I ran across a description of the human mind as being made up of two parts, the Thinker and the Prover. I had never heard it put that way, and I liked the simplicity and accuracy of the idea.
Earlier in the week, I had been thinking about the phrase, “What you think about expands.” Now I had a simple explanation for how that happens.
Here’s how it works. You get caught in a loop where your Prover goes out to bring your Thinker evidence. And the evidence stimulates you to think that your thought is even truer than it was before. Then, because you’re looking at it with such renewed interest, the Prover brings you even more proof. And your thoughts – with their attendant emotions – intensify. And the Prover brings you more proof.
I sometimes call this a mental movie loop. It’s some story you keep playing over and over in your mind. Maybe if you focus on it enough, you imagine, what happened will somehow change. But at least in our current world, thoughts don’t change events that happened in the past, no matter how passionately we think them
Well then, you tell yourself, maybe if I keep letting the movie play, I’ll see why I’m feeling what I’m feeling and how absolutely justified I am.
Movie loops might spin around forever if some distraction didn’t intervene. Luckily, distractions abound. You can always take a reality break, check out what’s happening, take a breath, take a stretch, look around. (Personally, I like to ask myself three questions: “Who am I? Where am I? What was I doing?” They get me oriented in the here and now instantly.)
Sometimes we get so hooked into some emotionally charged movie-loop that we leap right back into it after it’s interrupted. The Thinker thinks the story line. The Prover brings evidence as proof.
But here’s an interesting thing about the Prover. Its only purpose is to bring you evidence for what your Thinker is thinking. And that means if you change your mind completely and start wondering if this other viewpoint might be true, the Prover will bring you evidence to support that thought. The Thinker is in charge. And here’s the key: You are in charge of the Thinker! You can choose what to think about.
We do that all the time, of course, decide where to put our attention.
When I was a little kid and I went to the movies, a whole string of short features would play before the main one started, and then more would play before the second one started. I always liked those short features. They let my attention move from place to place and my emotions to change with each little story.
These days, I think of looking out my window as a kind of “short feature.” It puts me in the present and lets me shift my thoughts and check in on what’s going on around me. I just look outside my window and tell myself what I see. And it’s different every time, and refreshing. It’s like a little vacation from whatever mental movie had my attention. And then I get to choose whether to resume what thoughts I was thinking or to entertain new ones.
And that reminds me of this wise line: “You can’t stop thoughts from coming to your door, but you don’t have to entertain them.” Remember about the Thinker and the Prover and decide what kinds of thoughts you would genuinely prefer to entertain. Because one way or another, the Prover will bring you proof.
Wishing you fine thoughts and refreshing “short features.”
Warmly,
Susan
Image by mohamed_hassan on Pixabay