Enough with the unthought thoughts

the daily taryn - october 22, 2021

Happppy Sunday, my people. I’m sitting in my backyard drinking a watered down iced americano and some pulpy lemon-lime water that my perfect fiancee (omg!!) made me. It’s the exact kinda day you know you need but might not know how to ask for it.

If you’re new here, hello and thanks for stopping by. These newsletters are a casual look into my brain as I try to type out something I’ve been thinking/feeling/working through. The ideas are hashed out the second I start typing them and not a second earlier, which makes for a very raw walk through a lane in my brain. Thanks for coming along for the ride.

If you’re not new here, you know I love you and just the thought of you reading this right now after potentially years of you doing so is just the warmest little musing.

Independent thought

I’ve been slowly chugging through a little book from The School of Life called How to Think More Effectively: A guide to greater productivity, insight, and creativity. It may sound either boring or laborious to get through, but it’s neither — I haven’t nodded, highlighted, and “Can I tell you what I’m learning?”-ed so much through a book in forever.

One thing that is fundamentally changing so much of how I relate to my thoughts is about independent thinking. This chapter talks about how we, often rightfully so, rely on experts, writers, and any "authority figure” to be in charge of helping us work through our thoughts. That means looking to them to articulate and/or validate what we’re thinking. This obviously works well because that’s how we all do much of our learning — we listen to what smart people have said and nod along, or disagree and go find another smart person who said something else and then nod along with them.

“We are educated to associate virtue with submission to authorities. What they present feels surprising and impressive, yet also obvious and right, once it has been pointed out. They clearly and powerfully articulate notions that are already familiar to us because we’ve been circling them ourselves, possibly for years, without properly closing in on them due to our modesty.”

Because of how ingrained and subconscious this practice is, we don’t often try to articulate thoughts to anyone (or ourselves!!) until we can point to what someone else has already said on the subject.

“We kill off our most promising thoughts for fear of seeming strange to ourselves and to others.”

That… sucks. Like, how lame is it that this good thing we can do has become our default state stopping us from doing another good thing.

Let’s not

I’m challenging myself (and you, if you’d like to join) to do this less. Next time you have a thought about life or shoes or love or work, try to take it seriously. Try not to go, “Well, why would I know?” and instead, go there with yourself.

“The point at which we censor and close down, when we take fright and try not to think, is exactly the moment when the so-called genius starts to take note of what is happening within them.”

Exchange that fear of, “I’m so weird for having such a weird thought?” and let yourself think about it, work through it, maybe even feel strange to yourself for a bit. Maybe you’re the first one having that thought, or the first one articulating it in a way that uniquely works for your understanding. Maybe you don’t need to go get it validated by anyone else, seeing if “smarter people” have thought the thought already. Maybe you can take your unthought thought and examine it for the sake of examining it.

Let it air out. Ask yourself what you think, you interesting, intelligent, creative bitch.

I wonder what that practice would do for me. I’m excited to find out.

As always, thanks for reading. Hope it spurs some thoughts for you.

Talk soon <3

Your friend,

Taryn