60,000 Thoughts a Day: How to Declutter Your Mind and Focus on What Matters

Researchers say we have approximately 60,000 thoughts per day. Some of them are useful. Most of them are not.

I often tell my clients to think of their mind like an email inbox.

Most of our thoughts–like emails–show up uninvited. Some you want, but most of it is spam.

How many thoughts are sitting in your mental inbox being useless Or worse, causing pain, stress, or unnecessary suffering?

This week, some of mine looked like this:

Catastrophizing about politics. “We’re doomed. What’s even the point?”
Ruminating on past mistakes. “Why did I say that? Ugh, so embarrassing”
Melodramatic thinking. “If I don’t get this right, my business will collapse and I’ll end up on the streets.”

These thoughts show up uninvited, filling my mental inbox with noise and anxiety.

But here’s how I deal with it:

💡 I don’t have to open every email.
💡 I don’t have to believe every thought.
💡 I definitely don’t have to take them seriously.

Sometimes I ignore them.

Sometimes I laugh at them.

Sometimes I reply back with something sassy.

When my brain sends me a “You suck at this” message, I hit Reply and say: “Your opinion is noted” – and then I keep doing my thing anyway.

When I get a “Remember that dumb thing you did in 2016?” notification, I send it straight to Trash.

When my thoughts start filling my inbox with blame, complaints, or drama, I flag them as Junk.

A thought worth keeping

One of the things my clients hear from me all the time is: You can’t control the 60,000 thoughts that show up, but you do get to decide which ones you believe.

If each thought is a seed, the ones you focus on are the ones that will grow.

I try to water these ones instead: