What are you thinking?

Diving deeply into the unanswerable question that is so often asked. Striving to understand the inner workings of the mind.

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Speaker 1 0:05

Welcome to a place where we're thinking together and thinking deeper about who we are. Welcome to the podcast.

Speaker 2 0:18

Hello, I'm William fortune. And this is bill [inaudible] today thinking what's going on in our minds, the answer is unique to each of us. Something that no scientists will ever be able to come up with a definitive, quantifiable, straight answer. The question that many of us get in the many of us give is what are you thinking, man? That one always stumps me because every time I process, what am I thinking? Do you mean right now? Because right now my brain is going through, Oh my goodness. Many different gyrations and not everyone's brain does the same thing. Not everyone's brain works the same. We all are unique. But in that time, that moment of processing, what am I thinking? My goodness. I'm thinking about that monkey on Seinfeld and that a Seinfeld episode. I am thinking about an elephant. Why are their feet so soft when they're so big? Uh , I thinking about that first car I ever owned and why did I crash it? Why was I going too fast? Uh, that girl over there, that guy. Oh my gosh. His biceps are huge. Um , I'm thinking about the color blue. Why is it blue? What makes it blue? Where did that word come from? Who came up with the word blue all happening at the same time. And there's so much more that taste in the back of my mouth. Why is that taste there? What am I thinking? What are you thinking? Just take a moment right now. What are you thinking? Not just the first thing that pops to your mind. The thing that's way back in the corner, just tugging at your attention. What are you thinking if you search this up on the internet, if you go looking for how many thought processes happen in the course of a minute or an hour or a day, and you'll find that there's one that keeps popping up in that state 70,000 thoughts per day. Uh, and of course, you'll also find that that's also connected to a Snopes article that disproves that or disclaims that, and the more you dig, the more you'll find that, you know, scientists will agree that there is no way of actually coming up with a definitive answer, but think about it for yourself right now. Just take , you're going to focus your thought for just a moment. Think about thought processes. Think about right now. What is going through your mind? Other than me asking you to think about what's going on in your mind? What is it? You know, I can lay some prompts. I can lay down some things and that'll change. Your mind will cause you to turn corners and spin around and do all kinds of weird things. If I were say a think about your first Pat or your first kiss or hug, or your favorite cousin, aunt, uncle , uh, a teacher. Think about the first time you ever did. And the pause in that pause, your brain went through about 30 different things. First time I ever did, what , what, what did I ever do? What is that thought process? Now I have just helped you along the thought process by laying out there in front of you, some sort of stimulus, and our thought processes are guided by the stimulus coming in from many different places. Excuse me, for stumbling over my words. Once I get going, I just get going. Our thought processes are stimulated by what we see, what we hear, what we smell, what we taste, what we touch. And then there's more, there's some of those thought processes sought processes by goodness that are stimulated by other thought processes. That's crazy that our brains will stimulate other thoughts based on thoughts that we just had, that didn't come in from the outside, they started on the inside. Now I could spiral you down this little staircase into though the well of the inside the inside of each of us inside of you. And you can get it's easy. You can get lost in there. It's easy to get lost in there. There's so many corners and so many dark spaces. There are also so many bright spaces and Meadows and , and fields in which to romp where our brains just go, wow, this is incredible. One of the things that I was just introduced to was the idea. We like to think of the brain as this super computer, but a supercomputer has a starting point. We have things that make it, do what it needs to do. And it has pathways in which it has to run in order for that computer to run. When it doesn't work in those pathways, the computer starts to malfunction. Well, our brain, which part of the brain leads the rest of the brain. It's anarchy in there. Our heads, our minds are the epitome of anarchy. There is no one brain cell that causes the thinking process. There's no one leader that says, okay, it is time to start thinking about joining the military. It is time to start thinking about global peace. It is time to start thinking about climate change. Nothing in our heads has that leadership capability or that leadership role. The brain works as an organism that fires on itself, the juices flow in certain ways. And if you think about that as a little weird, little crazy, a little wild, and ah , man, okay, now I'm going down the rabbit hole in my working on that thought processing my thought processes and working on that thinking mechanism we're taught about right and wrong, good and bad. What is a good thought? What is a bad thought? What is a right thought? What is a wrong thought? And there is no answer to that because they're all just thoughts. Those thoughts don't happen out in the world. They happen in our heads. It's what we do with those thoughts. It's how we move on those thoughts. It's what those, what actions, those thoughts stimulate that makes it not good. Not bad, not right, not wrong. And now, as I said, here's where I step in it a little bit. This could be controversial, could be a lot of different things. Take it as you want, but I stopped the right and wrong, good and bad thinking. And I use this for everything I do and how I process. Okay. You want to know what I'm thinking? There is no right or wrong. There is no good or bad there's healthy. And there's unhealthy. Is that a healthy thought or as an unhealthy thought. Now, guess what the crazy part about that is there are only healthy thoughts. We need to balance our thinking process, our thoughts, we need to purge. We need to get those thoughts happening. And then out they go away. They dissipate. They are, they become nothing until we give them weight. Then we give them the power to be a good thought or a bad thought. We give it the power to make me pick up the stick to make he make me ball my fist to make me kick the car, to make me yell and scream and holler. Is it healthy or is it unhealthy? The outlet of the thought, the thought itself is part of the thinking process. The, what are you thinking? Is it good or bad to think of a pink elephant? Well, of course, just by saying the pink elephant, some people are going to think of many different things. Somebody might think of that. The song in the Disney movie, Dumbo pink elephants on parade, some others might think of, depending on your age, pink, elephants, signified , alcoholic, hallucination, some others might think of just fun. Frivolity of a pink elephant in a Bollywood movie. