Are You Your Thoughts?

If your answer is yes, then which thought are you? Are you the thought you had when you woke up this morning, or the one you had around 2 p.m.? Or perhaps you are the final thought you have before you go to bed each night. Here is a hint: if you go back to an earlier blog about the subject-object relationship, the key takeaway was that anything that you can perceive through your senses or that you are aware of is an object of your awareness, and therefore not you. Do you know the content of your thoughts? Do you sometimes say, “Well, that is the most ridiculous thought I’ve ever had”? Do you judge whether a thought is a good thought or a bad thought? The answer, of course, is yes. So, if we use our logic, we can conclude that we are not our thoughts. Our thoughts are certainly part of us, they come from us, but we are not our thoughts. Have you ever woken up in the morning and said to yourself, “I am not going to think today, I am too tired”? No, of course not. Just as breathing happens and is constant, thoughts happen, and they are also constant.

Source: Shutterstock

We know now that thoughts, ideas, memories, and mental models are wired together in our neural net. Because of this, our thoughts tend to reinforce our existing mental models, and vice versa. For example, many women still have a mental model that tells them there is a glass ceiling in corporate America. Some believe that, despite a few exceptions to the rule, a corporate woman can’t ascend past the level of vice president. If a woman vice president with this mental model learns that there is a senior vice president position available for which she is eminently qualified, what will her thoughts be? She may tell herself, “Oh, I shouldn’t apply for that job; they have already decided to give it to a guy. They might even interview me, but in the end they are going to give it to a man and make up some excuse. I shouldn’t even inquire about it, because everyone will just think I am crazy for applying.” If she tries to resist these thoughts, her mind will come up with anecdotal data to support her mental model. She might even go online and find some compelling statistical data that supports her mental model, and after hours of exhausting thoughts, she will decide not to bother. This is the way mental models and thoughts often work. It is a mutually perpetuating and reinforcing system that can keep us locked into old ways of thinking and responding. Our minds rely on familiar, comfortable patterns, which limit our ability to respond objectively.

In addition to supporting our mental models, thoughts themselves have a significant impact on our lives, moment to moment, every day. Have you noticed that the content of many of your thoughts is self-judgment, negativity, and anticipating the worst? Sometimes these thoughts can be very limiting, unproductive, even harsh. There are times when we are just not very kind to ourselves. The problem with our negative thoughts is that the latest science has revealed that thoughts are very powerful, even impacting us physically. In his book Change your Brain, Change Your Life, Daniel G. Amen points out that “every thought sends electrical signals throughout your brain. Yes, they have substance, actual physical properties, and they can impact every cell in our body, making us feel either good or bad.” Brain imaging clearly shows that when our minds are burdened with many negative thoughts, we tend to feel irritable, moody, or even depressed. Have you ever stopped to notice how you feel when you are mentally beating yourself up? Amen goes on to say that even though our thoughts are real, they are often wrong. Our thoughts lie. If thoughts often support our mental models, and if in some cases our mental models are wrong, meaning unproductive and no longer serving us, then of course some of our thoughts will also be wrong. In essence the lies we sometimes tell ourselves are causing us emotional and physical harm.

It is important to remember that a thought is harmless unless we believe them and act on them. As the Subject, since thoughts are an object of your awareness, you have the power to challenge every thought. You can decide if you want to make that thought real. You can decide if you want to pay attention to that thought, change the thought or ignore it. Amen suggests that when automatic negative thoughts pop up and you start feeling powerless or out of control, just talk back to the thoughts with attitude. Just like you can choose between juice or soda, you can talk back with attitude to a thought of “I always screw up” and choose to believe instead a thought of “when I focus on just doing my best, things normally turn out well.” You choose. You are the Subject. An important question for you to explore is, what mental model could be hardwired in my neural net that is connected to and reinforced by judgmental, negative, and unkind thoughts about myself?

In my next blog we will talk about mental models and what the latest objective leader survey reveals about common mental models.

Excerpt from The Objective Leader: How to Leverage the Power of Seeing Things As They Are