How To Collect, Analyze, And Revise The Thoughts Running Through Your Head

Have you ever wished that your mind would just be quiet? Do you find your thoughts relentless, distracting you from what you want to do, or are supposed to be doing — even the happy ones?

Why do our negative thoughts never seem to leave us alone?

They say that on an average day a human has about 60,000 thoughts in a 24 hour period.

It might be a good idea to pay attention to what mental journey they are taking us on, wouldn’t you think?

If thoughts are creative energy, then understanding their presence is important to our peace of mind. Practicing mindfulness allows you to become aware of yourself and of the circumstances you find yourself in, without judgement.

Periodically mining your mind to find out what kinds of thoughts are running through your head allows you to self-reflect, which is how we humans center ourselves. Understanding ourselves is our first step towards happiness, peace, and release from stress and helps to avoid depression before it sets in.

If you’re like me, your thoughts come and go randomly, one after the other in no apparent order with no apparent reason.

But sometimes thoughts get stuck, cycling through our consciousness in a never-ending loop — disrupting sleep, mood, and focus.

At first glance, it seems that this is normal for humans — we all do it from time to time and sometimes all the time! Could we therefore speculate that it is how we are supposed to be? Perhaps.

But, what about emotions? 

When emotions are attached to thoughts, especially persistent thoughts, especially negative persistent thoughts, that’s when we get into trouble.

Good emotions however, like loving thoughts about another person, place, or creature, is desirable. It has been proven that happy thoughts are good for our immune system, longevity, and overall good health.

But those nasty negative emotions due to an unpleasant situation or a hurtful encounter cause our cortisol levels to rise. Cortisol, also called the stress hormone, is released in response to fear or stress by our adrenal glands as part of the fight-or-flight mechanism that years of evolution has built into our biology.

If we don’t let negative emotions go, cortisol levels remain elevated — which is not good for our bodies. Elevated cortisol levels have been associated with everything from colds and flu, to interrupted sleep patterns, to cancer.

In order to be sure we don’t let negative emotions take hold of our consciousness, we need to mine them out.

Step 1. Collect Your Thoughts 

The first step is to brainstorm a list of what is in your head.

If you like writing on a handheld device or laptop, great. Excel and Word tables are perfect as they allow you to sort your list, which we will do later. Otherwise grab a pencil and two pieces of paper that have enough room for four columns.

Okay, so I also cringe at the thought of making lists, as I suspect you may as well. I get it. But no sympathy here — just do it — for you.

The first thing to do is make a list of all of the happy thoughts that you think about all the time. Your list does not have to be in any particular order — just jot down whatever comes to mind that makes you happy — your family and friends, pets, communing with Nature, etc.

Now that that is done, write down all the negative thoughts that you just can’t seem to shake — unpleasant encounters, people who disappoint you, or internal thoughts about yourself. Write them down, again in no particular order — just brainstorm.

Great. You have just identified the predominant thoughts coursing through your consciousness.

Step 2 – Analyze

In this step assign a numerical ranking to each thought on your list from most frequent to least frequent. This is column 2. How often does each subject matter fill your brain? 1 = most often, 2 = second most often, etc.

Cross over between those thoughts that make you happy and those that make you sad or angry. Rank them all, mixing them up as needed until you run out of numbers.

Now that that’s done, use the sort function in Excel or Word to reorder them from 1 to your final number. If working on paper, reorder them in the same manner (1 to ##) on your second sheet of paper, and remember to leave room for 2 more columns.

You should now have a list of thoughts with number 1 being your most frequent to your last numbered thought being your least frequent.

How does your list look? See any trends? Are you feeling depressed or happy?

Perfect! That is exactly what we want.

You have now reduced your predominant thoughts to a one page visual which is an objective way to self-assess.

Now write down how each thought on your list makes you feel. Use column 3 to assign definitive emotions such as happy, sad, loved, neglected, empowered, fearful, angry, silly, disappointed, proud, judged, etc.

The reason I ask you to define your emotions is to help you clarify your feelings. In today’s stressed out lifestyle, we frequently become numb to our feelings, and are left with ghostly residuals of encounters and experiences that linger in our consciousness like oppressive clouds.

