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First Line Thinking

The five senses are critical parts of the people survival system. Humans would not have made it much pass the Genesis bush without keen senses. The senses are subjective instruments being called upon to perform objective tasks. Subjective in the sense that they are no where near perfect in their role as data gatherers. Children are taught to "stop at the street corner and look both ways." But, who has not followed this procedure only to "pull out or walk out" in front of someone or something, or at least almost do so? However, the senses can usually be counted on to adequate enough information about any particular situation. The old saying that "two heads are better than one" is never more true than when it comes to compiling data for decision making. Four eyes and four ears are, in most cases, better than two.

First Line Thinking (FLT) deals with the facts as presented by the senses. There is no interpretation, no opinion or assumption involved in first line thinking. Joe Friday, television's Dragnet detective would say to the informant trying to add an opinion as to what happened at the scene would chide, "Just the facts Mister, Just the facts!" FLT takes what the five senses provide and stop at that.

FLT is an essential part of thought management. It is a way of preventing worrisome thoghts related to what could have happened or probably happened. Mental imagery can get very sophisticated when it comes to assumptions and presumptions. Borrowed trouble or elaborate "probably's" can be avoided when first line thinking is allowed to stand on it's own. A friend's wife left him. She told him that she was "leaving and that she would not be coming back."
In the days ahead his tendency was to make more out of what she said than was there. He was reminded of what his wife had said and, since there was no more information, was cautioned to limit his thinking to that information alone. Speculations about where she was, what she was doing, why she left and what she was going to do only dug his mental and emotional hole deeper.
She said she was leaving and she did. She said that she would not be coming back, which she did not. Stop! That's all the information that the woman provided upon her departure.

FLT can ease the burden of obsessive thinking. The mind can begin to formulate elaborate story lines and plots involving a host of assumptions and probabilities. This kind of thinking is a gamble with the facts and usually prove to be false. A more productive method involves a thought management called "First Line Thinking." As Joe Friday would say, "Just the facts mister, just the facts."

Something on My Mind

The song says, "You were always on my mind." The brain can begin thinking certain thoughts and these thoughts can be intrusive, continual and pressing. That is sometimes referred to as obsessive thinking or cognitive rumination. For example, thoughts that are characterized as "Worry" can be quite obsessive. Continuous thinking is, however, not an option. The mind is never void of thoughts; they are there 24/7.

Thoughts can be selected and managed. A challenging part of this cognitive management involves slowing down the thought process. Thoughts come one at a time. They may seem to overlap and run together, but a thought is basically a loner in the sense that each stands alone as a single entity. Some researchers speak of the "gap" between thoughts. Like gaps between notes of music. Each note stands alone. When music is being played the gaps are so close that no silence is detected, even though it is there. Some forms of meditation strive to slow the cognitive process down, striving to "get in the cognitive gap" of silence.

This type of thought management requires desire and practice. One must recognize and desire the benefits of the technique. One of the primary benefits involves slowing down the body's matabolism such as heart rate, blood pressure and stress index. The body and the mind get a rest, resulting in a sense of well-being, energy and motivation. A sign on our football dressing room wall read, "Fatigue makes cowards of us all."

One of the most effective ways of slowing thoughts involves becoming aware of brain activity. Simply taking a moment to feel the "thought rate" is important. Thought rate is the speed of ideas, images and thoughts through the brain. Manic and hypomanic thought rates are exceptionally to moderately quick often resulting in confusion and dellusions. Knowing one's "cognitive speed" is critical.

Once cognitive speed is calculated and a need for slowing down is determined, one can simply begin to focus the brain's activity on a "mantra" or a single word or sound that can help one "get in the gap." Once some profficency is achieved with this technique, one can usually simply adjust thinking with a thought, "Slow down!" Awareness and focus are the most critical factors in the slowing process. Although difficult in the beginning, some benefits are felt immediately.

Thoughts for the Taking

There is an admonition in one of the Biblical Gospels that reads, "Take no thought for the morrow for the morrow has enough worry of it's own" (author's translation). There is a general opinion spread hither and yon that we humans "cannot help what we think". How many times have you said that or heard someone say it. The mind has a mind of it's own, and can think whatever it wishes for as long as it wishes, according to this line of thinking.

