Much of what passes through our head doesn’t arise from a conscious decision. A thought arrives while we are doing something else, presents itself with a voice of its own, sometimes with a certain insistence, and we tend to take it seriously right away, to question it, to argue with it, to the point of confusing it with who we are.
The brain, however, keeps working even when we ask it nothing specific. In a sense it produces thoughts the way the heart produces beats: not because every single thought is necessary, important or true, but because this activity is part of how it functions. Into this continuous movement enter memories, hypotheses, fears, spontaneous associations, images of the future and that inner dialogue that accompanies a good part of our day.
The Default Mode Network is involved in many of these processes, especially in moments when the mind is not focused on a specific external task. It is not a factory of thoughts, of course, but one of the brain networks that take part in self-reflection, memory, imagination and spontaneous thought. This helps us understand something important: the fact that a thought appears in consciousness doesn’t automatically mean it represents us.
It may be just something passing by.
The problem begins when that mental phrase is immediately taken at face value. “I won’t make it”, “I’m getting it wrong”, “I’m not enough”, “it will go badly”. A thought like that, by itself, is not yet a truth, but if it is repeated, observed and confirmed long enough it can slowly turn into a belief and then enter the way a person describes themselves.
At that point we no longer say “I had a fearful thought”, but “I am an insecure person”; not “today I fear failing”, but “I always fail”. It is a subtle step, because it turns a momentary mental event into something that starts to carry the weight of an identity.
Attention plays an important role in this process. The brain can’t give the same importance to everything that happens, inside and outside us, and so it continuously selects what it considers relevant. The more a certain thought is sought, repeated and confirmed, the more familiar it tends to become and, precisely because it is familiar, it can end up seeming more and more true.
It doesn’t mean that ignoring a problem is enough to make it disappear, nor that it is useful to fill our head with positive thoughts on command. It does mean, however, that there is a difference between having a thought and adhering to that thought, between observing a fear and turning it into a prediction, between feeling a doubt and deciding that this doubt really tells who we are.
Perhaps this is the most important distinction. The mind can continuously propose scenarios, memories, fears, possibilities and judgments, but we are not obliged to accept everything with the same weight. Some thoughts deserve attention, others need to be understood, others can simply be let pass without turning them into a sentence.
The mind will keep producing thoughts, just as the heart will keep beating. What can change is the relationship we have with what appears in our head.
Perhaps part of awareness is born right here: in understanding that a thought exists, but that doesn’t mean it must automatically become a truth about us.
Alessandro Sicuro
Brand Strategist | Photographer | Art Director | Project Manager Alessandro Sicuro Comunication
Sure-com America 