I once heard that all action is born in thought. I suppose this to mean all bad actions then start in bad thoughts, as well as all good actions come from good thoughts. In a goal towards serenity and peace, why would someone then want think bad thoughts if they led to negative actions? Then one could argue, "what is bad and negative"? I think those are self defined by the individual themself, their family of origin, and the society they belong to. Of course, the legal system has more defined terms of good or bad. What would be bad in my mind could be good in someone else mind. I suppose it would come down to what behavior one would like to change or an action they would like to prevent. This in itself could go down a rabbit hole of a conversation about mindfulness that I won't attempt to approach in a simple blog today. In theory, one could work on changing thoughts to good thoughts. This in turn could promote good actions (by their own definition). Therefore, when would this ongoing progress of good thoughts and good actions become good habits? According to Aristotle, "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit". No one living is perfect, so let's face it, we all have good and bad habits. Some we like and some want to change. I wonder if we could just do away with the word 'bad'. The word itself stirs up emotions from childhood and could send one into a spiral of internal rebellion. For now, for me, I think I will work on stopping myself with what I define as a 'bad' thought and change it into something more 'good'. Perhaps that loud obnoxious person at the store isn't annoying, they're just not pleasing to listen to at this moment. Perhaps that crazy disrespectful driver that cut in front of me isn't the bad word I want to say, but perhaps an individual having a stressful day that is merely getting to their destination the safest way they know how. I think the point here for me is to realize that other people are not causality of my bad thoughts, my negative thoughts are my own creation.
