What Are You Thinking?

When you hear an unusual message, you might take a second to consider whether you should listen to it. Is it worth my time?

But when, almost immediately, it comes to you again from a different source, now it carries more weight and becomes worth considering. Could this be the Holy Spirit whispering to me?

The unusual message that came to me was: Don’t believe everything you think.

I read this in Louise Penny’s 2020 novel, All the Devils Are Here. “Don’t believe everything you think” is the advice given by Chief Inspector Armand Gamache to incoming cadets at the Sûreté academy.

Within a day or two of reading that, and pausing only briefly to read it again, I came across the following in a video message from Dr. Benjamin Hardy: “A sign of wisdom is not believing everything you think. A sign of emotional intelligence is not internalizing everything you feel. Thoughts and emotions are possibilities to entertain, not certainties to take for granted. Question them before you accept them.” This is a quotation from Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at Wharton.

So, receiving the same unusual guidance twice, I feel compelled to ask: What am I thinking that should not be believed? What thoughts am I entertaining that are actually leading me someplace I don’t want to go, to become someone I don’t want to be?

It doesn’t take me long to come up with a list of things that have trotted into my mind—that must be allowed to trot on through into oblivion without being accepted as truth. The thoughts come in from everywhere—news reports, books I read, social media, email messages, commentators, friends and acquaintances. None of it is necessarily truth to be believed.

What are you thinking that you should not believe?