The only thing in this world we have complete unquestionable control over is our own mind, and our own thoughts, and how we choose to frame (or think about) things. (page 2)

Wasanelder Once

You think you control your own thoughts? Do you have a TV? Enough said.

JeffT

Don't go to the bathroom for two days then see if you can control your thoughts well enough to think of something else for an hour.

i would have to humbly disagree, our mind is influenced by external sources and inputs whether we want them or not. We don't choose to take an action, we react based on the external data we have taken on.

If you lived the last 24 hours over again, without knowing you were, you would make the exact same desicions and choices, for the same reason you did the first time around. You chose cornflakes because you saw the box and your memory initiated a want for them, you wore the red socks because they were top of your drawer. You decided to go the other route to work because you got out early and fancied a change.... and on repeating the day you would make the exact same decisions for the same reasons. This negates free will and choice, we will always make the desicions we make because of previous influences leading to that point in time.

it has interesting religious significsnce... How can we be judged, when we were ALWAYS going to peform that act because of previous influences that were not our own.

even if you wish to say we can influence ourselves,by taking on data and contemplating it in our minds, well our mind is given to us, we don't select it or construct it. Our mind can be altered by chemical, anatomical, developmental variations...It is not our will or determination !

steve2

The OP is based on one of the central tenets of Rational Emotive Therapy developed byAlbert Ellis is the 1950s. It has influenced a number of therapeutic modalities including Cognitive Behavior Therapy and Dialectical Behavior Therapy, two of the most researched and empirically validated therapies in the western "world".

Satanus

If you can stop your mind from thinking thoughts, that proves that you congtrol it.

S

Oh Gawd

This is just personnel responsibility 101.

Two pictures that hang in my office:

1. Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.

2. It is that mark of an educated mind to be able entertain a thought without accepting it...Aristotile

WTWizard

People's thoughts are in fact controlled. The Anti-Defamation League does this for us. Anything that goes against the Establishment is not "politically correct". The "correct" viewpoint is that everyone is precisely equal, that whites are guilty because they are whites and that they need to be exterminated, blacks and Asians need to be enslaved, and anything that disagrees with Einstein, the Rockefellers, or the education(??) system is taboo. (To me, Einstein is the equivalent of the cat lick church. Einstein is to science what the cat lick church was to religion during the Inquisition.) And anyone that disagrees with the Establishment is "offensive" and not tolerated.

Seems the Anti-Defamation League has done a damn good job of controlling our thinking. They are to the world what the Washtowel Babble and Crap Slaveholdery is to the jokehovian witlesses.

poppers

Stop your thoughts on demand and see how successful you are at controlling your mind. You may suppress them for a very short time, but they will come again. If you've ever had a single thought that you didn't want then you have no control over your mind/thinking.

steve2

Albert Ellis's view was not so much you have complete unquestionable control over your thoughts but you can do something about your thoughts and behavior - but by contrast cannot do much about others' thoughts and behavior. People tend to spend their lives trying to change and/or control others when that precious energy needs to into working on oneself. The OP tends to overstate the position of rationale motive approaches to self-improvememt. Yes, the fundamental notion is self responsibility

snare&racket

Don't think about apples!

See....

The only thing in this world we have complete unquestionable control over is our own mind, and our own thoughts, and how we choose to frame (or think about) things.

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