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Your attention shifts every second-and-a-half. We know this because it’s possible to measure and count when we’re thinking. Scientists agree on these figures. All day long our perceptions—sights, sounds, touch, feelings—interact. The result of this activity is your experience. Eyes move about, attracted to forms, moving over them. Ears constantly listen, accepting and integrating sounds moving by. If you stop for a second to observe, you’ll notice your attention is scanning the world with your senses.
This shifting, scanning attention leads to impressions, which then are stored. This process I refer to as thinking. The thinking process is a nearly non-stop flow of impressions being stored.
Scientists agree you have about 35-48 thoughts per minute. Yep, that’s right. Left to run on its own, your body turns attention into impressions and stores them at an amazing rate. That’s the result of your attention moving every second and a half, scanning with your senses. So all day long you are naturally making thought after thought. If you do the math, it turns out that the average human thinks somewhere between fifty and seventy thousand thoughts a day. It’s no surprise we hear ourselves saying, my mind is racing.
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If you truly want to be a good father, it’s likely you will have to face and change much of your thinking. Thoughts and concepts have settled comfortably into our definitions of our selves and the world. Each second-and-a-half, as we have paid attention with our senses, we stored information in our bodies in the form of thoughts all day long, all our lives. It’s a beautiful, sophisticated system that works incredibly well. It also requires maintenance.
What needs to be maintained in your thought system? Only you can figure that out. Here’s a clue: Look for resistance and conflict.
In seventy years of life and forty as a counselor, I’ve come to see clearly how powerful fathers’ interactions with their wives and children are. Rarely has my role as counselor dealt with problems which were not the result of conflicted thinking. To this end, I say to you fathers, if you truly desire the best for your children and their mom, deepen your awareness of your thinking.
Begin by observing your thoughts and choosing which ones get to stay and which ones get to go. Let’s call this thought monitoring.
Thought monitoring is a necessary skill. We must do it to remember our phone number, directions to the store, how to make pancakes. You and I are capable of sorting through billions of thoughts stored in our bodies to find these stored observations. It only requires our intention to do so. We do this so easily and often the thinking process can be taken for granted.
Here is where the problem arises: We think so easily and powerfully, we believe our thinking, and trust it to run on its own, and that can be fine. It can also be a huge mistake because much of what we think is information stored in past, that is outdated. Ideas we had as five-year-olds often don’t serve us well anymore. As an adult, knowing when we are thinking of conflict is a tool for changing that type of thought.
When we become a father, our primary relationship tool is our thinking. Our behaviors, emotions, and thoughts with our family will come largely out of the library of our personal experience. So all day long, say forty times a minute, we experience thoughts which direct our relationships. By and large, this works out. Or does it? It depends on whether or not the information we stored is relevant to the present moment. Much of the information we have thought into memory may not work well.
For example, I grew up thinking and believing that sarcasm was an important part of being a boy. Being able to speak quickly and hurtfully was a way to be strong, right into my teens. Then I began to see the pain my words caused for others. I had learned a sarcastic thinking skill that was useful for me to feel superior, but it didn’t do much for those around me. Somehow I received a gift of insight that thoughts are to be used carefully. I began to not speak sarcastically, which opened another world.
As a father, you use words internally and externally, based on your stored thinking. Consider your thinking before acting. Slow down and watch your thoughts. Take time to structure some quiet time to study your thoughts.
Roughly fifty thousand times a day we receive information from our stored thoughts and the ongoing input of the world around. Your children and wife relate to what you think. That is what they’re supposed to do. They’re sensing and thinking just like you. As fathers, we are able to choose which thoughts we accept and live. You are capable of being both peaceful and conflicted. Which of these you share with your family depends on your thinking, and your choices of which thoughts to live out into the world.
Think of a quality you value for your life. Kindness, humor, honesty for example. Make a choice as a practice word. Breathe your word in and out for a minute, and notice what happens in your body and the world around you. During the day take moments to breathe your choice, and move only in response to thoughts aligned with that choice.
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Photo credit: Pixabay