BLOG: Breaking Our Addiction to Thinking

Written by Damien Chinappi with Evolution Now Project

CAN ADDICTION BE A GOOD THING?
Addiction, that’s a word that is typically designated to drugs, substance, sex, and even food. But the truth is we all have an addiction … to our thoughts. You heard me right, we are addicted to our own thoughts. What’s even more … they aren’t even ours. 

Still, everything from the opinions, personal thresholds, the attention spans to even the quality of the thoughts in our minds create a certain addiction. The brain wants to coast along on autopilot which means it gets used to the thoughts that populate the mind.

And all of this is for better or for worse. We’ve all heard the saying, ‘the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.” Well this can be applied to how your mind works.

WHAT ARE WE FOCUSED ON?
You follow a particular version of yourself, that version is cycling thoughts. These thoughts feel like you, but they are really more like the station that the antenna of your mind is tuned to. All of this is to keep us in a place that is familiar, because familiarity breeds security. A deep part of our core being is to stay alive but to truly live, requires us to thrive.

The key is to get addicted to the thought patterns that expand our curiosity which enable us to grow. The growth mindset allows us to endure the pain of change while we engage with the toughness required to stay persistent in those pursuits.

So how do we shift into that mindset?

We have to break the addiction to certain thoughts. I can’t, it’s too difficult, I’m not ready.

BREAKING THOUGHT ADDICTION
We break our thought addiction first through awareness and through accepting that it occurs. And second, by installing the conceptual frameworks. Mental frameworks that allow us to minimize the amount of negative emotion we feel while experiencing frustration in the early phases of building a new skill or habit.

In short, you become aware of how to find positive emotion through failure. Moving forward isn’t a straight line, and the more you can find something positive in the process, the more likely you will stay consistent with it. Like Pavlov's dogs.

This week on Evolution Now we explore how to get outside the bubble of our thought stream and create new habits of mind. Listen or Watch on YouTube HERE.

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​Written by Damien Chinappi, July 2023
This essay was written as part of Evolution Now Project
Blog Article #1

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