Flavours of Thought Intro

We think of our thoughts as being our own and largely being generated in our heads. This is a natural conclusion to come to.

I wrote the book Flavours of Thought as an exploration of what is really happening in our heads in order to give a closer approximation to how it all really works. I am not claiming by the way that this is gospel or that I have all the answers, merely that things are not as they first seem.

I am guided by something I once heard from Bill Liao, CEO of www.weforest.org: "It only has to be true enough."

So, as it happens, nothing in the book is necessarily true.

In fact, little of it is proven or even provable. Yet it's the kind of stuff which we sense is intrinsically real.

Indeed, the concepts in the book are intrinsic to our very own nature as it's a book about thought and about what and how we think. The aim of the book is simple; just to get people thinking in a fresh way about thinking.

Thinking about our thinking isn't easy. Imagine if a tire knew it had a puncture and was able to repair itself while still travelling, at speed, down the fast lane of a highway. This would be a wonderful invention but obviously, with current technology, you need to stop to make that tire change.

Similarly, the book is a pit stop for your thoughts; somewhere to pause and take a breather for a while to work out what you are thinking.

What is remarkable is that, by thinking about our thoughts in a whole new way, we can change our understanding and our very nature.

What's more, we don't have to be prescriptive about exactly how we think about thoughts. Just thinking about them in a different way is enough to generate a new perspective.

The metaphor — and conceit — I used in the book is to generate this change in perspective is to look at thoughts as possessing different qualities — or flavours.

Furthermore by combining different flavours of thoughts in various combinations — or recipes — we can achieve a transformation in our thinking such that any issue can be resolved and any opportunity capitalised upon.

Remarkably, we go about our days not giving a second thought to our thoughts.

This is a bit of a shame as the way that we are thinking fundamentally affects how well our days go. This is not just about something as trivial as changing your outlook. For example, adopting either a glass half-full or glass half-empty mentality.

Your thoughts alter the world around you and your inner space too. It's even thought your thinking affects your health and it's certainly clear it can affect your demeanor which in turn can affect those around you.

What the book contains we all know is true in our hearts — and in our guts. It might not be fully understood by mainstream science but some enlightened thinkers are researching the mechanisms behind what is going on in our brains and minds. The subject matter of the book has been to date the domain of philosophers and, to some extent, those with religious or spiritual leanings.

As such, it has attracted nebulous and intangible labels such as faith, prayer or just plain old wishful thinking.

Many people who espouse this kind of thinking can often be heard saying, "Thoughts become things."

This is kind of right but misses the mark by some way. It is more accurate to say that, "Thoughts are things."

They are as real as the screen from which you are reading these words. They are as real as the photons of light that reflect off the markings on the page; that enter your eyes; that then get converted to an image and interpreted as words in your mind.

These words started as thoughts in my head; I wrote them down as words and now they are creating thoughts in your head. In anyone's book, these thoughts are things. Like the light you are using to read them, thoughts are energy. They radiate out from our minds and get picked up by others.

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