Cleaning up our thoughts

I have for most of my life believed that thoughts are a private matter. That it’s up to me what I choose to fill my head with and that it doesn’t matter much either to myself or anyone else. That they are a private matter is in a sense true. But that they don’t matter is not true.

I used to fill my head with all kinds of negative thoughts about other people. Sometimes I thought thoughts akin to “if you only knew what is going on in my head right now.” I also indulged in all kinds of fantasies and played up little scenarios of taking revenge in all kinds of ways on people that I believed had wronged me. In a particularly hurtful situation, I fantasised about writing a suicide letter to the person that hurt me so that she knew that it was her fault that I was dead and then hang myself. 

Now, I’ve stopped believing in the Law of Attraction. At least as some mechanical law that says that we attract what we focus our thoughts on. God might decide to give us gifts or harsh lessons depending on what we fill our heads with. But that is something completely different from how we usually see Law of Attraction.

And here is the point. Here is one of two main reasons why our thoughts matter. Our thoughts affect us. That’s a given. They affect how we feel. And not just those really negative thoughts. All of them. If I’m judgmental towards other people in my mind, I become more judgmental in general. If I’m kind towards others in my head, I become kind towards others in real life. If I engage in destructive fantasies, I increase my chances of starting to seriously consider what I’m fantasizing about. 

I have started to see just how much things shift inside my head. I convince myself of all kinds of things. Things that often begin just as an idea that flies through my head. Sometimes I manage to convince myself of the exact opposite of what I originally intended and I often lose sight of what is important, when passions start to drive me in some direction. Sometimes I manage to convince myself that what is driving a clearly passion driven decision, is really rational considerations. 

Knowing all of this, I realize very clearly that it’s time to clean up my thoughts. And I will remember this until about thirty seconds after writing this post. And then my thoughts will start living their own lives again. But hopefully, with time, I will become better and better at reminding myself of just how unreliable my thoughts are.