My Story

For years I was shy around new people and new groups. I was unhappy with myself, insecure, always thinking, full of negative thoughts, heading toward the depressive side. In 2009 I was studying psychology at university, and I could not cope with my own head anymore. I had had enough. I decided to do something about it because I could not go on like this.

I started reading books and watching documentaries about who we are: metaphysics, psychology, philosophy, spirituality. I tried yoga, meditation, breathing techniques, eating patterns, and cold showers.

The big eye-opener was when I started talking back to my own thoughts. At first I told them to shut up every time they started. After that I began talking with them. I started noticing my thoughts more, and I noticed that many times my thoughts had been running for a while before I noticed them. When I noticed a thought, I gave it my attention, talked with it, and analyzed what it was saying. In all this I saw something. The thoughts that I talked to and analyzed started losing their power. I think it was because those thoughts had no place left to run or hide.

This is the example in my life that opened my eyes. I was studying psychology at university. I did not dare to ask questions, even when I did not understand the explanation. At home I thought, “I don’t understand the material, the exam is soon, and I will not pass.” Then another thought came up: “Your classmates will laugh at your accent.” I was not born in this country. I spoke well, with an accent. Unconsciously, a thought was saying, “I do not speak well, and my classmates are going to laugh at my accent.”

I started talking with that thought and analyzing it. A fight was happening in my head. On one side: “I have to ask questions in class.” On the other side: “They will laugh at you if you speak.” I looked at both sides and thought about what was more important to me and what I wanted to do. I thought, “If I don’t ask questions, I won’t pass the exam. If I ask a question, my classmates will laugh at me.” I asked myself, “What matters more, passing the exam or being laughed at?” I came to the conclusion that, for me, passing the exam was more important than being laughed at. I decided that the next day, in class, I would ask questions when I did not understand the lecture.

The next day in class, the thought started again: “Better not ask. They will laugh.” I said in my head, “I have to ask. I don’t understand.” Before I raised my hand, I started sweating and my heart was pounding. With a lot of mental and physical effort, I raised my hand. I asked the question that I had. My voice was soft and unsure. But then something happened that was more important for the change in the way I started looking at thoughts: nobody laughed at the way I spoke. It was all in my head. My own thoughts had created a reality that did not happen. I was so afraid and shy because of this thought.

It was hard to ask my first question in class, but I was very happy that I had asked it, even though my thoughts were saying not to do it. At home I analyzed what had happened and said to myself, “I will keep asking questions if I do not understand.” The next day it was still difficult to raise my hand and ask questions. Every time I had a question, I asked. Asking questions got easier and easier. The thought “They will laugh at you” left and never came back. I still had other thoughts that sabotaged me. But that one was gone.

I became a different person. In the first months I said nothing in class, not even to my classmates. One month after my first question, I was talking with everyone, making jokes, and discussing the material. When the teacher asked the group a question, I put my hand up to answer.

That was the real-life event that started to open my eyes. My own thoughts had created a reality that was not true, a reality that did not exist. It existed only in my head: “If I talk, people will laugh at the way I speak.” In reality, I talked, and nobody laughed.

I started looking in my head, looking at my thoughts, to find where else they were influencing my life without my knowing, without my being conscious of it. I was amazed at how much my life was being controlled by my thoughts. My beliefs, my perception, my convictions, and much more came from my own thoughts, and often I did not agree with these thoughts. Some of these thoughts were given to me by society and by my upbringing. In this starting phase I was like, “Wow, I have to relearn everything. I have to relearn knowledge of self.”

I went deeper into knowledge of self. I kept reading, watching documentaries, doing yoga, meditation, and breathing. The deeper I went into my own head, into my own thoughts, the more knowledge I got, the more I knew, and the more I got the impression that I did not know anything. After years of self-research, there is still no concrete answer to what a thought is or where it comes from. Psychology says one thing, philosophy another, spirituality another, science another. Sometimes they agree with each other, and sometimes they contradict each other. In all this, what I realize is really important is looking inside your own head, body, and thoughts. I can read a lot of books and talk with people, but if I do not do the work and go inside, I will not know myself, and I will not see my blind spots. It starts with us going from unconscious to conscious.

And this is how I came to the conclusion that thoughts matter more than we think.

A lot of thoughts arrive unconsciously while I am doing the dishes. The thought goes to the past, or to something that never happened, or to the future, or to something else. Thoughts can be conscious when I use them to plan, to calculate, to understand, to solve something, or for something else.

When I looked at society and at what people are talking about, I realized that there is not much attention on thoughts themselves, explained simply and practically, so that we can understand how thoughts influence us and how we can be conscious of our thoughts. That is why I started Know Thy Thought so that I can try to explain thoughts from a human perspective. I want people to get to know their own thoughts and gain control over them. I want to see people flourish and reach their potential. And I know it can start with being conscious of your own thoughts.

Know your thoughts. Know yourself.