Don’t believe everything you think

Growing up in the age of AI, deepfakes and fake news from every direction, we’re pretty used to exercising healthy skepticism when it comes to what we see and hear.

But too often, we unquestioningly accept the thoughts that show up in our head as the truth.

Here’s the problem:

Most of our thoughts don’t come from some deep well of wisdom or analytical insight about the secrets of the universe.

Most of our thoughts are recycled sense impressions that we picked up from our environment, byproducts of our physiological state or emergency signals from a brain that’s stuck in survival mode.

To put it bluntly: most of our thoughts are either noise or trash.

But because we’re taught in this culture to identify with our mind, when we see all that trash floating past we get worried and we start to think oh no... maybe *I’m* trash

Let’s clear this up:

Your mind is not you.

Your thoughts are not you.

If your thoughts are trash, that doesn’t mean anything about who you are.

So get a little skeptical. Don’t believe everything you think.

In resilience,

Caitlin