think the thoughts

Thinking your own thoughts is one of the factors that makes the human mind something amazing. Even though it is an endless process (since we can think the thought we thought of the thought we were thinking) it is a creative act, an act that creates our world. We can use this way – think a thought and rethink the thought – to create a more coherent, healthier and better meaning for our lives.

If I say or think a certain sentence, I can then think what I just thought. In this way, we are going to go to higher levels of abstraction.

Imagine, maybe you are sad or angry about something that happened. You can think and figure out what it is that makes you sad or angry. What was expected that didn’t happen?

And, going on, you might think the following: Is this way I’m thinking the best way to think? Will being sad or angry solve it?

Clinical psychology, for the most part, works this way. The patient has a certain problem – let’s put it this way, and the psychologist questions it, helping the patient to think about this problem, helping the patient to think in a different way, from another angle, changing his point of view, his assumptions, beliefs…

In my teens I liked to write poetry. Some I still think were interesting. These days, when answering an email from the Ask a Psychologist section, I remembered this:

“When I start to get sad

is that something is wrong

But I stop feeling

to think

And I stop thinking

to be who I am”

Read Also: Skinner Explains Freud's Id, Ego and Superego

Of course it is a simple poem, more a way of thinking than poetry, with rhyme or meter.

But what it said there fits very well with the theme of this post. Isn’t it wonderful that we can think what we’re feeling? Why and what are we feeling? Isn’t it even more wonderful that we can question our own thoughts and change them? And even more: discovering that we are not our thoughts…

Our thoughts are just a “part” of who we are, as we continue to be, we continue to exist, even when we remain silent…

This is the 18th way to change that we find in the Book Mind Lines, lines for changing minds and is part of the series How to change?