---
title: 'Thinking about Thoughts'
url: 'https://tonypiper.coach/articles/thinking-about-thoughts'
date: '2023-01-13'
updated: '2024-12-04'
author: 'Tony Piper'
description: "You have thousands of thoughts daily but you don't need to engage with any of them. Discover the freedom in choosing which thoughts to think about."
tags:
  - 'Presence and Clarity'
  - 'Ship 30 for 30 2023'
  - Mindset
---



# Thinking about Thoughts

By Tony Piper,  January 13, 2023 •  [Presence and Clarity](https://tonypiper.coach/tags/presence-and-clarity) [Ship 30 for 30 2023](https://tonypiper.coach/tags/ship-30-for-30-2023) [Mindset](https://tonypiper.coach/tags/mindset) 

In [Day 6](https://tonypiper.coach/articles/the-surprising-and-liberating-fact-about-feelings) I talked about how feelings are just telling us something about our thinking.

When I first heard about this, I didn't believe it.

It didn't seem that I was doing any 'angry thinking' when I was feeling angry.

Rather, that feeling seemed to come directly from people, situations and other stuff outside of me.

But then I read a study that suggested we have 70,000 thoughts a day.

Thoughts are just stuff coming into our awareness. What to have for dinner. The unusual pattern on that coat in the shop window. What the boss said as I was leaving the meeting. And so on.

I wondered what it would be like to be aware of all those thoughts, let alone giving them a good old thinking.

I quickly concluded that it would be exhausting, and that us humans are not built to do that.

That suggested two things to me.

Firstly that **we are not aware of all our thoughts. Not consciously, anyway.**

And secondly, **we don't think about all our thoughts.**

Crucially,

**If we don't think about all our thoughts, the implication is that we don't need to think about any of them in particular.**

I'm not suggesting that we can easily make a conscious decision how to think about a particular thought. For me, positive psychology - finding the silver lining in every cloud - doesn't seem easy, especially if I'm upset. And once I'm thinking negatively about a thought, no amount of well-intended reframing from self or others will help me snap out of it.

**But realising that I can choose whether to think about a thought is a game changer.**

**And even if I've started thinking about a thought, I don't need to continue.**