15/07/2025
The Thought Aquarium
“Let’s imagine that you are visiting an aquarium. It’s an incredible sight, up there with the world’s finest, such as the Georgia Aquarium in the USA, or L’Oceanogràfic Aquarium in Spain. The centerpiece of this aquarium is a huge tank filled with millions of litres of water surrounding a tunneled walkway snaking around the tank’s floor. Imagine that you are walking through that bright and airy tunnel. The water is a beautiful translucent blue as the sunlight shines down from above. Large rocks and colorful corals litter the aquarium floor to your left and right. As you advance, you can see fish of various shapes and sizes swimming into view. Imagine that these fish represent the myriad thoughts you experience; you have entered the Thought Aquarium.
Small tropical fish, including colorful clownfish and butterfly fish, catch your eye as they swim into view, only to disappear quickly with the flick of their tail. These are the joyous thoughts that accompany good news or moments of success. Their appearance can be fleeting and all too infrequent. Then there are medium-sized fish – think of mullets and snappers – that swim casually into view. These represent your ‘run-of-the-mill’ thoughts: tasks you need to remember to do, opinions you hold, news stories that have piqued your interest. And then there are the larger, more menacing fish—the manta rays and sharks… You can feel the sense of foreboding as they swim into view and linger overhead. These fish represent the more challenging thoughts you experience and the shadow of cold emotions they can cast – health concerns, financial stresses, regrets about the past, fears about the future, concerns about your ability to cope… Thoughts that can stop you in your tracks.
Now let’s pause to appreciate that no matter how beguiling, attention-grabbing, or threatening the fish in an aquarium might be, the tunnel walls ensure that they are separated from you. Despite how it may seem, they can’t consume you, nor can they block your path as you make your way through the aquarium. So, too, with your thoughts. Whilst being inquisitive and curious about thoughts is essential, we must appreciate that these are transient elements of our experience that come into view before passing on. Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet, “There is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so“. By adopting an attitude of detached curiosity, we can notice that whereas thoughts come and go, we prevail. We have thoughts; thoughts don’t have us.”
Full article: https://trainingmag.com/the-importance-of-developing-a-flexible-mind/
Association for Contextual Behavioral Science (ACBS)
