In my mid-thirties, after having a prestigious university degree, a dream job, and a beautiful wife, I was becoming frustrated and felt tired all the time. I was getting annoyed by every silly matter. I tried to overcome all the situations in many different ways, but nothing went very well. None of those attempts were very effective.

At that time, I was desperately seeking a way out of the situation. A line I had read somewhere caught my eye: “Change your thoughts, change your life.” At first, I took the line as usual. I used to think that thought was just a past form of thinking. Then, when I went deeper into this thinking, a new world opened up to me. From the hidden treasure of that world, I changed my life. By becoming happier and wealthier, I tried to figure out things, and I wanted to share my journey, experiences, and learnings with everyone.

We often speak about thoughts and thinking, but in reality, they are not the same. If we want to describe them in a very simple way, we can say thoughts are units of thinking. One after another, thoughts create thinking. When thoughts are aligned with other thoughts, we can say thinking is straightforward. But when they are not aligned, and thoughts come from different angles, thinking becomes uncomfortable. We say our mind is not clear; it’s exhausted.

The above description is very much simplified. Thoughts pop up in our minds involuntarily; we have the power to choose whether we want to follow that thought or the next thought. If we follow one thought, it is linked to another thought. We are unconsciously, subconsciously, or consciously following the stream of thoughts and forming a chain of thoughts. These formations of thoughts are called thinking.

Let’s take an example of walking and steps. If we consider steps as thoughts, we can compare walking to thinking. As step after step creates walking, similarly, thoughts after thoughts create thinking. Of course, they are not the same. There are significant differences between these two. Our steps are voluntary; our next step will not jump to another time, place, or anywhere else. But unlike steps, thoughts jump from one time to another, from the past to the present or the future, and from one place to another far away. Thoughts of ideas, jealousy, fear, memory, people talking, our knowledge, and our experiences create thoughts that pop up in our minds. A thought can be any form—maybe an image, idea, word, emotion, or feeling. But the certain thing is that only one thought at a time can be experienced by humans. In a single moment, humans cannot experience multiple thoughts. Thoughts are linked to other thoughts. We get swept away by following any thoughts and the linked other thoughts. Sometimes we involuntarily follow those thoughts one after another and create thinking. Occasionally, we get caught in our minds and ask ourselves, “Hey, thinking mind, where are you taking me?” If we are aware enough and have trained our minds, we catch ourselves and get back to our initial state.

Now, let’s elaborate on the above discussion a little bit more. Let’s assume our mind is like a person standing in front of a door-type screen. On that screen, images are appearing one after another. Unlike these simple images, imagine those images as doors to reality. The meaning of this line is that we can enter into any image when it appears in front of us. Those images take us to the world related to them.

On that imagination of the door and the mind, let’s take an example. A beautiful garden just appeared, and the next moment, a tree appeared. We unconsciously, subconsciously, or consciously open the door and see another tree, and those related thoughts; we start to follow those. All of a sudden, if we are aware enough and have trained our minds, we catch ourselves and get back to our initial state regarding that imagination of the door and the mind. The process continues in every moment in our life. 

This thinking produces and generates emotions. We can suppress our emotions temporarily, but in the long run, we cannot help but surrender to these emotions and take action based on them.

Our actions towards our goals lead us to make our desires come true. So, thoughts are the key to doing anything in our lives.

Now, if our thoughts come involuntarily, how can we change our thoughts? The answers are hidden in the thoughts that come or pop up in our minds. If we observe our minds very closely, we can see that they are not coming from nowhere. They come from our beliefs, experiences, stored information, and their permutations and combinations. Without information stored in our minds, no thoughts can appear. For example, an auto driver cannot have any quantum physics thoughts without having any knowledge of it. So, the information stored in our minds, reforming our beliefs, and interpreting our experiences can change our thoughts in significant ways, although this may not change everything or eliminate every unwanted thought.

Changing thoughts is not as simple as it seems. On the other hand it is not as hard as it seems. The process may differ from person to person; we will learn or discuss that in the upcoming articles.