However, if you do not control your mind...then who does? How safe are you, how safe is anyone, if you cannot control your thinking? How could you ever have goals and work toward meeting those goals if you could not control your thinking? You can and you do control your thinking. Every thought that you have is managed by none other than you. You may manage your thought life very well. Maybe not. For most of us, our management varies from extremely effective and productive to extremely ineffective and dangerous.

There are thoughts, of course, that are intrusive. Those thoughts "pop into your mind." You may wonder where they came from. But, you manage them, and all other thoughts. Your thoughts may be "racing" and yo may have a "flight of ideas", but you manage them. The word manage may cause some confusion. Your thoughts arise from within your brain, and are categorized (conciously or unconciously) by your prior learning (thoughts) and decision making (thoughts).

Education comes from prior learning experiences and is used to categorize thoughts and make decisions. These prior learning experiences are all inclusive, i.e. every experience in life is a learning experience. We may or may not remember the experience, but the experience is part of our history and can effect the way we think, feel and behave.

Let me qualify my thinking on this. There are instances when you cannot and do not control your thinking. There are illnesses that arrest that ability and one becomes captive to a "run away brain". For example, there are instances of dementia caused by old age or disease. Individuals with traumatic brain injuries also have problmes related to thought management.

This is unfortunate and cannot be helped in some instances. So, I am not addressing this blog to someone in that kind of situation. Rather, I am thinking of those of us who have excellent neurological health. Our "thinker" is not damaged or diseased.

According to that ancient Biblical admonition, you do not have to "take a thought." You can reject it and send it away. However, you may chose to accept a thought, nurture it and build upon it. Thought Management is a new discipline for most people. They have allowed themselves to be at the mercy of every thought without considering the power they have over their thought life. Comedian Bob Newhart played the role of a psychiatrist on The Bob Newhart Show. A lady came to see him complaining of frightening thoughts of being buried alive. His counsel was "Stop it! Just stop it! Stop thinking about that! It's crazy to think like that! You do not like it. It causes you to feel frightened, so stop it!" Simplistic? Maybe. But, what else might work for her. If she is to ever get over the frightening emotions related to the negative images produced by her thinking, she would certainly have to change the thinking. I can see no other way. Unless perhaps medications or mood altering substances are administered to numb a thought or suppress it.

Again, what about individuals with Thought Disorders? Yes, this is a reality for many people and their families. What causes these Cognitive Disorders. We are not completely sure. Sometimes mood altering drugs may cause delusions. Individuals who have ingested hallucinogens have visual and sometimes auditory hallucinations. The individuals are experiencing self-induced mental illness; a thought disorder. There are also individuals that have been diagnosed with Thought Disorder illnesses such as schzophrenia and Dissociative Identity Disorder. We are not sure what causes these illnesses. It is safe to say that these indivuduals have some control over some of their thinking, but not all. The illness affects the cognitive processes.

Individuals not having these illnesses control their thinking. They may not think so.

Thought Stopping is a cognitive technique.

A Mind Set

The lady had just about driven me crazy. A sweet soul, she came to the counseling lab where I was doing my training. She was fifty years old and admitted that she felt a hundred and fifty. She had lost her husband some years prior. He had "run off" with another woman. The lady's negativistic personality was right up there with best of the nagatives.

The fact that she was a referral from a fairly popular counselor in town made me wonder if that good counseling doctor might have pulled one of my "Greyhound Therapy Tactics". Before a client drives you to the point of insanity, put them on a bus to another therapist that you generally don't like.


Ms. Negativistic admitted that she was negative about most everything; she had been that way all her life. At the end of the day she was satisfied with that "mind set". Her mind was set, made up, and she had no intention of changing it for herself or anyone else, which was her right.

The human brain produces thoughts in all humans. If there is no thinking, there is no life. If there is life without a functioning brain, the person is clinically dead. All life roads lead to the brain. The brain is an organ that creates a mind. The mind is thought central. A brain is an organ. We should be careful not to confuse the two.


