Richard Rhodes Quotes

I have no inner monologue.

I think a lot of people in their average day actually imagine two sides of a conversation at one point or another. I think that the mental trick of holding two sides of a conversation in your head is actually something that we all do.

Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself.

I'm in my mind a lot. I live there.

Most people don't realize that the mind constantly chatters. And yet, that chatter winds up being the force that drives us much of the day in terms of what we do, what we react to, and how we feel.

Independent of what is happening around you in the outside world, humans constantly have internal activity in the brain.

I can't turn off the way I think, and that's essentially who I am, who anybody is.

I need one of those baby monitors from my subconscious to my consciousness so I can know what the hell I'm really thinking about.

When I work out at home, I don't have mirrors, and I really like it. When I'm not working out in front of a mirror, I don't have those conversations with myself that I have in the gym, when my head starts drifting in all those dark spots.

Your life is a reflection of how you think

Every one of us is the sum total of his own thoughts

I've never meditated for a moment in my life. I don't know how it works. But one of the things you have to do to put yourself in the meditating mode is stop narrating yourself to yourself.

Have you ever sat very quietly with closed eyes and watched the movement of your own thinking? Have you watched your mind working?or rather, has your mind watched itself in operation, just to see what your thoughts are, what your feelings are, how you look at the trees, at the flowers, at the birds, at people, how you respond to a suggestion or react to a new idea? Have you ever done this?

The most important conversations, briefings, meeting, and lectures you will ever have will be those you hold with yourself in the privacy of your own mind.

Some day I'm gonna call me up on the phone, so when I answer, I can tell myself to shut up.

I am the thought you are now thinking.

There is thought, and then there is thinking about thoughts, and they don't feel the same.

If you spend enough time with yourself in silence, you'll be surprised what goes through your head.

Whether you're keeping a journal or writing as a meditation, it's the same thing. What's important is you're having a relationship with your mind.

You find out what you think by talking to yourself.

How we think shows through in how we act. Attitudes are mirrors of the mind. They reflect thinking.

Our thoughts are certainly part of us; they come from us, but we are not our thoughts. Have you ever woken up in the morning and said to yourself, 'I am not going to think today; I am too tired'? No, of course not. Just as breathing happens and is constant, thoughts happen, and they are also constant.

Every time you think a negative thought, it's one step in the wrong direction, for me.

Observe yourself as you go through a typical day. Stuff happens to you. As it does, you immediately judge it and label it. Dozens of times. Hundreds of times. So often that you no longer recognize that you're doing it. It is a deep-seated habit.

What a liberation to realize that the 'voice in my head' is not who I am. 'Who am I, then?' The one who sees that.