Our Quality of Thinking

Low vs. high quality thoughts

For many years, I listened to the large majority of my thinking, believing it all had something useful to tell me.

The negative thoughts in particular, were seductive and sticky. They really seemed like they had something important to tell me. This could sound like... you need to get this right, you have to figure this out, this person should have done that, you could have done better.

When I met my mentor she shocked me with a radical proposition… not all of our thoughts are of the same quality.

Some are helpful, hopeful, positive, creative, wise.

And the others, we know well, can be discouraged, insecure, anxious, judgmental, self-conscious.

The low quality thoughts, she argued, don’t need to be respected. They aren’t going to get us anywhere we want to go. Like a fish we didn’t mean to catch, we can throw it back in the sea. Like a tennis ball with no bounce, we won’t get far playing with it.

As I sat with this new understanding, I grew more aware of how low quality thinking felt. How when I entertained insecure, worried or judgmental thinking, it brought my spirits and energy down.

I began to see that this quality of thinking didn’t make me a better boss, colleague, or friend. It was like being an athlete who’s tight and constricted, rather than loose and warmed up. It didn’t seem like such a good idea anymore.

I began practicing leaving my low-quality thinking alone, like a noisy passenger I insisted stay in the back seat. It could be in the car, but no longer my co-pilot (and certainly not driving).

This was easier in some moments than others, but when I was able to disregard low-quality thinking, I saw that my state of mind would eventually shift. Once it had lightened, new, higher-quality thoughts would then follow.

This is how we are designed. Just like our bodies know how to heal from a paper cut or a cold, our minds know how to come back into balance.

When our state of mind recovers, the quality of our thinking naturally goes up. Like clouds parting after a period of rain, new views reveal themselves. Ideas and perspectives that were previously hidden, now become available to us.