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Is it healthy or unhealthy? Well, if pink elephants make you think of drinking and then make you long for that drink and you take that drink and you become drunk and you get behind a car, it wasn't the thought that made that happen was the actions. It was what you did with that thought, how you put that thought into the world. The same crazy-making thoughts became incredible when they became the actions of one Albert Einstein or Tesla or Edison, those crazy making thoughts, those things, which are completely absurd and outrageous are why we have bulldogging in, in rodeo. When bill Pickett decided he was going to take down a bull this way, it hadn't been done before people weren't doing that. Was that good or bad? Was it healthier on a healthy , well, it worked. It's been beneficial for millions. Billions, probably in many of these different things, whether it's for entertainment or for science, those unique thoughts, the unique thoughts that are in your head right now, hopefully being inspired by this podcast, those unique thoughts created the world around you. They created the idea that we could put electricity in these things and transport it from one place to the other that we could mass produce things. We could injection mold, plastics that we could create plastics that we could pull resources out of the ground. Those same thoughts are going to be what cures cancer. Imagine if that crazy thought that was in someone's mind, that is in someone's mind right now is seen as bad wrong because it is so unique. And so out there, or in most cases, because it is a thought it's in there way deep in there is not allowed to come out. Then we don't have the cure for cancer. We don't have the cure for the common cold. We don't see the end of things that we want to see the end of war. We don't see the end of war because we don't follow through with the thoughts based on thinking, because that thinking was considered good or bad. And wasn't looked at as healthy or unhealthy. Wow. Wow. Yeah. I stepped in it here. Uh, and that's what this is, bill us a free podcast is all about let's think deeper. Cause when we do man, anything is possible. Anything is possible. You'll hear me say it over and over. When we dig deep, when we go deep within, when we allow ourselves the space to think, to really think through, and then the put that into practice, take some of that thinking and find a space where you can manifest it. Then we're going to see huge breakthroughs. Soon. We will be putting people on Mars not very long ago. It was impossible to get someone to the moon. And when we talk about putting people on Mars, no one's laughing. I have a 15 year old son who knows it's going to happen in his lifetime, that there will be missions to Mars. He's excited about the possibility of colonizing. Another planet. For me, that was science fiction. As a child, things that I live with every day were not even thought of for science fiction. Dick Tracy's watch. When I was a kid was, was still laughed at, it was something that was drawn up in what the twenties or thirties. And I was living as a kid in the seventies and a watch that you could communicate with that you can use as a, as a radio transmitter and receiver. And today I have a phone in my pocket that does more than that. And there's a watch that people where I don't have one, there are watches that people wear where they talk to other people on those watches, they can get their heart rate. They can find the weather. That's crazy. Absolutely crazy. I look at the transmitters from star Trek, my son and I laugh about this all the time because we know that some kids somewhere has already figured out how to hack a Bluetooth headset and put in, make it into a pin so they can have a communicator on their chest in the shape of the Starfleet logo. Some kid, right? Not some tech genius in Silicon Valley or some tech genius in India or somewhere else in the world. Some kid somewhere has probably figured out how to create that wonderful little life hack. And where did that come from? That thought? Now, if you ask that kid, what are you thinking? Oh my goodness, that might not even be the first thing on their mind because there are so many thoughts that pop up in our heads every moment and how we work with them and how we do them is what makes them incredible. Now how we bring them into the world is what makes them healthy, unhealthy, forget good or bad, forget right or wrong. Because the right thing in the wrong situation is what, I don't know. You give me the answer on that one. Is it the right thing or the wrong thing, the wrong thing in the right situation? Same thing. Is it healthy is an unhealthy and not just for you, but for the world around you, is this healthy. If you want to harm someone because they're gonna , you think they might harm, you think they might harm you, not because they're harming you. Is that the right thing or the wrong thing? Is it healthy or unhealthy, healthy or unhealthy for all involved? Now, in some situations we have to do things that are pretty difficult, but in our thought processes, in that moment of what are you thinking? What are you thinking? And forget validating whether it's going to be good for the common good of man, whether it's going to be beneficial for whatever, what are you thinking? How do we get to that place of healthy thought? We continue to think. We let things go. We retouch on other things that are important, that are necessary. And sometimes we get help. If that thought process gets stuck and you wind up in a cycle that isn't healthy, that you're stuck in a negative cycle or stuck in a, in a weird cycle that whether it's negative or positive, whether it's, if it's, is it healthy, you're stuck. Get help. There are many ways to do that, reach out. And if you don't know how to do that, this is where we get to the healthy thinking process. If you don't know how to do that, reach out to your doctor. If you don't know how to find , if you don't have a doctor, you can't reach out to a physician, whether it's your healthcare or whatever is not helping you go to the ER and just say, I need help. Oh yeah. That's what they do. That's how that works. There are many ways to do this and you don't have to do it alone. The thought processes will happen alone. They're going to be in your head. No one else will ever be in there, here that you're there alone. It's the loneliest place in the world, your head. And it's also one of the fullest places in the world, all those thoughts happening in there. Are you in charge of them? Are you in control of them sometimes? No. Sometimes yes. When you have to think of where you left the car keys, where you put your shoe, where is that thing that I'm missing? You control those thoughts now locking into that memory part where you, where you left the, whatever that was. That's a whole nother thing because that space is so huge in there. So many dope doors, places to hide your stuff in your thoughts in. And unfortunately for most, there's not a real place for us to hide ourselves in because have you tried to hide yourself in that space of the mind? What you'd keep finding is yourself more and more lost, more and more confused. Don't hide there, go there to shed light in the coming episodes. I'll also talk about the whole dreaming process, analyzing dreams, and also lucid dreaming in how we move through that space and daydreaming. And I, I leave you with this. What are you thinking? I should also give you a way to, to start to work with that thinking maybe a little tool. You don't have to use it, but you can. It's like having a toolbox. You can put some tools in there that may be necessary right now, right today. Or you may come back to him in a week, a month, a year, a decade. One of those tools to focus your thinking or to unfocus your thinking is kind of a meditative tool. If you can find a place where you can sit and not worry about who's seeing you, who's watching you and all those other little concerns and see things. So not focusing on anything, you can close your eyes. If you have to and just breathe. And as you breathe in, in your brain, in your mind's eye, in your mind with that voice of your head, say, I'm breathing in. And as you exhale say, I'm breathing out and try to focus on that. Nothing else focus on. I'm breathing in, I'm breathing out. I'm breathing in, I'm breathing out. When I first started doing that exercise, I could last for maybe 10 or 15 seconds before I started thinking of, Oh my goodness, what else do I have to do today? Why am I sitting here breathing? What's going on? What is my heartbeat? What has happened ? And the brain would go absolutely ape. I can sit there and for a little bit longer now and do this exercise. The exercise really is about focusing on now is being present right now. How do we shut off all those things that we need to shut off? You know, what are you thinking? A thousand things. There's no way to quantify it. Sometimes it's only one per second, but one per second is

