Don't Believe Everything You Think

"Don't Believe Everything You Think!"

I spied this bumper sticker on a car recently and fell in love with the sentiment since I often advise my clients to evaluate the quality of their own thoughts for inevitable distortions, dogmas and flat-out delusions. Similarly, sometimes I look in the mirror and laughingly say "get out of my head, you crazy person!"

The job of the mind is to generate thoughts and it goes about its business with a passion, often with little regard for quality control. We live in a culture that doesn't place much value on teaching the skills for constructively quieting the mind, so it's no wonder the little chatterbox carries on the way it does.

Now here's where the whole "unexamined thinking" situation goes from inefficient to risky. A person on a desert island or in solitary confinement is bound to go a little off-center. (Think of Tom Hanks in "Castaway" talking to a volleyball.) When you and I don't check out our assumptions and biases with other people (especially those who may lovingly challenge us) we are likely to get caught up in closed-circuit thinking loops that are self-reinforcing but often stray from objective reality.

I remember a TV comedy once where a character was wearing a wristwatch that was something like 7 hours and 47 minutes fast. He became so accustomed to it that he knew that "4 o'clock" actually meant 8:13. That's a humorous example of learning to account for a stable distortion, which we all have. I may instinctively come to a negative conclusion from some benign situation but once I accept that this is just what I do then I begin to gain the ability to move my thoughts toward a positive and accurate direction. This idea is similar to what I have previously written about the benefit of "Choosing The Most Benign Interpretation."

The ego serves an important role in maintaining a sense of identity but one of its lazy habits is to presume that it's always right. It's an act of emotional maturity to transcend the need to be so gosh-darned right all the time and let go of "False Evidence Appearing Real" (whose acronym is "FEAR"). This concept is akin to what I previously have written about how "Soothing and Confronting Yourself" is necessary in order to maintain a healthy, adaptive, ever-evolving relationship with yourself and others, which is a skill the whole world needs.

So recognize your own blind spots, accept feedback from others, come to accept and compensate for your typical distortions, be willing to recognize and discard your own conclusions when they are of too low a quality to do anybody any good, learn some techniques for quieting your mind a little, don't take yourself too seriously too much of the time, and remember that bumper sticker!
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