Too many people are too lazy to think. Instead of learning something new, they think the same thought day in day out.
If I'm riding my bike I just replay the same scenarios over and over in my head, like I haven't had a new mental adventure since high school. So that's what I like about books on tape, so my mind can't wander anywhere.
Your head's like mine, like all our heads; big enough to contain every god and devil there ever was. Big enough to hold the weight of oceans and the turning stars. Whole universes fit in there! But what do we choose to keep in this miraculous cabinet? Little broken things, sad trinkets that we play with over and over. The world turns our key and we play the same little tune again and again and we think that tune's all we are.
I do not have OCD OCD OCD.
Every morning we awaken from sleep and from our dreams and enter the state we call wakefulness. A continuous stream of thoughts, most of them repetitive, characterizes the normal wakeful state.
I write everything many times over. All my thoughts are second thoughts.
A belief is really only a thought that you keep thinking.
The thoughts of a prisoner - they're not free either. They keep returning to the same things.
I like to be alone and listen to music. Every match I play, I have a tune in my head over and over. It might only be a few words or a small piece of the tune, but it can drive you mad.
Your mind is an instrument, a tool. It is there to be used for a specific task, and when the task is completed, you lay it down. As it is, I would say about 80 to 90 percent of most people's thinking is not only repetitive and useless, but because of its dysfunctional and often negative nature, much of it is also harmful. Observe your mind and you will find this to be true. It causes a serious leakage of vital energy.
First examine what is constantly there in your mind, what is being repeated again and again. You don't have many thoughts. If you examine minutely you will see that you have only a few thoughts repeated again and again - maybe in new forms, new colors, new garments, new masks, but you have only a very few thoughts.
Much like the hands of a clock go nowhere fast, anxious thoughts run us round-and-round without taking us anywhere!
I have a personality that tends to be somewhat compulsive, and I do tend to think in a circular way. I dwell on the same things over and over and I try to figure out different ways of looking at the same issue.
I was always incredibly obsessed with germs and cleaning and taking shower after shower after shower. Even when I was very young, I wouldn't tie my shoelaces because they had touched the ground. I had continuous repetitive thoughts that I couldn't get past. As a child, my mind was a lot busier than I was.
I once missed an appointment because I left my house, I locked the door. And then I thought, like anybody else, you know, 'I don't think I locked the door.' I just kept going back to the door. And I couldn't stop myself from checking and checking.
A song will keep going round in my brain and keep me awake.
I'll run through things over and over and over again in my head and think, "How could I have done that better?" Silly things like that.
I couldn't sleep for nights on end, as my brain felt like there were thoughts colliding within it; I obsessed over small details, from saving pennies and polishing each one of them to washing my clothing over and over in the washing machine.
How much of you is repetition?
Why does my brain insist on counting the steps every time I walk up a flight of stairs? I just can't help myself. There's something about my mind that always wants to keep counting.
The words went round and round and round in my mind and my body, until I knew they were no longer my words but something that had been carved into my heart. And now my soul was crying.
I'd love to be able to write again, but I'm so repetitive. And it was all about fear. Never positive. Just indulgent about my sadness.
Alas, why does my mind have to walk through the dust of the past every day?
All my life, I've had these flashbacks, these dreams, nightmares, daymares, like visions, where I relive certain plays. Only the bad plays. I see them over and over, as if somebody's rewinding a tape and forcing me to watch.
What repeatedly enters your mind and occupies your mind, eventually shapes your mind, and will ultimately express itself in what you do and who you become.