Speaker 3 20:22

tick, tick, tick, tick.

Speaker 2 20:25

That's a lot of thoughts. And if you think about it, they can start to overlap and overlay in Southern. And then there's two per second,

Speaker 3 20:32

tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick,

Speaker 2 20:36

or each of those Texas two thoughts. Now that's conscious and subconscious and all that stuff mixed together. So focusing on the present the now right now, right ? What's important. Your heart's beating, you're breathing, your heart's beating and you're breathing your heart's beating. And you're breathing in, breathing out and breathing in and breathing out. And in the process of doing that, everything else goes away. It's still there. There's subconscious thoughts that are happening. There are other things that are happening, but they're not focused on. They're not stressed. And that's the important part of this. Doesn't matter what your thinking. And it does matter what your thinking is it healthy? Is it unhealthy removing that stress? Is there a healthy level of stress level? Yeah, we're all. We have stress every day, but trying to attain that is really difficult. Taking a moment each day to distress your thinking will help distress. Your day will helps distress. Your body will give you a moments break. Finding that space is important, just as important as what are you thinking? Because when you take the moment to distress, you take the moment to validate you in the moment in the day in the world, in the universe, boom. And then the magic starts to happen. The magical thinking, healthy, magical thinking, and anything is possible. The cure for cancer, the cure for the common cold, the cure for climate change, the answer to new sustainable resources. The answer to peace in the world. The answer to how are we going to colonize Mars? How are we going to get faster than light travel? That's all up there. And we're all capable of coming to that point, finding those solutions and more, keep thinking, then take those thoughts and put them to healthy actions and you will change the world. I'm William fortune. Thank you for listening to philosophy on ear spoon, go forward with passion and purpose

Speaker 1 23:30

philosophy podcast . Keep checking in as we will be regularly releasing new episodes.