Do you ever feel like your mind is an outgoing 5-year old who just won't stop talking? I think most people do; after all, some conclude that the average person has over 70,000 thoughts a day...that's a lot of noise! And trust me, I felt the weight of all 70,000 of those thoughts the other night when I was lying in bed with my eyes wide open. The house was quiet, my family was sleeping, and everything was calm. But my mind (sigh) was anything but calm. My thoughts were racing about this and that...random things.
Needless to say, I was not happy about this situation! So what type of thoughts cause us to pay attention, stress us out, or, like me, keep us awake in the middle of the night? I'll get to that. But first, keep in mind that many of our thoughts are pretty meaningless. We may not even pay attention to them. After all, if we pay attention to every belief, opinion, or perception we have, we won't be able to get anything else done! But then there are the other thoughts, the thoughts that hurt us, the thoughts that are negative or untrue or just plain self-defeating. These are the thoughts that get our attention and these are the ones I want to talk about. Oftentimes we think the same unhealthy thoughts over and over again. It's like letting the same person beat you up, day after day. Why am I thinking this again, you may ask yourself. In fact, some people spend so much time trying to figure out where the thought came from that they don't ever get around to changing the thought (which can be done). That's not the best use of time! A basic understanding of the four main thought sources can help relieve your mind so you can stop questioning where a thought came from and start working on actually changing the thought.
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1. Your Upbringing There is a particular line of psychology that says we come into the world as a blank slate. In other words, we soak up everything around us: our environment, our interactions, words we hear, actions we witness, and experiences we have. For example, there is a restaurant that my husband and I frequent. This particular restaurant isn't geared towards kids so I was surprised to see a little baby, 7 months or so, sitting at a nearby table with what I presumed to be his family and some of their friends. In front of the baby was a portable DVD player which the baby was intently watching while the adults talked and effectively ignored the baby. In this case the baby was learning something that may eventually become part of his belief system.
2. Your Personality Everyone is born with a particular temperament...as every parent knows all too well! Some say that our temperament, or personality, cannot be changed but recent research says just the opposite. We all have some preordained character traits but regardless of what these are, we still choose our actions.
3. Your Experiences Our 5 senses are always at work processing and filtering information. Think about how conversations affect you. Or think about how the things you see stay with you. This includes our interactions with others, the television and movies we watch, the news stories we listen to, etc. If you ever doubt this, think back to your childhood. Is there a specific conversation you remember overhearing or did you ever see something that scared you? I have a friend who saw Jaws as a child and is still to this day scared to go into the ocean even though it's been 30 years since that fateful event.
4. Your Inner-Core There are also people that believe that some thoughts originate from our inner-core, from a place of intuition, a sixth-sense if you will. I believe that that this is true and that these thoughts help us assess our life and well-being. This is where our thoughts originate. Sometimes you can easily identify where a specific thought came from but not always. That's okay; you can still change the thought by isolating it, deciding if you want to hold onto the thought, and then choosing another thought that will create better emotions and therefore better actions.
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