You Can Only Hold One Thought in Your Mind at a Time
At any given point in time, you can only keep a single thought in your mind. And if any time we experience a thought that doesn’t suit us, we always have the ability to choose to create space for a better one.
Episode Transcription
Intro:
At any given point in time, you can only keep a single thought in your mind. Unfortunately, many of the thoughts that occupy that single, very valuable piece of real estate are the kind that don’t suit us.
But the good news is that there we always have the ability to make choices about how we think, and we alway can choose to create space for newer and better thoughts. Let’s talk about how to do it. Here we go.
Main:
Here’s a concept I want you to study: You can only hold one thought in your mind at a time.
Think about that - at any given time, we only have room in our mind for a single thing. Now our minds might be good at bouncing around among lots of different thoughts quickly - but we’re never able to simultaneously make space for more than one thing.
The challenging part of this reality is that at any moment there are dozens of thoughts competing for that one spot. It’s natural for us to be processing information and inputs that are all around us at a lightning quick pace, and so we end up shifting thoughts into and out of that space moment to moment all day long.
Unfortunately, many of those thoughts that occupy that space are the kind that don’t suit us. And you know the kind I’m talking about here - in the context of your day they could be thoughts about things you wish you had done differently in the past, things you’re anxious about or worried about that might happen in the future, fear, self-doubt, all of those things - they tend to creep into that spot.
And the reason they creep into that spot is because it’s a biological survival mechanism that’s been ingrained in our brain thanks to evolution and our ancestors.
In a nutshell, one of the skills our prehistoric ancestors developed was the ability to be fearful and cautious - those who were fearful and cautious were the ones who could spot risky situations and were better at staying away from things that would put them into danger.
They’re the ones who knew not to stay out in the open where predators could see them, they’re the ones who started to think ahead and anticipate what might happen in the future so that they could adjust their behavior and not put themselves unnecessarily at risk.
And the ones who did that are the ones who one survived, and fast forward to the present day and as their descendants we still have those thoughts as our default wiring.
Now because that’s our nature, paying attention to what thoughts we let into that single spot is a full time job.
If we’re not vigilant moment to moment, that spot is likely to get filled with a thought that comes from a place of fear, or doubt, or uncertainty.
And although our mind defaults to those thoughts because they’re the kind that help keep us protected and safe, they’re also the kind that prevent us from moving forward, and staying focused, and experiencing a healthy state of mind moment to moment.
So what can you do about changing what occupies that spot?
There’s two things I think you can do as a starting point. First, you can act like a gatekeeper. You can constantly check in with yourself so that you can be vigilant about which thoughts you let occupy that space.
This is where the importance of daily routines, like a few minutes of quiet time or mindfulness, become critically important. They’re important because those moments help you understand what’s occupying that valuable spot.
Second, once you get good at gatekeeping, you might realize that you don’t really like the thoughts that you’re having moment to moment - so what do you do about that?
If you want to have new and better thoughts, the answer is to work on clearing that space so you can insert a new thought that suits you better.
Let me give you an example. Let’s say you have this recurring thought that keeps popping into your mind - maybe it’s a conversation you had with someone that didn’t go the way you wanted, maybe it’s a negative thought about yourself, or maybe it’s just a neutral thought that you keep having over and over again, something you want to remember or that you might want to dig deeper into.
When that happens, ask yourself what you can do about the thought you keep having? How can you acknowledge it and process it, and how can you start to make room for a new thought you want to have?
So you may end up processing that old thought by doing things like
Having a tough conversation you need to have
Taking some sort of action that will help you to better understand why you’re thinking that way or help you clear it up
Or maybe you just need to write it down so that you can capture the thought and remember to address it later.
Just be aware that every time you have a recurring thought, it’s probably because you need to take some kind of action related to that thought. And the action could be as simple as acknowledging the thought and letting it go - which is really one of the foundations of meditation and mindfulness - but at the very least, you want to work toward having that moment to moment awareness that will help you identify that thought and move forward from there.
When this comes up for me and when I have a thought that I want to address so I can clear some space, I like to write the thought down and then write down the first step I need to take to address it.
Writing things down can be really powerful, it’s very helpful if we’re looking to clear space. There’s also science behind how our brain functions that says that when we write things down, it marries the left and right side of our brains and helps us be more intentional about acting on those thoughts.
Remember though that those thoughts will always be there. No matter how much you train your brain to think differently, you’re always going to have thoughts that you don’t like occupying that spot.
But here’s the great news: in those moments, you always get to decide whether what’s there is suiting you.
And if it’s not suiting you, then you always have a choice to let that thought go and open up the space for a better one.
You always get to decide. So remember to stay vigilant.
Go have a great workday.