reach a sane solution. In other words, all of the facts are not evident to bring about the means to solve a question, or a solution to a problem that has been internally posed does not have all of the information necessary to bring the problem to the solution.

When we cannot find something, we go looking for it. The problem is, when we do not have all of the pieces to a problem we engage in mind chatter, which is emotionally and physically exhausting. Looking for a solution where there is none is not helpful or sane. However, until a problem is recognized, old methods of engaging in problem solving will continue. This includes mind chatter. It would make more sense to look for the missing pieces of the problem rather than engaging in internal rhetoric that does nothing except upset us. At least this would not be a waste of time.

When mind chatter is not a factor, it is because we have access to all of the facts necessary to put the problem to rest, and so we are at peace. Having peace of mind allows us to sleep when we go to bed and rest even while we are awake.

When we are in the mind chatter mode, our inner child is having a difficult time reaching a reasonable solution. We can help our inner child by interrupting the inconsistency of the method of internal communication by learning to ask pertinent questions. We would not engage with a child in a conversation that clearly made no sense, yet we will put up with this from our own mind. It is time to begin to challenge our own internal chatter and determine what the problem really is so we can take a step towards internal peace. When we are peaceful everyone is a beneficiary, and this is how it should be.