For people who fail to generalize from the exercises:
I think the more general point with these kinds of exercises is that you can’t stop your mind from working on something, only change the object of attention, and that requires that you’re conscious of what your mind is doing in the first place. When you tried not to subvocalize, you probably tried to focus your attention on other objects. If you weren’t subvocalizing in the first place, you were probably already focusing your attention on something else.
This is why meditation usually anchors your mind on some relatively boring object. You can’t stop the mental chatter, but you can mostly replace it by intensely focusing on your breath, for example.
Music, video games and subvocalization are poor anchors for attention, because they can hijack it completely. Breathing is boring so you have to be conscious of your attention to focus on it, and it also happens to be a tool you always carry with you, and it happens by itself.
For people who fail to generalize from the exercises:
I think the more general point with these kinds of exercises is that you can’t stop your mind from working on something, only change the object of attention, and that requires that you’re conscious of what your mind is doing in the first place. When you tried not to subvocalize, you probably tried to focus your attention on other objects. If you weren’t subvocalizing in the first place, you were probably already focusing your attention on something else.
This is why meditation usually anchors your mind on some relatively boring object. You can’t stop the mental chatter, but you can mostly replace it by intensely focusing on your breath, for example.
Music, video games and subvocalization are poor anchors for attention, because they can hijack it completely. Breathing is boring so you have to be conscious of your attention to focus on it, and it also happens to be a tool you always carry with you, and it happens by itself.