Your thoughts ... rethought

There’s been lots of suggestions about our thinking process, and many current and past thinkers have suggested various types to classify our different thoughts. There in not a universally accepted categorisation of the different types of thought we have, and this makes things more complicated. One common classification suggests only two types of thinking i.e. problem solving and reasoning; however more kinds have also been proposed such as judgment and decision-making thinking.  Within those, yet more categories have been identified corresponding more or less to the aforementioned ones e.g. abstract, analytical, concrete, convergent creative, critical, divergent and so forth and so on.

I want to focus on only 2 categories that I have identified for which I factored in the dimensions of time (past/future vs. present) and usefulness. I mean the term usefulness as the quality of our thoughts being of practical use in a given present situation e.g. finding a solution to a problem or making a decision. However, you can also interpret the term usefulness as similar to productive for example how practical is this thought or how much stress a certain thought can cause or not for such given situation.

One would unsurprisingly ask, why the dimension of time? This is because, within the framework of mindfulness, there’s evidence that we spend most of our thinking time in the past and future and not in the present, the suggestion being that living in the present and being more present and mindful reduces stress, boosts happiness, and improves emotional wellbeing, whereas being concerned about the past or future make staying present hard. Focusing on the present moment, the here and now, helps overcome anxious thinking. Some literature even suggests that the actual thinking process as a whole, block us from being present and as a result happier e.g. in case of ruminating, fixation or negative self-talk.  

For the dimension of usefulness, I consider how helpful and constructive is our thinking for everyday life, in the sense of problem solving, being realistic and enjoying life to the full. Surely, even the less obviously productive thoughts can still be creative and perhaps they serve a purpose, e.g. dreaming about something might enhance my imagination and ingenuity; or pondering and reflecting on the past can be a learning process to help us grow and develop. I want however, to focus on the productivity or lack of obsessive thoughts about the past or the future, e.g. I am punishing myself and feeling guilt ridden for something that happened in the past and I cannot change anymore; or I am obsessing about the future in a manner that stops me from being present and enjoying the things that I have now. 

With these assumptions in mind, I consider two different types of thinking:

1.        When in the past or future we are evaluating or visualising respectively; we are tortured by either thoughts of what-ifs or thoughts of what will happen; we ponder, and we make decisions be it about what we should’ve done in each situation in the past or what we will do in the future. And there’s also dreaming and planning and escapism at these thinking moments, which often means it might not happen as these thinking moments are products of our imagination.

2.        When in the present, we can engage in conversing with others or when listening our thoughts are more about evaluating, reflecting and presenting a viewpoint; this is when we are thinking about facts whether these are in the past or in the future. OBSERVATION and JUDGMENT or simple observation, reflection, of own thoughts perhaps of things that we engage with in our environment e.g. observing people’s behaviours while in the bus or on the tube.

In mindfulness the suggestion is that we can be in the present by engaging all our senses and getting in touch both with our own body and with the physical environment around us. When are you at present you engage all your senses as much as you can, i.e. the breath, the body, listening to sounds, being aware of feelings and thoughts.

The point isn’t to stop thoughts—it’s to see them as they arise without getting carried away and without judgment. Therefore, the elements of evaluating past actions and behaviours or visualising and planning the future cease at this moment.

BUT it’s almost impossible to live in the present all the time. Our brain will get a sensory overload of all the sensations that are available to us while engaging in a specific activity. Moreover, this kind of activity might imply that you don’t fully engage with others.

The mind is a great time-traveller. We are travelling from the present to the past and then to the future and all of this back and forth again and again in split seconds and we don’t even realise it. But our mind is not a place to live. That's why we enjoy sleeping because we escape the mind. Children don't live in the mind; they live in the present; they are free from all these types of thinking that adults spend time on.

We don’t want to lose this 2^nd way of thinking, but we want to reduce slightly the 1^st and this is pondering and learning or planning but without obsessing about something specific; so, use this time travelling facility we have, to come back to the present moment. And here’s a quick framework you can use (or adapt) to utilise and make the most of the thinking process:

Carl Jung the father of analytical psychology, famously said that …

"Thinking is difficult, therefore let the herd pronounce judgment!"

Jung was basically pointing out how much easier it is to just judge things compared to actually thinking critically about them. He was saying people often take the easy way out—they just jump on the bandwagon and go with what everyone else (the "herd") is saying so they don't have to do the hard work of forming their own solid opinions. Such, really deep, thoughtful analysis is tough and can be mentally draining. To Jung, deep analysis is taxing, while adopting the majority view is mental laziness. The main takeaway is this: while judging is simple, it's really just a stand-in for truly understanding something. True wisdom comes from making the effort to think independently rather than simply accepting the consensus of the group.

 On a similar vein, the English painter Joshua Reynolds is credited with saying that

“there is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labour of thinking.”

Critical thinking is avoided because it feels like labour. Our aversion isn't to thinking itself, but to the effort of challenging our thoughts and assessing their merit. Many judgments are passively formed—shaped by upbringing, ingrained attitudes, and media—meaning much of our thinking is already done for us. We often lack the obligation to change it. For the passive thinker, this avoidance carries dangers, such as conflating self-worth with circumstance or reducing others to single assumptions. To counter this, we must focus on choosing to engage our discernment: how will we interpret and respond to any event? Simply put, we control how we experience our experiences. Our capacity for thinking is the superpower that allows us to adopt the most useful perspective in all situations.

According to Epictetus

“… what oppresses and scares us? It is our own thoughts, obviously.”  

And equally, what determines the way we experience things, be it a happy occasion or a sad, or any other emotions we may feel during a specific time, can be somewhat controlled by the way we think of things.

As we are approaching the end of the year, this is good time for reflection (obviously after you have finished all your shopping and celebrating the festivities). Thus, use this framework both as a tool to evaluate the year’s actions and plan for the next, and also to make the most of the present time. As Roman emperor and stoic philosopher, Marcus Aurelius said:

"Give yourself a gift: the present moment"