If you study a thought, you’ll see that it’s…

Page 4. If you study a thought, you’ll see that it’s merely a temporary appearance of words. But if you pay attention to it, and repeat it in your mind, it comes to life with meaning and substance and this is the beginning of a great deal of trouble. This is what I used to call ““ my life. But when I didn’t pay attention to those thoughts, they could arise, but I remained peaceful.

— from The Mind in the Cockpit · End of Self Help

In the book

Keep a box of mental tools close at hand for all of this, and hold your thinking to its purpose: my thinking, William James said, is first and last and always for the sake of my doing — a mind that only spins is not thinking, it is idling. And learn to see a thought for what it actually is, because studied closely even a tormenting one is merely a temporary appearance of words passing through, neither a fact nor you. There is nothing wrong with not knowing; the only real danger is being certain you know what you do not. — The Mind in the Cockpit

Related