(An Attempt to Organize My Own Thinking)
This text is not an attempt to explain how people should think. It is rather a record of how I try to understand what is actually happening in my mind when I think, feel, and make decisions.
I see it as a working effort to organize my own experience, without any ambition to present definitive conclusions. In a way, it is another attempt to go one level deeper than my earlier reflections on autonomy and well-being.
Orientation in Chaos
The simplest way I understand thinking is as the work of my mind arranging what I know and what I feel so that I can figure out where I am — physically and mentally — and what I can do about it.
For me, this is not an abstract process. It is an extremely practical one. Thinking is what allows me to orient myself in reality.
Wikipedia describes thinking as a „cognitive process” involving associations and symbols. That sounds fine, but to me it feels rather dry.
In my experience, thinking is a living process that draws from sensory input, moods, memories, and the context of where I am. It is here, within the process of thinking itself, that my subjective meaning of reality emerges from all this chaos.
Flashlight in a Dark Room: Do I Think, or Am I Being Thought?
For a long time, I assumed that a stimulus appears first, then I analyze it, and finally I draw conclusions.
The problem is that thoughts often appear on their own — sometimes faster than I can place them within the situation I am actually in. And quite often, they do not fit that situation at all.
My conscious attention resembles the beam of a flashlight in a dark room. It illuminates only fragments of what my mind has already produced.
I often have the impression that my consciousness merely interprets the results of unconscious mental activity rather than truly controlling them.
If so much happens by itself, an important question arises:
Do I actually think independently?
Is thinking an act of will, or is it more like a process that simply happens to me?
I also notice that complete nonsense regularly appears in my awareness. And I am grateful to evolution for equipping me with at least some ability to filter out my own stupidity.
For me, this is yet another reason to examine the way I think and to see whether I can do something about it.
Stepping Out of the Program
I believe — and this is the foundation of how I understand autonomy — that I was not born with a ready-made ideology, religion, or way of interpreting the world.
All of that developed over time.
Or perhaps more accurately: it was programmed into me over many years.
For a long time, I absorbed — and still absorb — enormous amounts of information, rarely questioning its quality.
Today, I see more and more clearly that a simple principle operates inside my mind:
Garbage in, garbage out.
If my system is fed with informational noise, fear, and other people’s beliefs, then my supposedly „independent” thoughts will merely be echoes of that informational landfill.
What I am looking for instead is thinking that is meaningful, logical, and appropriate to my position in the world. And above all:
my own.
The Mechanism
At this point, science becomes helpful because it allows me to better understand the mechanism itself.
My brain does not passively react to the world.
It is a prediction machine.
It has no direct access to reality. Instead, it continuously constructs its best guess about what reality is by interpreting signals coming from the senses — and there are dozens of them.
It seems that the mind operates within a set of conditions:
• The State of the Body
Hunger, fatigue, excitement, breathing, tension in the chest, a tight feeling in the stomach — all of these bodily signals actively participate in my thinking.
Sometimes it feels as if thoughts arise not from pure logic, but from the interpretation of physiology — from what is happening inside the body.
• The History of Experience
I am certain that I carry well-established patterns of interpretation that my brain knows best.
It does not reinvent the world every morning.
Instead, it places old templates over new situations and offers familiar maps.
Perhaps this is why I sometimes fail to notice what is actually new and see only what I already remember.
• The Situational Context
Sometimes changing my surroundings or simply starting a conversation with someone is enough to alter my way of thinking almost automatically.
It is as if the mind selects its learned interpretations according to the place and situation.
• Language and Concepts
What I am able to name determines, to some extent, what I am able to think.
The poorer my vocabulary for describing emotions, the more black-and-white my thinking is likely to become.
These conditions shape what I feel and what I think.
And if this process develops over time, then it should also be possible to modify it gradually and consciously — provided that I first learn to understand myself.This is where I see the meaning of what I call inner power.
Attempts to Influence Future Predictions
If influence means selecting only pleasant or positive thoughts, then I believe that approach leads nowhere.
I cannot stop the stream of thoughts.
What I can do is influence the conditions under which my mind generates predictions.
This is my personal testing ground.
This is where I try to cultivate autonomy.
I imagine the brain working for me in several different ways.
1. The Sound Engineer
Signals from the body are like raw audio input — tension, rapid breathing, physical arousal.
The brain may automatically suggest:
„Something is wrong. Be afraid.”
At that moment, I can consciously introduce a different label:
„This is not fear. It is energy. It is my body preparing for action.”
In a sense, I am showing the sound engineer a new set of controls on the mixing desk.
2. GPS Navigation
The brain calculates routes using old maps.
Conscious reinterpretation is like manually correcting the route.
Over time, the system learns new maps and begins suggesting different paths on its own.
3. The Librarian
When I learn new categories — for example, seeing discomfort as information about growth, strength, or adaptation — I place a new book on the shelf.
The next time a similar experience appears, the brain may reach for that book automatically.
This is not positive thinking.
It is a practical form of neuroplasticity — a conscious reinterpretation of signals.
Why Am I Doing This?
I do this for myself.
I want to understand what, in my thinking, is a conscious choice and what is merely a programmed script.
To me, independent thinking means having the ability to pause and examine whether what has just appeared in my mind actually makes sense and has value.This is how I understand strengthening inner power — as the ability to guide myself without the need to control or dominate other people.
For me, this is a very practical expression of autonomy.
Instead of wasting energy fighting the stream of thoughts, I would rather work on the soil from which those thoughts grow.
I am not looking for definitive answers.
I am looking for a way to make my inner climate a matter of conscious involvement rather than merely the result of random circumstances.
Will this help me live more effectively and with a deeper sense of calm, even in the very center of the whirlwind of the modern world?
I do not know.
Time will tell.
Best regards,
Paweł Kosiński
Original Polish version:
Moje myślenie: między programem a samodzielnością
This text was originally written in Polish and translated into English with AI assistance. The ideas, reflections, and personal experiences presented here remain my own.
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