90% of Your Thoughts Are Not Yours — Here's What's Actually Happening

Video Summary

Most people assume they are the thinkers of their thoughts — that there is a deliberate "I" behind each mental event, choosing what to think, when to think it, and why. But look more carefully. Right now, as you read this, thoughts are arising about what this means, what comes next, whether you agree. You didn't schedule those. They arrived. The truth is that somewhere between 90 and 95 percent of everything passing through your mind was never intentionally generated by you. It came in through the senses — something you heard, saw, smelled, tasted, touched — and the mind simply started running with it, building images, inferring meanings, projecting futures, dragging up pasts. You were not the author. You were the audience.

The exercise in this video makes it undeniable. Eyes closed, you're asked to simply listen — not to imagine, not to engage, just to hear. And then a scene is described: Mumbai, children playing, a five-year-old girl, a stray dog, a mother with a broomstick. And without any instruction to do so, without any deliberate choice, your mind generated its own version of that scene — your girl, your dog, your mother, your street. You didn't think those thoughts. They appeared because a sense door was open and information came in. That's how 90 percent of it works. The five senses are always open, the world is always feeding them, and the mind responds automatically — thinking, inferring, imagining, without ever being asked to.

What changes when you see this clearly is not that thoughts stop — they don't. What changes is your relationship to them. When you become conscious of which thoughts are arriving uninvited, you stop giving all of them your energy. You start choosing. A thought arises — you see it — you decide whether it deserves your attention or not. That small shift, repeated consistently, is the difference between being dragged through the day by the world's noise and actually living deliberately. And underneath all of it is the deeper question this points to: if 90 percent of your thoughts aren't yours, who — or what — is the one that can choose to notice them? If this points to something you've glimpsed but can't stabilise — a Clarity Call is where we look at it directly together.

Full Transcript

So — do we actually think our thoughts?

Let's take a look at the words. Let's find out what is being assumed here. According to the words used — do we, as human beings, actually in reality think and project our thoughts? The questioner is asking: is there anything intentional from our side? Am I, as a human being, in control of my thoughts — or when they come, is it really me who is thinking them? Thoughts come all the time. But is it really me thinking them, or are they just randomly coming?

And the reason such a question comes up is because thoughts can be bothering you. Thoughts can lead to fear, anxiety, depression, sadness — or the opposite: happiness, joy. Thoughts carry emotion with them. Thoughts make you feel something, which makes you in turn act on something — or not act on something. So the question is: are the thoughts that come into the mind our own actions? Are they intentional or not? Do we actually think our thoughts?

So — 99% of our thoughts arise spontaneously. And when we become aware of our thoughts, they stop. But then there are thoughts we can intentionally think. I want to think about my car — I'm doing it consciously and intentionally. I can sit in the car, clean the dashboard, clean the seats, start the car, put on my seatbelt. I'm doing this consciously. These thoughts are deliberate, intentional.

So yes — I can do that. But am I doing that all the time? The answer is most probably not. In fact, 90% of the time — not. So then where are those thoughts coming from and how are they coming in?

We have never been taught about this. I wish I was taught about all this. I think it's important — children should be taught how to think, rather than what to think. When you know how to think, then you can think about what you want. But when you're told what to think, your deliberate intentional thinking is taken away from you. Your own creativity is taken away from you. When children go to school, they are told what to think about. They are never taught how to think intentionally and deliberately — which I think is very important.

But as adults right now — you can have intentional thoughts. The question is: 90% of the time you're not having intentional thoughts. So what are those thoughts?

Let's do a simple exercise. Close your eyes. I'm going to think thoughts in my mind intentionally. I don't want you to think at all. I just want you to listen. Do not get involved in any activity. Do not follow the thoughts that I'm describing. Just listen to what I'm saying — and observe what is going on in your mind in terms of images and sounds. That's all. You're not going to intentionally think thoughts the way I am. I am doing that so I can talk about it — and you just observe what's going on in your mind.

Right now — there could be people in London going through a tough time. We're recording this in 2026. We have a few wars going on — the Ukraine-Russia war, the US and Iran. I am based in India, in Mumbai. I watch on the news terrible things — buildings being destroyed. I walk out of my apartment. I see nature. I see children playing — what we would normally consider poor children, who come from poor families, who have less than what we think should be enough for living. But when I step out, I see a five-year-old girl running, playing with her siblings, plucking a little yellow flower from the grass.

