Saturday, February 20, 2010

Fresh Idea

I read a statistic today that I had heard before but had since put to the back of my mind - 95% of our thoughts are repetitive. Wow. That certainly helps explain why making progress can sometimes seem so difficult. And it's no wonder why negative thoughts can be so debilitating - they could quickly become a skipping record, playing over and over in our heads.

I started to wonder what the cause of this high rate of repetitive thought is. Perhaps it's just the human wiring, the way our synapses fire reaffirming our thought process. Or maybe it has more to do with our 21st century culture, with the inundation of information which is often very repetitive in nature (who hasn't heard the robotic Tiger Woods apology by now?).

But regardless of the cause, who wants 95% of their musings to be unoriginal? We may not be able to actually change the percentage of our thoughts which are repetitive or not (that's for the neuroscientists to analyze), but I know I spend a lot of time pondering, discussing, and wearing out the same tired topics and I will bet I'm not the only one. So what are you doing to inspire fresh ideas, new experiences, untrodden paths, and original thoughts in your life?

Just a question to take into the new week...


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