Everything is an idea. How you feel is an idea, it is not something that can be quantified by anyone else. What your future looks like is an idea. No one else can predict what your future will be. An idea is a thought in its infancy stage. The most powerful tool you have is how you think.
Examine how you think.
Too many people shy away from is examining their own thoughts. They live day to day simply doing. The problem with this is that when we do not examine how we think, we keep doing the same things over and over again. As a result we keep encountering the same problems over and over again. It is important to remember that so many of the ways we think have been given to us by others. Perhaps it was the way our parents thought. Maybe it was the way our teacher thought. We are thinking the way we were taught, by people we are not even aware impacted our way of thinking.
Not every thought need be examined.
If we were to undertake examining every thought that passed though our minds we would not be able to live. We would be too busy pondering to live. Each day over 400,000 pieces of information gain entry to our brains. We are lucky to do any type of examination of even a couple hundred of these inputs. Can you see the problem here? However, when we repeatedly experience anger about a particular thing, that would be the time to begin examining what bothers us. If we fail to unearth why something bothers us we are at the mercy of others. We are no longer the masters of our own lives.
Far from a new thought.
Socrates, the Greek philosopher, said the unexamined life was not worth living. Before you dump this idea into the category of pop-psychology, remember, Socrates was born in 469 BC and died in 399 BC. The quest to better understand why we do things has been around a long time.
Even with that said, I have added my own thoughts to this age-old quest. My book It’s All About Me, The Involved Observer, has a more modern take on what pushes our buttons. The Involved Observer encourages us to examine why we react as we do. If you click on the cover below you can read a sample chapter, then order your own copy through Amazon books.
