We all have the ability to control our thoughts and moderate their impact. Sometimes, they can become a part of your identity, but here’s the thing: you are not your thoughts. Psychiatrist Sigmund Freud once asked, “Where does a thought go when it’s forgotten?” Although this complex question has no definitive answer, there’s one thing we know: your thoughts leave a footprint in your mind. Get out of your head: you are not your thoughts! shutterstock/G-Stock Studio Looking at these statistics, it’s easy to understand how much our thoughts can affect our quality of life and potential for enjoyment. Indeed, back in the early 2000s, researchers at the United States National Science Foundation estimated that 80 per cent of our thoughts are negative, and 95 per cent of them are repetitive. Negative self-talk and rumination are real problems. However, from a mental health perspective, it’s important to be aware of the content of our thoughts, and of the impact they can have when we let them run loose. Of course, thinking isn’t all bad and letting the mind wander can have its benefits. For example, an article published in Science magazine reported that we spend more than 46 per cent of our waking hours thinking about things that aren’t related to what we’re doing in any given moment. And there are plenty more studies to confirm this. This figure seems to confirm that we spend a lot of time in our heads. In fact, psychologists at a Canadian university have quantified the average number of daily thoughts an adult has as 6,200. Have you ever wondered how many thoughts we have in a day? It may seem impossible to calculate, but actually, we do have an answer. Dee Marques offers some mindful exercises to help you do just that. But overthinking regularly can be detrimental to our mental health if those thoughts are negative, so it's important to remember you are not your thoughts. We all spend too much time 'in our heads' now and again.
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