Our Thoughts Are Not Facts

Don’t Believe What You’re Thinking

It has been part of lessons that I have spent the past year or so learning a lot about. Multiple lessons surround ideas about our thoughts. The idea that we don’t always have to believe our thoughts, just because we think things doesn’t mean it’s true, and as the title of this piece states, our thoughts are not facts.

As many of you may wonder, this is not carved in stone or ironclad. For of course sometimes they truly are actual facts. But what these theories really are, are ones surrounded bit more around their existence.

What I have come to understand about this, can really all come to be while keeping most of the phrase or quote, then simply adding an addition to the original phrases.

For example, I feel that a more clear cut philosophy in a version better understood is something like; “ just because thoughts are existing or present, does not mean they are true.”

To really be able to determine if it really is truth or not is like anything else. We need to be able to gather facts, determine what parts are more emotionally drawn, what thoughts or ideas might be developing more from opinion.

This is all part of a broader term which is called rethinking. It’s quite literal in meaning. “Re-thinking” is a process of utilization of multiple tools.

What the tools do is help us change how we think, better gather our emotions, don’t allow emotions to manipulate our thoughts, and finally, learn how to better decipher, or interpret thoughts. With an end goal in seeing if we are able to translate what thoughts really are, and what they are for.

Often times, it’s my opinion, that we somehow fail to notice just how much our thinking is affecting our lives. Sure, once we hear that statement, we can probably almost instantly be able to give many good examples in both positive and negative ways.

Thinking alone is likely a huge factor to blame for stress. That right there is extremely broad, as stress manifests itself in almost an endless amount of ways.

If anyone reading is now having many thoughts of clear examples on how your thinking stresses you out, how come we can go through so many hours, days, even weeks, not putting any thought into it? It’s as if having constant stress has just become natural.

We may even assume everyone has the same amount of stress all the time. Stress can be hitting us so much, and there’s a good chance some of that stress can be processed and eliminated in a healthy way.

It’s as if we subconsciously think that stress is just something we are stuck with, and possibly even deserve, so we feel we may as well just live with it. But, you may not have to just live with it.

So, our thinking can have total influence on how life can be affected. Stress can be a big one, but there’s just so many from big like stress or worse. All the way down to small things.

An example for myself, is something I’ve been guilty of in the past; that being thinking myself into a huge ridiculous assumption that a friend or loved one is ignoring me and not liking me anymore, simply because I called them once or twice, and they weren’t available to take my calls.

From the time I called, to the time they were available to return my call, my inaccurate, incorrect thoughts had me all kinds of stressing and angry. Total nonsense. Now, that was a long time ago, but a good example. I totally assumed my thought was correct, simply because it was there.

This is just the beginning of this journey of ours. We have just barely touched the tip of the iceberg. Everybody is thinking all of the time. While awake, asleep, while daydreaming, during nightmares, while we’re reading a book, while we shower, while we conversate, and whatever else we may be doing in the 24 hours we get each day.

Although many might come to an incorrect conclusion that people who talk to themselves likely have some type of mental health problem. Well, you may want to RE-THINK that (no pun intended).

Reason you may want to think again, is because we are all, (me, you, all mankind) talking to ourselves at many various times in our day to day life. What that is called is, Self-Talk. We’re all doing it.

To assure that claim/statement to be true, i looked up the definition of self-talk from two different sources.

My results were the following; the official definition of self-talk from Dictionary.com is “the act or practice of talking to oneself, either aloud or silently and mentally.”

In addition, I then researched another source for a second definition. That came from Healthline.com and it defined self talk as “something everyone does naturally throughout your waking hours.”

With all of that in mind, self-talk can have the ability to hold a lot of power. It can help us love ourselves, or it can help us hate ourselves. It can destroy confidence, or build it strong. It can eliminate self esteem, or establish great, positive self esteem.

So, one of the goals is trying to master the ability to harness self-talk and re-thinking. Utilize them both, to be able to garner control over the accuracy of our thoughts.

Get to a point where we can trust ourselves. Trust what we say to us, silent or aloud. Be able to have faith in the fact that at the end of the day, we can at least trust the thoughts in our minds.