I know it sounds obvious, but you and I are thinking creatures. Believe it or not, however, it’s easy to forget that we are thinking because it’s so automatic. It’s sort of like breathing. Until this second, when I brought it up, you had probably not thought too much about breathing either, because it happens automatically too.
I hope by now that you are totally convinced that your thinking plays a significant role in the quality of your life. Pillar #4 has to do with the very fact that we are thinking, and that our thinking is affecting our entire experience of life.
Recognizing my own thinking is like waking up to the fact that I’m thinking. For example, say I start to feel overwhelmed about my schedule; I’ll be thinking about how busy I am and how little time I have and so on. I’ll convince myself that I’m busier than everyone else, and I’ll be conjuring up all sorts of reasons why it happens. I’ll even start to feel sorry for myself.
Then, all of a sudden, I’ll wake up and recognize that my mind is filled up with my to-do list. I’ve been having a “thought attack” without even knowing I was doing so! This recognition instantly makes me feel better because, all of a sudden, I’m reminded that my sense of being overwhelmed is being created not from my life but from the fact that I’m obsessing about my schedule.
You might look at my schedule and say, “But, Richard, maybe the overwhelmed feeling is coming from your life.” If you step back from it, you begin to realize that it couldn’t be. If it was, then I’d feel overwhelmed all the time—but I don’t. I only feel overwhelmed maybe one percent of the time, when instead of doing what’s in front of me, I start thinking of everything I must do later that day—or tomorrow, or next week, or in the coming year. In other words, the overwhelmed feeling is present only when I fail to recognize that I’m thinking about it. Once I do, it fades away.
The idea is to recognize your thinking (wake up to the fact that you’re doing it) whenever there is a possibility that your own thinking might be getting in your way, making you feel bad or making things seem worse than they are. I received a great letter from a teen who told me that, in the past, she had created a life in her head that included no friends. She’d convinced herself that no one could like her, and that everyone was angry with her. At some moment, after hearing about the importance of recognizing her own thinking, she woke up to the fact that she was simply carrying on in her mind—it was just her thinking.
She went on to say that she still has occasional insecure thoughts about what others are going to think of her, but she has learned to take them a little less seriously. As she recognizes her thinking, the sting of pain leaves her.
So, there you have them—the four pillars of thought—the what, the when, the how, and the fact of. I hope you’ll continue to develop a healthy relationship with your own thinking. If you do, your life will be enhanced in many wonderful ways.