My first thought in seeing this outside my front door, “Oh what a mess…” A split second later I thought, “But the purple color is so nice…” and then my mind rambled on with back and forth thoughts on whether it was a mess or beautiful. Why am I sharing this? Because your mind produces thousands of thoughts per day and those thoughts of yours can serve you or play havoc with your internalGPS. I went looking for some information on how many thoughts we have in a day and came across a NY Times article about a professional baseball player who works with Jim Fannin, an ex-tennis pro and performance Coach who works with corporate executives and professional athletes. He states:
”Superstars don’t think like everyone else,” Fannin said. ”The average person has 2,000 to 3,000 thoughts a day, and 60 percent of the average person’s thoughts are in chaos. The superstar has 1,100 to 1,300 thoughts a day. They eliminate worry, envy, jealousy, embarrassment and anger. The superstar thinks a lot less and holds a thought longer.”
Think about how powerful it is to shift your thoughts out of chaos and eliminate (or at least minimize) thoughts associated with those negative emotions.
My hope is that these “Thursday Thoughts” will help you shift your thinking and thrive while you drive with your internalGPS.
Please share a few of your thoughts in a comment!
Hi, – re; your May 3, 2012 post.
I first came across the question (thought) of, “How many thoughts do we think a day,? – about fifteen years ago. Since then I have on several occasions googled this question. The answers I came across are wild in their disparities. They range from the one you shared -attributed to NY Times article of 1,100 per day to 70,000. I come up with approx 60,000 and here’s how.
I will attempt to be succinct.
First – What constitutes a thought? I say a thought is akin to a simple sentence or a grammatical clause.
e.g. “I wake up.” A simple sentence therefore one thought.
“I wake up. I drink coffee.” Two simple sentences therefore two thoughts.
“I wake up. I drink coffee and read the news.” Two simple sentences and a clause therefore
three thoughts.
Second – How long is a thought?
I propose – one second. I am not considering what might be going on in the wild-west of the sub-conscious but only what we are aware of and the thoughts that we are aware of (according to what I contend a single thought is) take about one second each. So when I think, ‘I wake up.’ this thought takes one second or when I think, ‘I wake up. I drink coffee and read news.’ this group of three thoughts takes three seconds. And on and on it goes – one thought a second. (close enough anyway)
The rest is simple math. We are awake for 16.5 hours a day and we are always at some level thinking. 16.5 hours equals (60x60x16.5) 59,400 seconds and if a thought is one second then we think approx 60,000 thoughts a day. (drum-roll please)
***
It is true that during any given moment in any given day that our awareness of self fluctuates. We are not always critically aware. But even when our consciousness is on auto-pilot: at times driving a car or cleaning house or any mundane task that doesn’t need crucial attention, even during these moments we are processing thoughts and we process these thoughts – single thought by single thought and at the rate of one a second.
And that be thoughts on, ‘how many thoughts do we think a day’.
Regards – Teddy McDermott