Suddenly — a stray dog runs to attack her and she screams. The dog bites her and holds on to her leg. And hearing her screams, her mother rushes from inside the house to save her daughter, picks up a broomstick and hits the dog. The dog lets go of the leg and runs away. She quickly picks up her daughter and takes her inside a little slum where there's hardly any daylight coming in. She pulls out some cotton wool, dabs it in antiseptic, and soothes the little child.

That's a little random thought that I intentionally played in my mind.

Now — keeping your eyes closed. I asked you not to get involved at all, just to listen to what I was saying. And if you heard what I was saying — you would have had your own imagination of what I spoke about. You would have imagined your own little girl. Your own situation. The wars going on in your own way. You would have imagined your own nature — different from what I projected in my mind. The five-year-old girl in your mind would be different from mine. The dog would be different. The mother would be different. The broom would be different. The antiseptic would be different. The soothing would be different.

I want you to notice — understand what just happened.

I asked you not to get involved, not to pay attention, just to listen. And as I spoke — automatically, without you getting involved, you started imagining. The pictures of what I was saying started appearing in your mind without your involvement. You did not intentionally or deliberately do that. So if I spoke something and you imagined it — you thought about it. And you didn't choose to.

How many of these kinds of things are we letting ourselves think about, imagine about, worry about — unintentionally — which are not even our own thoughts?

You hear something on the news — you imagine it, you see it, you visualise it in your mind. It was not your thought. You heard something. You perceived something. It wasn't intentional — but you paid attention to it, and that thought, that imagination, came into your mind.

Now we've just used one sense — hearing. I asked you to close your eyes and just pay attention to my voice. That's it. Just the sense of hearing.

Now slowly open your eyes. Look around. Things — wherever your attention goes — are forcing you to think about them. Wherever your attention goes, that's a thought. If I move my eyes, look around, pay attention to something — already I'm thinking about it. That thought is in my mind. It wasn't deliberate unless I wanted to look at something. But most of the time I'm just looking around.

The five senses in the body automatically make us think. You smell something — it wasn't intentional, the smell came, you thought about something. You ate something — intentionally, obviously, to feed yourself — but you did not know the taste of it until it touched your tongue. The taste is always a surprise. No matter how many times you've eaten an apple — every apple will be a new taste. That apple's taste is that apple's taste and not any other apple's.

So like that — the five senses and the body are constantly bringing in information, which leads to thoughts. These are not intentional thoughts. I am not thinking about what my skin is touching all the time — when something touches it, it forces me to think. I am not thinking about what I'm going to smell next — a smell arises, I smell it, I think about it. It forces me to think. My eyes are open and I see a million things — wherever my attention goes, I am forced to think about that.

I would say — less than maybe 10% of the time is it that I am very deliberately and intentionally thinking about something. 90% of the time, we are just observing what is going on. 90% of our thoughts come in from our senses — and then what comes in is churned further. We imagine things about the future or the past.

I saw smoke — I inferred fire. I couldn't see the fire, but because there was smoke, there must be fire. I inferred fire. I did not see fire. Thinking one thought of a physical thing led to another thought — fire. Did I intentionally look for smoke? No. I saw smoke. Not my thought. Not my thing.

So we are surrounded, all the time, by things and thoughts that we are just trying to manage. Instead of deliberately and intentionally thinking our thoughts, we are in a spiral of thoughts depending on what or who is around us.

Your loved one said something — just like I spoke. She said something, he said something — it hurt you. You're forced to think about it. It made you feel a certain way. You did something about it. Your boss, your colleagues — they're talking all the time. You hear them, just like you heard me, and you're thinking about it. That's where the thoughts are coming from. They are not deliberate — but our senses are open all the time, and we are fed with things and thoughts, and then we infer them further, imagine them further.

So — do we actually think our thoughts?

I would say — maybe 5 to 10% of the time. 90% of your thoughts are not thought by you. They don't begin intentionally. They are not intentional.

If you were to become conscious and aware all the time, you would live life absolutely as you want. But right now, we are not aware of our thoughts all the time. We are thinking about thoughts that the physical world is giving us.

When you start becoming aware of your thoughts — you know which thoughts you want to give your energy to. You know which thoughts you want to pay attention to. You know which are important and which are not. But until you don't become aware of thoughts — the mind can go crazy with thoughts.

If you start becoming aware of thoughts — you'll find there are a lot of thoughts you just let go. They arose, but you never paid attention to them. They left. They didn't get your energy. They didn't have your attention.

And again — children should be taught how to think so that they can think whatever they want. Which brings up their creativity, their originality, their personality. Sadly, children — and we as well, when we went to school — were taught what to think. Not how to think. This is science. This is geography. This is history.