Thinking is behaving

Behave yourself: watch your thinking.

I used to tell people I loved “doing nothing”. What I really meant was I found pleasure in having no obligations, a wide open day to do what I wanted. Often, that looked like getting an iced mocha and binging YouTube. But, saying that to your date is less sexy than the idea of a man in solitude, confident in himself, stoically accepting the day’s tasks as they come. Don’t get me wrong, I still value a hedonistic afternoon, but I acknowledge that’s not nothing; it’s something.

We are always engaging in some behavior. Sometimes this might be apparent to others, something that could be observed. But often, what we are doing is invisible, internal: thinking. Maybe our eyes are on the TV, or our bodies are with our friends, but the mind may be spinning webs, and our attention gets caught in them rather than on what we want to be doing.

Not all thought is the same. I don’t know about you, but I experience at least 3 kinds of thinking. First, the thoughts that occur to me. These come out of the blue, seemingly unprompted and uninvited. They can be thoughts like, “Don’t you have a doctor’s appointment this afternoon?”, or “Did you close the garage?”. Then there is analytical thought. And here I’ll divide how I experience this type of thinking into 2 categories: 1) helpful, productive, and chosen, and 2) unhelpful, circular, anxiety-inducing, a mess. The first category of analytical thinking helps us plan, learn, and be in relationship with others. The second kind, while it can tempt us by disguising itself as the first, produces anxiety, gets us stuck, and makes us disengage from the world around us. The thing is, both of these types of thinking are a behavior. And where we are behaving, we have choice.

It is largely out of our control when thoughts occur to us. This happens to all of us. Even so-called “intrusive thoughts” that have a dark tone to them, like, “What if I swerved off the road and crashed my car?” occur to most people. It is the judgement and unhelpful engagement with these thoughts, like, “What if I’m a bad person for thinking that?”, “If I really loved my family I wouldn’t have thoughts like that”, that gets us stuck in a loop.

When it comes to analytical thinking, we have a choice. I can choose to get curious, ask questions, and learn. This type of thinking helped me create this website and write this post. Most of us are fine with this idea, and it seems intuitive that we choose to think this way. However, when we are stuck in the web of circular, worrisome thought, it can feel like we had no say in getting there. “Of course I wouldn’t have jumped in this web on my own if I knew what I was getting into!”

And while it can be jarring to hear that we choose this type of thinking, too, I hope it can empower you as it has for me (after my initial fits and resistance against it—which still visit from time to time!).

Next time you find yourself going in circles in your mind, name it: “I’m caught up in unhelpful thinking.” Once you name it, you can tame it. Empower yourself to end unhelpful thinking! Now, I’m not trying to say this is easy, but it is simple, possible, and will improve your life.

Name unhelpful thinking patterns, get out of your head, and get into your life!