[SnowyBernard]

By the amazingly gifted Karl Kerschl. You can find the entire comic here.




So the question I posit to my fellow INFPs:

Do you feel that you think too much?

Do you ever get caught up in your own mind so much that you lose site of the moment? How do you remind yourself to keep active in the external world, when we may tend strongly toward the internal world?

[FreeBeer]

I actually made a thread about not being able to stop thinking :P...on the enneagram I'm in the middle of the thinking triad as a 6...soooo...myeahhh lolz.

[telepariah]

I stumbled across this last night while surfing through TED talks.

Thandie Newton at TED Global 2011

[Oh_no_she_DIDNT]

Do you feel that you think too much? Do you ever get caught up in your own mind so much that you lose site of the moment?

Sometimes yes.

How do you remind yourself to keep active in the external world, when we may tend strongly toward the internal world?

Our ability to explore ideas and analyze and think can be a strength, I think. But I also recognize that sometimes for me it can become out of balance, and that its good to balance this out by being active and putting myself in action, to throw myself out into the world so that I can get out of my head. I find this is the healthiest for me. A good mix of *thinking* and *doing*. For instance, going out to an event. Talking to other friends about their lives, their thoughts, their opinions. Being physical (dancing, exercising, moving). Surrounding myself with friends. Having projects to do. When I don't keep myself busy, I have a tendency to get too much in my head. Idle time isn't good for me. I thrive with projects. Its all about balance.

[SenhorFrio]

Do you feel that you think too much?
Sometimes i do but most of the time i find the flow of my thoughts quite entertaining

Do you ever get caught up in your own mind so much that you lose site of the moment? How do you remind yourself to keep active in the external world, when we may tend strongly toward the internal world?
It may sound un-infpish but i don't think this has ever happened to me, i'm ver able to balance my thought with the world, and i've never had a time when someone had to"shake"me out of day dreaming. maybe i get wound up into my own mind sometimes but never at time when the extrenal world is doing anything important

[FreeBeer]

I stumbled across this last night while surfing through TED talks.

Thandie Newton at TED Global 2011

^^ here is something else to ponder.

[Bago]

Yes, sometimes I think too much. Sometimes I also blurb too much too, and not really absorb the moment.
However, I now know that, cos I am not entirely living my life in such a way that ticks all my needs, it is why I think so much. That is okay too. I am trying to work towards a place where I am so much more mindful. To me, an element of meditation, love, focus on Self and everything like that will slowly pull me out of it. At the moment, I know I cannot help thinking too much, but I do not fight it. I let the thoughts come into my mind. I know that it serves a purpose. Though, I do not have to act on it, right ?

[Belovodia]

I do tend to over-analyze but what works well for me now
is observing my thoughts, detaching somewhat and
quieting my mind as much as possible.

I find when I do this, I feel clearer, calm and what
thoughts do come seem to me more creative and
positive.

I suppose it's similiar to meditation, except I'm
walking around with my eyes open.

Has taken me years of practice though, but
certainly well worth it. My thoughts used to
drive me mad.

[Steppenwolf2]

Do you feel that you think too much?
Yes, I tend to think too much.

1) I over-analyze situations, people, theories, books,...

2) I cannot stop thinking about past, about what just happened, and sometimes I tend to switch from a topic to topic that do not have anything in common. Also, I like to make connections between things that are not well researched, think about abstract things, and make new theories of phenomena that are little understood or accepted.

3) I tend to listen to NPR radio in my car thinking about the topic discussed, and if some random words spoken remind me of something else - I tend to switch my thinking to something totally different than topic discussed and start obsessing about it.

4) I have a problem of choosing among many articles I find because I overthink my thesis statement and see many possibilities and want to put everything in my research paper. I feel like I am doing injustice to a particular article and its author, if I do not put it in my paper. It is obsessive–compulsive almost. It is like, I cannot let this go. Consequently, my draft paper has many pages that need to be edited and cut before I can actually focus to what is necessary and not to present everything that is possible.

5) I just sometimes what peace in my head, but there is always something new happening in thinking department.

Do you ever get caught up in your own mind so much that you lose site of the moment? How do you remind yourself to keep active in the external world, when we may tend strongly toward the internal world?

Too many times I get so caught up in my mind that I lose sight of time passing, not notice familiar people approaching me, miss exits on highways, and need to be reminded to "wake up."

In order to keep active in the external world, something or someone in the external world has to have an importance to me/be important to me. When I am the movies, I am able to do so as well. Also, I can focus on a person talking about something that interests me, or is unusual, or new to me as well as to a person that I care about and he/she is needs me to listen.

[Inigo]

Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now:

FROM DESCARTES’ ERROR TO SARTRE’S INSIGHT

The seventeenth-century philosopher Descartes, regarded as the founder of modern philosophy, gave expression to this primary error with his famous dictum (which he saw as primary truth): “I think, therefore I am.” This was the answer he found to the question “Is there anything I can know with absolute certainty?” He realized that the fact that he was always thinking was beyond doubt, and so he equated thinking with Being, that is to say, identity—I am—with thinking. Instead of the ultimate truth, he had found the root of the ego, but he didn’t know that.

It took almost three hundred years before another famous philosopher saw something in that statement that Descartes, as well as everybody else, had overlooked. His name was Jean-Paul Sartre. He looked at Descartes’ statement ” I think, therefore I am” very deeply and suddenly realized, in his own words, “The consciousness that says ‘I am’ is not the consciousness that thinks.”

What did he mean by that? When you are aware that you are thinking, that awareness is not part of thinking. It is a different dimension of consciousness. And it is that awareness that says “I am.” If there were nothing but thought in you, you wouldn’t even know you are thinking. You would be like a dreamer who doesn’t know he is dreaming. You would be as identified with every thought as the dreamer is with every image in the dream.

Many people still live like that, like sleepwalkers, trapped in old dysfunctional mindsets that continuously recreate the same nightmarish reality. When you know you are dreaming, you are awake within the dream, another dimension of consciousness has come in.

The implication of Sartre’s insight is profound, but he himself was still too identified with thinking to realize the full significance of what he had discovered: an emerging new dimension of consciousness.