My Riffs

How do you keep your thinking straight? Talk to and listen to other people and opinions.  Be willing to admit you’re wrong.  Be willing to change your opinion.  Don’t be afraid. 

Being thorough usually saves times. Once you cross the line from thorough to overthinking you're now wasting time though. Being thorough is somewhere in between being too quick and getting bogged down into inaction through overthinking.   

Our brains need to be trained. They are like a muscle, they need exercise and challenges to stay strong and get better. Do things that challenge your brain. That means things like puzzles, but also things like forgiving and showing mercy. Train your brain to find the good. Train your brain to see the other side. Train it and keep training because it will become who you are. Once it becomes who you are it will still require training, but it will be more natural to accept the things you trained it to do.

If you accept a thought, the next time it will be allowed a bit quicker and easier. Allow it enough times and it will become part of who you are and what you believe. People become absolutely sure of completely delusional ideas, because they simply accepted the idea too many times. We have to become our own best fact checker and idea destroyer. If we have a wrong idea or thought we need to seek it out and destroy it immediately. That way a bad thought won’t become a reality. 

Our inner voice is the one we end up believing. If we let nature take its course, that inner voice will naturally decline into negative thinking. We have to train and guide that inner voice to only speak life. We have to become destroyers of negative self talk. If we believe it we can achieve it. The opposite is unfortunately true. 

Our minds are busy places. The amount of information, media we take in daily and the amount of decisions being made have never been higher. If we don’t take to declutter our minds, they become very confused and inept. Find ways to declutter your mind. Learn to let go of things, to let things roll off your back. Learn to set priorities of what you will consume energy on. Our current culture demands an unsustainable pace from us. 

We waste too much time with wishful thinking. If it’s realistic then just do it. If it’s not realistic, forget about it. 

The more afraid we get the poorer we think. Fear is more often than not a lie. When we entertain it we start a self propelled downward spiral of cognitive decline. It’s best to cut off fear at the pass. If it’s always proved to be a lie, it will always continue to be a lie.

Learning to control one single thing will give you power over your entire life. That one thing is your mind. If you can control the mind, you can control the heart, you can control your actions and you can control your emotions. If you can control yourself to that degree, you have found enough control to live a good life. Much of what makes us unhappy is the lack of thought control. Control your mind and you control your world.

Big minds think and talk about ideas. Big minds don't dwell on the negative. Big minds are used to create not destroy.

News, work, social media all clog the head. It's hard to find a time and space to get a clear head. The more we operate from a clogged head the worse we are going to perform. And I'm not just talking about job performance, I'm talking about life performance. Finding a way, time and space to get a clear mind is so important in these crazy times we live in. Clearing your mind may look different for each person, but it's important to figure out how to do just that.

It used to be thought that you couldn't change your thinking and mind. It was thought you wore patterns into your brain that couldn't be changed. But then something pretty amazing was discovered, that being, you can in fact change your brain. It takes three basic things: 1. Willingness. Of course you have to be willing to allow new thoughts to shape you. 2. Focus or Pressure. You have to focus on something to learn or change. Another way this can happen is through an intense situation which I've called pressure. 3. Good sleep. Good sleep is when the new information and paths actually take shape. Without the proper rest this process isn't possible. Don't like something about yourself or your thinking? Then don't accept it. That's the focus and the pressure. Re-learn or re-think it. Then get good sleep. Then repeat. You can form a new way of thinking!

From Wikipedia: The illusion of control is the tendency for people to overestimate their ability to control events. We are beings who enjoy being in control. We're uncomfortable with the unknown. We're uncomfortable with things that are beyond out control. We like to think we can control things, but many things are out of out control. We sometimes lie to ourselves and think we can control something. This is sort of like the illusion of control. The moral of this post is that much is out of our control, no matter how hard we try.  But our actions, thoughts and words are always in our control.  We can't control what happens around us, but we can control what happens within and what comes out from us. Don't try and act like you can control things you can't, control yourself and by that you are exercising ultimate power.

"We become what we think about all day long" - Ralph Waldo Emerson What we dwell on, or what we think is of utmost importance. Sometimes we need to purposely clean up our thought life. Clean out the negativity, jealousy, anger, etc. Because those are the things we are becoming. Eventually the mouth will start speaking these thoughts. Then our actions will start matching our words. Good thoughts lead to good behaviour.

If we're not careful we can get sucked into the belief that what's popular is what's right. But that's not the case. There are many times that what's popular isn't what's right. Group think can suck anyone into itself. At some time or another we all have been subject groupthink. But don't accept that what's popular is what's right or acceptable. Some really really bad ideas became mainstays in countries and cultures because people just accepted what was seemingly popular.

Here is one simple thing that many of us don't do, but should... Think before we speak. We often blurt the first thing that comes to out minds. But that isn't always the wisest thing to say. Sometimes the first thing that comes to mind is the most emotional thing, not the best thing. Listen, think, speak. One simple change can make us much better communicators and much wiser. Think before you speak.

The majority generally always wins. But that doesn’t make the majority right. There’s something called group think. And it can cause lots of wrong things to become “right” or seem to be a majority decision. So if you find yourself in the minority you may be in the right camp. We can’t always assume the majority is the right place to be. This isn’t applicable to every single issue of course. But it’s interesting to think about how many issues where the majority is wrong.

It’s 2019 and people want answers! And it’s now easy to get answers. You can just google it to find the answer you likely want. Answers are cheap. Teaching people how to think and find answers is much more important than providing them with answers.

Some people who spend a lot of time in their minds kinda go crazy. Think, but maintain connection to reality.

It matters. Your opinion matters much. Getting your opinion out there doesn't matter so much. What you have to say is important and should be heard. But your opinion matters more than just speaking it. Your opinion dictates your perspective and behaviour. So your opinion matters a whole lot. You will live out your opinions. Don't worry so much about getting your opinion out there, worry more about getting it right.