move THINK connect

Your beliefs become your thoughts, Your thoughts become your words, Your words become your actions, Your actions become your habits, Your habits become your values, Your values become your destiny.

Mahatma Gandhi

Thinking is both an amazing and tricky part of our design as humans. It is hard to know how many thoughts we have - some say on average we have 60000 thoughts a day. Rumination, analysis, fantasy, problem solving and storytelling to name a few. Our frontal cortex has evolved as a species to find cures for disease, create beautiful art work and nail biting film scripts. It is also what gets us caught up in overthinking, thinking about thinking, ruminating about the past and worrying about the future. 

We can not stop thoughts, images and mental events playing out in our mind. What we can do is get curious about the patterns and habits that tend to show up. Becoming the observer of our experience, which is no straightforward task because as these patterns are repeated, they become more efficient, faster and unconscious. This strategy is there to save effort and when combined with our evolutionary ‘better safe than sorry’ bias - can cause havoc in how we feel, leaving us somewhat stuck in mind loops, which can be hard, often impossible to think our way out of. It is this inner chatter that becomes part of the background. It is only when we explore ways to tune in, that we can discover the energy of our thoughts and how helpful or harmful they are. 

As we tune in we can evaluate the qualities of our inner narrator. Is it one that berrates, critisies, worries, blames that keeps us in a state of threat. Or, is it is one that understands, is open to new perspectives and trusts that it will find a way through? Our brain state organises where we place our attention, how we think, feel and determines what actions or inactions we take. The way we talk to ourselves matters. Our thoughts become our words, Our words become our actions, our actions become our habits, our habits become our values, our values become our destiny.

So when we think about thinking, we want to get really fascinated about the patterns that show up in our mind. Understanding that this is part of our design and profoundly influenced by the body and interaction with the environment. In doing so, we can find understanding and work out what could be wise action - we find a compassionate response.