An Excellent Wknd [25.47]
Some thoughts on thinking about thoughts
Hello, hi, 👋
Happy Sunday, my friends, & a slightly early Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours. We’re grateful as heck that you’re here.
Let’s jump in.
THINKING ABOUT YOUR THINKING
Alan Watts said that when we learn to think about our thinking, we become alive in a new way.
And our friend Mark England likes to remind us that the fastest way to think about our thinking is to write things down.
Not type. Not record a voice memo. Not keep circling the same thoughts in your head hoping they’ll magically resolve themselves.
Write.
When questions stay in our heads, they move too fast. They swirl. Five questions feel like 555 questions when they’re spinning in your mind, mixed with everything else competing for attention - the grocery list, the work deadline, the worry about what someone said yesterday.
But when you externalize them, when you pick up that pen and get the words on paper, something fundamental shifts.
You slow the story down. You create distance between you and the thought. You can look at the words, let them breathe, and make them better.
This distance is everything.
Without it, you’re trapped inside the kaleidoscope - fragments and shapes and emotions all swirling together with no clear picture. With it, you have a fixed point. Something you can build strategy around. Something you can actually work with.
And here’s what happens next: once you’ve cleared out that mental real estate, once you’ve gotten the swirl onto paper, you become more sensitive to feedback. Not sensitive like emotional - sensitive like a better antenna.
You start noticing answers showing up in conversations, in articles you read, in the shower two days later. You’ve posed the question clearly enough that your mind can actually work on it, instead of just cycling through the same confused loop.
Peace of mind requires knowing what you’re actually dealing with. You can’t chase what truly matters if you don’t know what’s in your way.
Write it down. Think about your thinking. Become alive in a new way.
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Until then, keep on chasing.
🤙🏼 Patrick
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I love this idea! I am doing a ton of cleaning/rearranging and one thing I'm doing is a writing nook! This solidified my reasoning!! Thanks!!