Filter your thoughts

How to have quality experiences through quality thinking?

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Personal Development

An average human has about 60,000 thoughts in a day. Yeah these many! Now this just doesn’t sound overwhelming but is overwhelming for a lot of people. Thoughts floating around could make a person happy one day, sad the next and make them angry for no good reason. Many people live their lives under the impression that they cannot control their thoughts. They think there is something wrong with them and they just can’t change.

False. You may not be able to control your thoughts but what you can control is what thoughts to focus on. There are two parts to this newsletter: What are the types of quality thoughts? How to focus on quality thoughts?

But let’s start with why? Why to have control on your thought process? What purpose does this serve? Answer: thoughts beget actions and actions beget experiences. If you focus on quality thoughts, you will take quality actions which will result in quality experiences. If you do not want quality experiences, just stop here but, if you do, continue reading.

What are the types of quality thoughts?

1️⃣ Thoughts on solving problems: If there is a problem that needs your attention, give it. How can you improve your business sales? This surely is a quality thought.

2️⃣ Thoughts on understanding knowledge: If you’re learning something, ponder on it, this will help you better understand it. Say, you are learning how to play the guitar. Thinking over how to move your fingers while shifting chords, or how to hold the guitar in a proper way, or how it will feel when you play the first song are thoughts that must be entertained.

3️⃣ Thoughts on improving relationships: How can you strengthen your relationships? Planning a weekend with your family, a movie night with your friends, a date with your partner. Mind me these are very important quality thoughts!

How to focus on quality thoughts?

How do you focus on quality thoughts? Here is a rule of thumb that I read in the book Think Straight which I now use to focus on the right thoughts:

Only think about things you can control.

This filters out 99% of your thoughts because there’s so little you can control in life. Here is a list of the right and wrong thoughts:

❌ Will my business survive few months down the line?

✔ How can I drive sales through marketing? - Solving a problem

You do not have control over future situation but you do have control over driving sales.

❌ I messed up this project and I’m going to get fired.

✔ How can I upskill myself so that I become indispensable? - Understanding knowledge

You just cannot change the past. The right thought is to think on upskilling yourself so, you still remain valuable for the current company or any other company you may join in future.

❌ My partner is not interested in me anymore, love is fading away.

✔ What small things can I do to make my partner feel special? - Improving relationships

You do not have control over what thoughts go inside your partner’s head but, you do have control over planning things to strengthen your relationship.

Here is a thought filter tree to ease your life:

Watch time 🎥

Here is a very insightful video that gives reasons to stop worrying. If you worry about the future and find it hard to perform in the present because of that, this video is for you:

Book alert 📗

I read Think Straight by Darius Foroux last to last week. It’s a book on our thought process and how can we improve the same. The book goes through topics like: useful thoughts, quality thinking, meditation, mental block etc. A very short book, about 80 pages that you can finish in two sittings. Worth a read!

Quote of the week

Think Straight author Darius Foroux on useless thinking:

Commit to stop thinking about useless things. Start taking control of your mind. All that worrying about the past and the future is not going to help you. It never did. And it never will.

Get 1% better ❤

The next time you feel low, remember it’s the difference between: ‘I can’t help but feel this way’ and ‘I feel this way because I decided to feel this way.’

Until next week, ✌

Jainuine