Manage Your Thoughts

Manage Your Thoughts

Or

They will Manage You

“You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you.”

James Allen – 28 November 1864 – 24 January 1912

I Decided to pop this piece in today instead of my usual Eckhart Tolle Journal article – ’cause I think it’s important.

A commonly used word in our day and age is, ‘overthinking.’ And I am not surprised, because, in varying degrees this affects each one of us. I found this comment:

Author Ben Hardy wrote in Medium that, “In 2005, the National Science Foundation published an article showing that the average person has between 12,000 and 60,000 thoughts per day. Of those, 80% are negative and 95% are exactly the same repetitive thoughts as the day before.”[1]

I like the range because at least it will accommodate our differences. But don’t get caught up in the figures here rather take in the broader picture.

What is the broader picture? In every day we are processing a huge amount of thoughts. A large portion are both negative and repetitive. It’s a shock to me to read these figures as I now know why I’m so tired most of the time, and for that matter how many people I meet are suffering from fatigue.

Should we be alarmed – will our minds explode at some time not too distant? I’m no scientist or psychologist so I’m at a loss to give you a sure answer to this question. But if we are stuck with the volume and ignoring any potential explosions we might just look deeper into the facts as presented above.

By now, and possibly many times you would have heard the saying, “It’s not the problem that matters as much as it’s how you deal with it.” Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not suggesting the above facts are a problem, mind-boggling as they seem, but I’m interested to see what the effects of the negative and repetitive thoughts offer my well-being.

The only thing I am certain of in trying to digest the above statistic is this: Either the process described above works for or against my wellbeing. What arises from the statement in my mind is – which is it?

Eighty percent negative and ninety-five percent repetitive. Huh? What if ninety-five percent of the negative are repetitive? Would this be beneficial to my wellbeing? Well, you decide. Let’s do a little maths:

Say we end up with a stat of 72k thoughts I’m thinking each day/2 = 35k thoughts on average. Then I say that 80% of 35k = 28k negative thoughts per day. 95% of these are repetitive = say 27k repetitive negative thoughts per day. Your maths boffs will probably pick holes in my calculus, but be fair – it does provide a rough guideline to go forward.

Twenty-seven thousand negative thoughts rushing through my mind each day – can this be real? I hope not. But, whatever, lets evaluate this state. Let’s return to, “It’s not the problem (issue) that matters as much as it’s how you deal with it.” In all seriousness, if only fifty negative, repetitive thoughts were churning around in my mind each day, that would make my knees wobble.

Sensibility would say that, in view of the fifty negative thoughts present in my mind some major seasonal cleaning-up is necessary – do you agree?

I will continue with this article in two weeks. Part Two will show you how to organize the ‘seasonal clean-up.’

If you want to be reminded when the article is published goto ‘Home’ and subscribe. Don’t be shy, I never send our any mails, let alone junk mails.

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[1] The average person has between 12,000 and 60,000 thoughts per day – Siobhan Kelleher Kukolic (siobhankukolic.com)