Circular thinking and unlocking the cage

Ever looked through your Facebook feed and seen comments from a friend that look very familiar, or be thinking something and then get reminded by 'On this day' and find it identical to what you were just thinking about? How often do you recognize thoughts that you have thought before?

Today I mentioned in a comment the idea of 'Circular Thinking' which is how I have coined this term. Don't get it confused with the circular reasoning fallacy though as, this is not the same. However, I do tend to find that many people 'suffer' from it.

For most people, thinking patterns are habitual and the topics spoken about cyclical. It may depend on the changing seasons where the same thoughts, feelings and words arise as the same conditions form or, when a circumstance repeats and the thinking follows suit. We are creatures of habit and our habits are created through repetition until we become largely blind to what we do.

The danger is of course that when it comes to the things we think, they become our actions and even though we recognize that the world is changing, if our thoughts aren't changing, what of our actions? We like to think that when we look back we can see how far we have come but, if we are thinking the same things as we were at an earlier point in time, have we traveled at all? Perhaps, we are just getting older.

This is the problem when it comes to our individual potential for as we get older, we have less in front of us and, if our thinking and actions aren't progressing, we aren't using that potential very much at all. Potentially, we could be a lot more advanced than we currently are at a personal level.

How often do we think what we have always though and also wonder, "How come nothing changes?" How can things change if what we think and what we do aren't actually changing from what we previously have done. This is Einsteins: "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." issue, with the problem being our inability to adapt to our environment; the hallmark of intelligence.

Many of us, despite what we may believe, do not like thinking new thoughts and we are actually hardwired to habitualize our thinking to save energy expenditure. New thoughts takes effort that for the most part, we aren't willing to spend, unless forced. No one likes to get forced to do anything either and most would much rather make the choices themselves which funnily enough, are going to be made based on past information, choices and habits.

This means, we are stuck in a loop, a thinking loop that is much like the slow cousin of obsessive compulsive thinking. An obsessive compulsive thinker gets a thought and can't let it go as it recycles over and over such as, "did I turn the stove off?" which forces them to keep checking the hotplates. It is hard to leave the house when one thinks that the stove is on.

Circular thinking is a slow motion version of this which makes it much more insidious as, it is much harder to observe as instances are weeks, months or years apart. But, the effects can be much the same as the process covers many topics and situations, not just the stove. If we see leaving the house as difficult for someone with OCD, leaving a state of life can become the house as thought, word and action (the process of creation) keeps one stuck in the same loop which may cover years at a time. Stuck in a rut on a ring road that ends where it starts, so to speak.

Society further drives these types of thoughts, as does social media which is the king of spin, much like politics. Rather than develop new lines of thinking and encouraging people to explore wider, it looks to recycle and repackage and encourages specialization and penalty for straying too far from one's core position. This is a control mechanism that makes maintaining a status quo position, much, much easier.

It is not that specialization itself is bad but, if it isn't met with curiosity that keeps driving one forward into new realms, stagnancy is the result. Boring jobs that one can do with their eyes closed, conversations where the next sentence is already known and content that provides no food for thought.

I do not know if there is a technical term for this or how much research has been done on it but, I noticed this a long time ago in myself and then set about breaking the loop and, here we are. For example, while people seemingly struggle for content on Steem, I have n ever expanding pool and am forced to limit how much I write about.

For me, this is not about regurgitating what has been consumed from some Wikipedia spun article for upvotes, it is my thinking spiraling outward from what I know, not around in a circle of repetition. While many are looking for answers from an authority (Google these days), I am trying to develop my own lines of thought.

Am I always right? Hell no! But, my thinking is more mine than someone else's and it is much less repetitive than it once was. What I have personally found is that once I started paying attention to the loops, I began to recognize where, why and how my thoughts were keeping me in a 'locked-in'state of living. New opportunities arose, new paths taken, new thoughts developed.

Although I still suffer the many slings and arrows of outrageous fortune like everyone else, I am much freer in my thoughts and, a lot more creative than I ever was previously. People dream of freedom with repetitive thoughts of how to get there and feel oppressed by their lack of headway.

Change is easy, think about it.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]