A Habit of Thought

Last week I was thinking about habits or patterns of behavior. This week I ran across a discussion of habits of thought.

I subscribe to Tim Ferris’s Five Bullet Friday email, and this week he posted a link to a short article about how ideas behave in the mind. This is the part that caught my attention:

Turning the other cheek turns out to have selfish advantages. Someone who does you an injury hurts you twice: first by the injury itself, and second by taking up your time afterward thinking about it. If you learn to ignore injuries you can at least avoid the second half. I've found I can to some extent avoid thinking about nasty things people have done to me by telling myself: this doesn't deserve space in my head. I'm always delighted to find I've forgotten the details of disputes, because that means I hadn't been thinking about them. My wife thinks I'm more forgiving than she is, but my motives are purely selfish. – Paul Graham, The Top Idea in Your Mind, on paulgraham.com July 2010

During and after my divorce, I replayed the different hurtful events and situations over and over in my mind. I almost want to say that my mind was doing the replaying by itself. Whenever my mind wasn’t distracted by what was going on right in front of me, it would automatically return to those situations. It was a habit of thought. I’ve also heard it described as “ruts” in the mind, like worn channels of thought where once you get into them it’s hard to get out. Those repeating thoughts wasted a lot of time, cost me a lot of energy, and prolonged a lot of heartache.

I found that over time I gradually remembered less and less of the particulars of what happened and what was said. This forgetting is part of forgiving, I think. The other part for me seemed to be the concept of people doing the best they can with the awareness and knowledge they have at the time. Even if they know what they’re doing is not loving or positive, it’s the only way they know.

So now, since the first step in changing something is being aware of it, I am on the lookout for those habits of thought, those ruts in my mind. I’m working on stopping those habits faster when I spot them and moving on. I like the way Paul Graham said it above – it doesn’t deserve the space in my head. I can think of a lot of more productive (and happy!) things. I learn the overall lesson, but forget the particulars.

What about you? Have you gotten good at recognizing ruts in your thoughts? Do you have a quick way to snap out of them? Leave a comment!

Until next time, remember… We are all magnificent.