Psychologists have estimated we produce somewhere between 12,000 (minimum) to 70,000 thoughts each day.  That’s kind of mind boggling when you stop to think about it.

That starts to make sense though, when we realize we’re never really ‘turned off’ – even when we sleep our brains don’t shut down completely; we’re tossing and turning and dreaming even then. Thoughts are running through our heads all the time.

But what is really interesting is that the majority of these thoughts have been determined to be mostly pure nonsense and/or negative based.

The majority of these negative based thoughts dwell on the past, the future, obsess about mistakes we’ve made or might make, deal with guilt, or worry for the sake of worrying – among other things.

All of these types of thoughts are negative and they cycle ‘round and ‘round the same way a broken record (album) did as it skipped on the turntable – repeating the same sound over and over and over – never able to move on to the next part of the song without assistance.

Do you remember how annoying that was?

You can’t sing or dance to music like that.  In fact…you can’t even think straight.

It’s interesting, isn’t it, how we fast-forward through any television commercial that even hints at disrupting our favorite shows, but willingly let negative thoughts run rampant again and again and again, wreaking havoc with our mental states, as if that is perfectly acceptable.

The worst part of it is…after expending all of this energy (the tireless worrying, the over-thinking, the mental abuse) – the effort goes completely unnoticed.

Think about it.  If someone has upset us…our rehashing doesn’t cause the person to behave differently.  If we’re worried about the future…worrying does nothing to prevent the future from happening. If we feel bad about a past mistake…it doesn’t change the past.  And if we dwell on something upsetting… it doesn’t change the situation in the least little bit – it only reminds us of the upsetting situation constantly.

That seems like a lot of work for a no-return-investment.

And it’s a little unfair too, don’t you think?

And when you consider the fact that we spend a good deal of time stressing over things we did or didn’t do when we were younger and inexperienced  – we never stop to think that we’re judging those actions with a much older, wiser and more experienced brain.

And that is definitely not fair!  The playing field isn’t level.

If we have time for negative thinking and worrying – then we have time for creative play.

And once we begin a creative journey, we’re soon inundated with creative ideas all competing for time and attention.  We no longer have room for negative thoughts.  There simply isn’t enough space!!