Thinking, The Right Way

"As you sow, so shall you reap" ,  I heard this saying as a kid, and it still applies to us in so many ways today. Our mind is much like a storehouse of memories, childhood experiences, and everything else we go through in daily life. Knowingly, and sometimes unknowingly, we keep feeding it a steady stream of input, which gets stored away inside our minds. So what actually happens to all that content that goes into our mind? It becomes our thoughts, and those thoughts, if acted upon, eventually become our actions. Which raises the real question ,  are you feeding your mind the right knowledge?

According to the National Science Foundation (2017), the human mind generates roughly 12,000 to 60,000 thoughts per day, of which around 80 percent are negative and 95 percent are repetitive. That's a lot to process. These negative automatic thoughts are largely unavoidable, rooted in our basic survival instinct ,  but the real trouble starts when people overlook this and get sucked into them instead of simply noticing them and moving on. If someone ruminates a great deal, their chances of depression tend to be higher; if someone overthinks a lot, especially about the future, their chances of anxiety tend to be higher too.

What we feed our mind, if acted upon, eventually becomes our actions. The good news is that we always have choices to make about this. Here are some simple ways to think a little more intentionally:

Four ways to think more intentionally

Choose the right thoughts to act on: Not every thought that crosses your mind is negative, so it helps to weigh your thoughts correctly and choose which ones to act on judiciously, rather than acting on all of them equally.

Put the right things into your mind: This can be as simple as good sayings, good content, or listening to good music ,  what you feed your mind shapes what eventually comes back out of it.

Practice alternative thinking: This means actively changing negative thoughts into more positive ones, which can be done by tracking your beliefs and thinking patterns over time. Are you getting stuck in the same pattern of thinking for a long stretch? If so, it may be time to revisit your underlying beliefs and understand why you keep getting stuck there. This can sometimes need the support of a trained mental health practitioner, who can work with you to track and identify that stuck pattern of thinking together.

Solve problems creatively: Think of more than one way to solve a problem. Sometimes when we get stuck and don't know where we're heading, it's worth pausing to reflect and ask yourself honestly ,  are there other ways to solve this problem that I haven't considered yet?

In the end, right thinking is really a by-product of what we consistently feed into our minds, and we always have the choice to act on it wisely. After all, we're all chasing the same thing ,  happiness ,  and that happiness is something we already carry within us. So making this effort, however small it feels day to day, will always be worth it in the long run.

How counselling can help

If you find yourself stuck in the same negative thought patterns despite your best efforts, a trained counsellor can help you identify exactly where those patterns come from and work through practical, structured techniques ,  like CBT ,  to gently shift them. What starts as a repeated, automatic thought can, with the right support, gradually become a far more balanced and manageable one.