Episode 58: Why Did My Brain Just Think That?

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The other night, my daughter was sitting at the counter while I was pouring myself a glass of iced tea when she asked me if I ever wanted to do weird things that made absolutely no sense. Obviously, I needed to know what she meant. She told me that while I was pouring, she had this sudden thought about pushing the glass away just to see what would happen. She wasn’t going to do it. She didn’t want iced tea all over the counter. She didn’t even really want to push the glass. The thought just showed up.

And I knew exactly what she was talking about. I’ve had the same thing happen driving across a bridge. For absolutely no reason, the idea of turning the wheel will flash through my mind. I don’t want to turn it. I’m not fighting some secret urge to drive off the bridge. I’m just driving along, minding my own business, while my brain apparently decides to throw that possibility into the conversation.

There are so many versions of this. You’re holding your phone over water and imagine dropping it. You’re standing somewhere high and the thought of jumping crosses your mind. You’re sitting in a completely quiet room and suddenly wonder what would happen if you screamed. We don’t actually want to do these things, so why do our brains come up with them? Pasted markdown

The Thoughts Nobody Else Knows About

These completely uninvited ideas are intrusive thoughts, and they’re common. What I find fascinating is how private they are. My daughter could have said absolutely nothing that night, and I never would have known that little moment happened. I would have finished pouring my iced tea and gone on with my night while this whole weird experience existed only inside her head.

We walk around all day having experiences like that. Most disappear before we give them much attention, but every once in a while, one catches us. If it’s ridiculous enough, we laugh and move on. I can imagine dropping my phone into the water without launching an investigation into whether I secretly hate my phone.

Make the thought darker, though, and suddenly we’re not laughing anymore. Now we want to know why we thought it, what it means and whether having the thought says something about us. The thought itself might have lasted only a second, but the questions we attach to it can hang around much longer. Pasted markdown

How much meaning should we give something just because we thought it?

The Call of the Void

My bridge thought sent me digging, and this is where things got really interesting. There’s actually a name for that split-second thought about jumping when you’re somewhere high even though you have absolutely no intention of doing it: the call of the void. Dramatic name, and I like it.

One explanation that has been explored is especially strange. When we get close to danger, our bodies can react incredibly quickly. Stand too close to an edge and you may instinctively step back or grab something before you’ve had time to consciously think through what’s happening. There’s an idea that the strange thought about jumping can become tangled up with that rapid response to danger. Pasted markdown

Think about how strange that is. What feels like a thought about jumping might actually begin with your brain trying to keep you safe. Something happens inside your own head, and you may interpret it almost completely backwards. The thought sounds like danger, while what happened underneath it may have been safety.

It doesn’t explain every weird thought we have, but it opens a much bigger question. If I can have a thought I don’t want, didn’t choose and may not even correctly understand, then every thought that crosses my mind probably doesn’t deserve the authority I sometimes give it. Pasted markdown

Not every thought that enters our head deserves our attention.

But What About the Thoughts That Do?

This is where the whole thing took a turn for me, because we hear some version of “thoughts become things” all the time. Depending on where you hear it, that can get a little too magical for me. I don’t think we can sit around thinking really hard and make things appear. If that worked, I would have won the lottery several times by now.

But look around. So much of what exists started as something that existed only in somebody’s head. The chair you’re sitting in, a song you love, every book sitting on my shelves. At some point, somebody could see something that the rest of us couldn’t yet. We make invisible things visible all the time. Pasted markdown

Our own lives are full of those things too. Think about something in your life right now that once existed only as a possibility. Maybe it was something you wanted to do, somewhere you wanted to go, someone you wanted to meet or something you wanted to create. There was a time when it hadn’t happened yet. You could only imagine it. Then somehow, it made it out of your head and into your actual life.

Not every idea does that. Most probably don’t. So what happened with that one? At some point, you got involved. You participated. That’s where “thoughts become things” gets much more interesting to me. Not because the thought itself magically created anything, but because you gave that possibility somewhere to go. Maybe it worked. Maybe it didn’t. But now it had a chance. Pasted markdown

Maybe thoughts don’t become things simply because we think them. Maybe some of them start becoming things when we participate in them.

Doubt Is a Thought Too

This might be my favorite part of the whole rabbit hole. We can have one horrible thought we never wanted and spend all kinds of time worrying that it means something. Then we can have a thought about something we genuinely want, and almost immediately believe every reason our brain gives us for why we can’t do it.

Think about that. One thought scares us because we’re afraid it might be true. Another thought excites us, and almost immediately we start explaining why it probably isn’t possible. Why are we so willing to believe the thought that shuts us down? It doesn’t know what’s going to happen. Neither do I. So maybe I get a vote too. Pasted markdown

Doubt can feel a whole lot like information. I’m not ready. Nobody will care. I don’t know what I’m doing. It probably won’t work. Those can sound like conclusions when really, they’re thoughts too. How many things have we talked ourselves out of without actually knowing they wouldn’t work? Probably a lot. The possibility showed up, doubt followed it, and somewhere between the two we made a decision. Pasted markdown

Doubt can feel a whole lot like information. That doesn’t mean it knows what’s going to happen.

We Only Get to Live One Version

There’s something uncomfortable about admitting we don’t get to know how the other version of our life would have turned out. We don’t get to make the call and not make the call, then compare both lives afterward and choose the one we liked better. We pick a direction, and we live it. Pasted markdown

That doesn’t mean every idea deserves action. Some ideas are terrible. Timing matters. Circumstances matter. Information matters. There’s a difference between deciding something isn’t right for us and allowing doubt to make that decision before we’ve even explored it. I wonder how often we really know which one we’re doing.

I’ve tried things that didn’t work. We all have. I’ve also started things that became something completely different from what I thought I was creating. I couldn’t have known either outcome ahead of time. I had to get involved to find out. Pasted markdown

There’s a big difference between something not working and never finding out what it could have been.

That’s the part that changes “thoughts become things” for me. The thought itself isn’t magic. A thought can become a conversation. A conversation can become a decision. A decision can change something. Now that thought isn’t just a thought anymore. It has entered your actual life, and what happens after that is the part none of us gets to know ahead of time. Pasted markdown

It could work. It could flop. It could lead somewhere you never saw coming. Six months from now, you might laugh at yourself for ever thinking it was a good idea. Fine. At least now there’s something to know. That feels much more useful to me than sitting still waiting for certainty that was never coming.

So Which Thoughts Get Your Attention?

Our brains are weird. Mine can give me an idea, hand me doubt five seconds later, and apparently suggest driving off a bridge while actively trying to keep me from driving off a bridge. Clearly, my brain gets to have opinions. It just doesn’t automatically get the final vote. I do. Pasted markdown

Not every thought means something, and not every thought deserves something. But some thoughts keep coming back. Maybe those are worth getting curious about before we talk ourselves out of them. Thinking about something doesn’t guarantee anything, but giving it nothing pretty much does. Pasted markdown

So think about whatever came to mind while you were reading this. You don’t have to make a giant decision today. You don’t have to know where it goes or how it turns out.

You just have to decide if you want to find out.

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