By taking the time to dig into your predominant thought processes and labeling them with concrete actionable attributes, it makes them easier to process. So, which of your thoughts are most frequent and which emotional quality do they demonstrate?

Are you happy with your list? Do you see anything you suspected was bothering you that you couldn’t quite put your finger on? 

That’s great!

Why? Because understanding is key! Knowing your persistent thoughts, seeing them on paper, looking at how they make you feel is necessary to self-reflection. And self-reflection leads to understanding. And what is understanding?

The way to peace.

And so regardless of your results, it’s all okay because you have taken the first big leap towards peace.

Step 3 – Revise

For those of you happy with your findings, congratulations! You have found a way to stay balanced and centered in a complicated world. Kudos!

But for most of us, our list is top heavy with sad and angry thoughts. Why? For some reason (psychologists would say it’s the ego in us) our minds become obsessed with thoughts that bruise our ego — the part of us that longs for acceptance, love, and approval. It’s part of being human.

We relive hurtful events over and over — but only if we allow it.

To complete the task of mining your mind, use column 4 to asterisk all of the thoughts that reflect circumstances or events that you feel you cannot control.

These may be how others in your life speak or act when around you, or whether a loved one’s health is failing, or whether you feel you are lacking particular talents, possessions, or people in your life.

The problem with ‘negative’ emotions is that they make us feel that we have lost control — of our lives or even of others. Negative emotions can be very strong and are full of expectations that frequently manifest as disappointments.

But these expectations are self-imposed.

Consider this old maxim:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. 

Simply stated — let go of that which you cannot control, and change that which you can.

It’s frightfully simple, isn’t it? You cannot control another person’s thoughts, actions, or expectations of you. You can only control yourself and how you react to people and circumstances.

Once you understand this and incorporate it into your belief system, you have begun the process of ridding yourself of negative thoughts — and peace follows.

What you experience is based on your expectations, no one else’s.

Setting expectations for others and accepting their expectations of you only results in judgement of your and their actions, which leads to sadness and disappointment. These become the thoughts that haunt you and won’t leave you alone.

The same is true for expectations that you set for yourself. Some would call it guilt. These thoughts are compounded each time you interact with that person or in that circumstance and do or say things that they demand of you.

But once you stop setting expectations for yourself and for others, and stop accepting theirs of you, you stop judging and you stop feeling being judged by them. Only then can you truly be happy.

I have written in my post entitled: Wellness Defined that understanding is crucial to changing belief systems and behavior patterns and that we should always question what we think we know.

The adult human mind seeks to understand, but as children we believe what we are taught. If we don’t take the time to question our belief systems (which includes how to interact with others, expectations, and judgement) this can lead to patterns of behavior that haunt us in adulthood.

Prejudice, superiority, entitlement, feelings of inferiority and worthlessness are all examples of emotional behaviors that involve judgement of ourselves and of others.

Take a look again at your results. Is expectation and judgement laced throughout your results? Why do you think that is? Are you responding to others the way you were taught? Many parents clown around with the saying, “I opened my mouth and out came my mother”. But there is truth in that. Responses are more often than not, learned events.

When someone hurts you by doing or saying something unkind, you must let it go. You see, everyone in your life is functioning at a level of awareness and with a set of abilities that is in tune with their own stage of development. You cannot change them or make them be what you want, that only leads to depression.

But you can send them some mental good will. Just send them a thinking, “I wish you well.” and move on. It’s hard at first when you are feeling hurt or even vengeful, but those are thoughts that hurt you, not them.

Let go of the emotional hold expectations have on you for they are nothing more than self-imposed constraints.

Practicing mindfulness is all you need. Releasing that emotional hold leads to peace of mind. Emotions are meant to be felt and then released. They are not meant to consume us. Let them go and make room for the ones that make you happy.

And oh how good you will feel! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for viewing! I look forward to your comments.

For more information on ideas about empowering yourself please visit 8 Little Things You Can Do To Empower Yourself.

Tune in next week for The Wonder of Water — Keeping it Pure

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