Watching Thoughts Fly By
Did you know that every September, many birds transform themselves into completely different species?
Redstarts metamorphose into robins, summer tanagers into sapsuckers.
Others simply vanish. But where to they go?
Inspired by the work of Aristotle himself, Swedish priest Olaus Magnus determined that swallows sink into the mud at the bottom of ponds and streams and hibernate there until spring.
Even more incredibly, geese migrate to the moon, as Englishman Charles Morton taught his Harvard students in the late 1600s. How else could one explain their sudden disappearance?
Yeah, right.
Reality Check
Absurd as they are, some of these fantastical explanations for bird migration persisted into the late 1800s. Without technology, it is understandable.
After all, we don’t see the birds coming or going anywhere. Over a few weeks each fall, some birds simply disappear, and new species magically spring into existence.
Lacking the tools of scientific inquiry, magical explanations seemed appropriate.
Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction
We now know that what is actually occurring is one of the most incredible phenomena in nature.
Billions of birds fly thousands of miles from their summer breeding grounds to their winter homes, and they make the journey almost entirely at night. Thus the mystery.
As I write, Birdcast.info, which uses weather radar to monitor migration activity, predicts that 490 million birds will fly over the central United States between sunset today and sunrise tomorrow.
Although invisible to us, there is a coursing avian river flowing swiftly to the south, unnoticed, but right over our heads.
And inside our heads, there is an equally mysterious river of thoughts flowing just as rapidly.
The River of Thought
As with the migrating birds, it is easy to draw bad conclusions about the strange workings of this river of thought if we aren’t careful.
That matters, because misunderstanding our own minds is far more consequential than misunderstanding bird migration.
Learning to observe and understand the origins and patterns of our own thoughts is one of the most fundamental skills required for a life of growth and development.
So, how can we get better at it?
Become a Thought Watcher
Before we can come to better conclusions about our thoughts, we must first notice that we are having them.
That might sound silly, but it is entirely possible to spend a lifetime thinking without really knowing you’re thinking.
A person who is not particularly interested in birds might never notice that, not only do most parts of the United States have several hundred species of birds, those you see in winter are different from those in summer.
Unexamined, the birds are just there.
Likewise, our thoughts are so pervasive, we don’t question what they are, where they came from, or where they are going. They just are.
Thinking is what our brains do, and it is just as easy to identify with our unceasing stream of thought as it is to overlook the nocturnal torrents of birds passing overhead twice each year.
Unknowingly immersed in this river of thought, you are the river.
The Biggest of All Subject-Object Shifts
We have written before about the importance of the subject-object shift, and this one is perhaps more foundational than any other: I am not my thoughts. I have thoughts.
We all know the experience of being lost in thought, but to recognize that you are lost in thought, you must first recognize that you are something separate from the thing you are lost in.
Consciousness is not thoughts. Consciousness contains thoughts.
Break Out the Binoculars
Once able to observe thoughts from some distance, we must begin to challenge our own assumptions about where they came from and where they are going.
While we have yet to discover the precise location of that arctic tundra of the mind that serves as breeding ground for these cognitive flocks, what we do know is that most of them are involuntary, and a high percentage are negatively biased.
Act on them indiscriminately at your peril.
Just as Father Olaus had some wildly unfounded ideas about the birds, we often make bad assumptions about our thoughts.
Here are three common examples:
- Thoughts reflect reality. In truth, our thoughts are often based on bad information, flawed memories, transient emotional states, and cognitive biases. They can't be trusted implicitly.
- I am in charge of them. Uh, not so much. Sure, you have some voluntary control of your thoughts just as you have some voluntary control over your breathing, but only within limits. Most thoughts are involuntary. They come and go as they please.
- More thinking results in better outcomes. When it comes to thinking, more is not better. Good decision making is based partly on rational thought, but largely on emotion and input from the nonverbal, but equally intelligent, parts of your brain.
These are but a few of the many bad assumptions we often make about our thoughts. Perhaps not quite as ridiculous as geese flying to the moon, but just as wrong.
The broader point is, we would all do well to examine our own thoughts a little more critically.
Ask yourself, is this a rare and beautiful species worthy of study and reflection? Or is it the mental equivalent of a raucous and chaotic flock of gulls mobbing a beachgoer’s picnic?
The former is worth your time and attention, the latter is best shooed away or, better yet, simply ignored. Much of coaching involves helping people distinguish the two.
Together we can sort through these myriad mental species, marvel at their diversity and persistence, and let the unhelpful ones fly right on by.
Until next time,
Greg
