We are too smart for our good sometimes. The mind is a fantastic tool to enhance lives and solve problems. Still, I often forget it is just a tool to navigate our movements through life most efficiently and beneficially possible. I forget an instrument is not infallible, and this tool is not our identity. Left working on its own, the thoughts created by your mind will mislead you, make you feel unwanted and unnecessary emotions, and move your actions in circles rather than in the direction that might benefit you. Too often, we trust our minds and identify with our thoughts. We believe them and give credence to them, allowing them high power over our lives. The sad fact is our minds lie, mislead, and produce thoughts based on past programming, and following thoughts blindly will lead to treating perceptions as reality and having emotions run your life. Don’t trust your mind.
Tricks of the Mind
Our thoughts will trick us into believing something that isn’t true. The mind will often produce a story based on half fact and half rumor to support a thought you have and make it seem valid. It does this to justify your feelings and your actions even when your steps are not proper. All evidence is produced to make it seem ridiculous to question any part of it. Did you treat that person fairly?
Were you open-minded? Was that statement you made right or speculation? Our minds will find a way to make it seem right, but it may not be.
Like a lawyer arguing a case with no opponent, you will only get evidence that supports your thoughts and none that contradict or question. Unless you make a conscious effort to find it, eventually, the validity of thought will be revealed in the value of your life. Choosing not to question your beliefs will lead to a life of not getting what you need, but what is easy. We pay attention to each thought and believe going to bring a feeling with it, and it will lead to your actions in what you do and how you treat others. Much of what we “think” is done on the subconscious level, and thoughts are produced because of experiences in the past, not the thing you face today.
Confusing Movement of Thought
If you are honest, the truth is far from our minds. Our thoughts can prevent us from seeing if we don’t ask conscious questions. Opinions tend to overcomplicate things by adding a view upon the idea and creating wild 
speculation about what might occur if this happens or that does. The mind also produces many different possible solutions to a problem, which makes finding the exact answer hard in a world of choices that is no choice.
The hard lesson is that we think things into reality—nothing ever created in existence, which was not a vision in someone’s head first. Change is a fear producer in mind, and our thoughts will support this fear with a litany of “what if,” doomsday scenarios that lead us not to move forward. They keep us safe in our place, stunt any possible growth, and stop us from reaching for the next goal. There is no moving forward. We listen to alternatives from our thought which cause us to walk in circles of safety rather than trying something new. Your heart will always know the correct answer for you, but if you are listening to a thousand loud thoughts, you can’t hear the quiet calm voice inside of you. Don’t let the clouded judgment of untamed thoughts move you in cycles and circles in your life.
The Mind Avoids the Truth
Ask yourself any question, and your mind can move out on unconnected tangents of thought to avoid the more complex, more difficult choices and directly answer questions. A specific issue may be uncomfortable, painful, or just what you don’t want to hear. The mind is a deceiver, and it knows how to make you feel like you are
Being busy and productive even when you are not. Look for absolute truth with probing questions like, “Is this thought true?” Or “Is this thought relevant to the problem at hand?”
We will follow our thoughts into a place we shouldn’t allow them to take us where no action or movement exists. Thoughts about our past often provide no value other than to keep us spinning our wheels today. Thinking is the gatekeeper of our powerful tool of imagination. Instead of using this power to create today, untamed thoughts will turn into fantasies of the past, which will have you running in place, thinking of dead dreams, and a waste of your power. Using your mind well will allow you to create the world you live in and your experiences. Or you will be used by your meaningless thoughts, creating nothing but an eddy of mediocrity and unguided powerless action.
Question Your Thoughts
Take the time today to look critically at the thoughts you are producing and the subsequent issue of their power. Are your thoughts pure? Are you 100% sure? If you are not, you are letting your perceptions rule you, not the facts. Anything you are not sure of is just speculation, and if one side of the coin can be seen as 
accurate, then so can the other with a bit of effort. “That relationship ending was bad.” How was it wrong? List these things, then look and see if there is an argument for how it was good. Momentary pain can make something seem devastating, but the benefits might be very positive in the long term. Sometimes, just looking for them in your thoughts will reveal this to you.
Either we know the truth about something, or we don’t. Being honest about this will lead to seeing the power of your mind and the gifts it can provide. Following thoughts we are not sure of will lead to a rise in our anxiety levels. By merely admitting we are not sure and don’t “know” the answer, our negative emotions will decrease, and there is room for positive thoughts to exist. Create this room for positive thinking by questioning the validity and truth of all of your thoughts.
- “A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.” — William James
- “Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence.” — Thomas Szasz
- “Did you ever stop to think, and forget to start again?” — Winnie the Pooh
- “Few minds wear out; more rust out.” — Christian N. Bovee
- “It is well for people who think, to change their minds occasionally in order to keep them clean.” — Luther Burbank
- “Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about.” — Benjamin Lee Whorf
- “Misery is almost always the result of thinking.” — Joseph Joubert
- “Most of the mistakes in thinking are inadequacies of perception rather than mistakes of logic.” — Edward de Bono
- “Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “What we think, we become.” — Buddha
