Sometimes we are ashamed of our thoughts. If others heard the silent criticisms we cast, the wordless judgments we passed, the irrational sense of entitlement ingrained in our egos, we would be entirely alone.
Many years ago a friend told me that it isn’t your first thought that matters—it’s the one that follows.
First thoughts take years to retrain and decondition. They are entire childhoods in the making; they are generations of cognition baked into your brain.
So when you catch yourself thinking about that person’s terrible sense of style, their unkept house, their unusual choices, it’s not the thought that matters. It’s that you caught yourself thinking about it.
It’s the second thought—the one that says that’s not very nice, or who am I to say that her decision was wrong, or what matters is that it makes her happy.
That’s the thought that counts.