Some brains have illness or injury and are not rational, capable or reliable. This is a fact of life. A brain that cannot function properly cannot be counted on to produce a mind that is reliable or stable. An individual possessing a perfectly capable, reliable and functional brain should have a mind that is capable of the same.

Minds can be injured. A child with a perfectly good brain can have a mind that is crushed under a load of shame from the power people in his or her life. An individual goes into battle with a perfectly good brain and a stable mind. In the coarse of battle the person experiences much trauma and stress. His mind is injured by the trauma and stress. He begins to have flashbacks and depression and anxiety problems. The brain is fine, the thinking is not.

The mind can be helped. Thinking can be challenged and changed. Perceptions can be altered and the mind salvaged and healed. However, if a mind is made up and a mind set has been established without acceptance of positive possibility, there is little or no hope for anything different in the indiividual's life. A tragic scenario indeed when a person fails to fall forward into mind healing.

Words are Thoughts Too

This morning I read the news concerning an AirFrance plane that disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean. My mind immediately took me back to my last trip across the Atlantic. We had traveled 10 days prior to South Africa on a Safari of sorts and, having completed our mission, were flying home via the Isle of Cape Verdes. Just short of a hour after our departure from the Cape one of our very pleasant sounding flight attendants announced that the captain had informed her that we were having "electrical problems with the aircraft". My God! Should we begin to look for floatation devices, I wondered? I thought they were under the seat, or perhaps the seat becomes a floatation device once it has been ripped from the floor at impact.



That chilling announcement sent a ripple of verbal concern throughout the plane. Only a complete idiot could not have recognized that this aircraft was carrying approximately 300 terrified souls. Perhaps the captain had used those precise words to scare the living hell out of the flight attendants and the passengers. I can imagine a rather adolescent pilot reaching for the microphone and saying to his co-pilot, "Watch this. Flight attendant Semuskisent? Yes, would you announce to the passengers that we are having electrical problems with the aircraft?" Ms. Semuskisent may have developed a serious mood and inquired, "And just what the hell does that mean Captain Turnip?" Maybe he joked with her and said, "Just tell those publicans that the Captain has informed you that there is an electrical problem with the aircraft and watch their faces. Ha!" I don't know. But, whoever choose those words to announce what would eventually be known as a "problem with the television" could have definitely choosen better.



Words are verbalized thoughts. Thoughts are sometimes graphic designs, images with a cinematic flow. At other times, they are words that we hear with the inner ear of the mind. How may times have you said, "And just as I was about to do it, I heard my mother, dad, teacher, minister, wife, husband say..."? When our thoughts are visual images we describe what we are seeing with language. Sometimes it is difficult to find the words to express what we are visualizing in our mind. When our thoughts are words, we are "self-talking" and speech is simply a verbalization of that inner voice in the mind.

How we talk to ourselves determines our reactions to what we are experiencing. How we describe, define, explain, calculate a situation with images or words in our brain is the essence of our perceptions. These perceptions are the sum total of our life experience. Someone said, "If you aren't worried then you just don't have all the facts." In other words, "Your perception needs tweeking."

Of course, that is not necessarily true. Perceptions are unique to each individual. An opinion is a perception. A "stated opinion" is a perception that has been made known. Perceptions can be false to one degree or another, or true to one degree or another. Perceptions are like blood; different types, but everybody has some. And, they matter!



The way we choose to speak about anything or anyone reflects our thinking. Vocabulary enhances or inhibits our ability to perceive and verbalize our perceptions. When a doctor listens to an individual describe and point to her pain, he thinks in terms of his training. He has vocabulary that matches what he is seeing and hearing. He sees and hears what an untrained individual does not see or hear because he has learned anatomy, physiology, pathology, disease and the vocabulary that best reflects those disciplines.



Words are thoughts too. When we change our vocabulary, we change our life because we add to our ability to think about anything. We enhance our ability to perceive and know. Words make a difference in how we act, react, respond and feel. They also make a big difference how others at, react, respond and feel. When the flight attendant verbally informed us that the "electrical problem" was isolated to the aircraft televisions, we all breathed a sigh of relief. Our negative possibility thinking that provoked our feelings of terror gave way to more positive truth and euphoria. I thought about buying everyone on the plane a drink.