What is our Thought-speak? (Understanding The Language of Thought)
We all talk to ourselves, think in a certain language to ourselves. But what if we never learned our speech? How would we translate our thoughts then? Would we simply be unable to think?
The Inception
It was a warm Sunday evening. Stripes of golden bloom were flickering through the two usual screens, a dense network of leaves fluttering on a tree somewhere outside, and a smudged glass window that encased the inner boundary of my room. Slow-whooshing wind patted my head subtly, providing me with a sense of comfort that only a ceiling fan could give. Distant shrieks and shrills of cheerful kids often mixed with my occasional hearing.
But existing inside of such a vivid ordeal, I sat unknowing of it all.
My hands were keeping busy a beefy book open as my fingers grazed briskly off to a new page seldom. The crisp smell of white paper overpowered my senses, my head buried deep under its thick lines, and my mind helplessly engrossed inside a world far beyond the one that my mere body existed in.
I was walking purposefully in the bustling streets of Old London, following a hot tail led by my good companion, Mr. Sherlock Holmes. Only moments ago had he emerged to an epiphany, launching erect from one of his sulked-down and deep-thought-engulfed sessions upon his couch. “This case shows remarkable features of interest, dear Watson!” Only seconds after which he remarked “The game is afoot,” in his familiar keen manner.
CAWW!
A sudden ill-timed cry from a crow barged my senses to life, just fluttering away from my window moments after. Led by a shake of my head, I was transported back to my world, the real world. I sighed then, a little frustrated, a little fascinated by this predicament as often I tend to wonder about the state of things I find myself in.
I was here in my room…
Yet, not here at all!
I was in a different world altogether!
I further realized how spectacular the fact was that only by reading some words written by an author long dead, combined with the riveting powers of my scintillating thought-process, was I able to transport myself into such a vastly different dimension. I recognized the voice which reads to me each letter of every word, the voice that talks to me constantly, helps me write what I write, speak what I speak, and think what I think. My thought-speak.
But what if this thought-speak did not know how to speak? What if I never learned any language, spoken or written? Would I be able to “talk” to myself then? Would I ever be able to think?
Queries like such bombarded my head inevitably. And what this curious line of questioning only did was switch on the integral investigative side of me, an act which would lead me to uncover one of the most crucial truths about our thought-process, and how understanding our distinct thought-speak; the Language of Thought, can exceedingly transcend us into a higher plane of existence.
Let us begin on that journey.
The Deep Dive
First, a situation.
Imagine ourselves in the body of an infant. We strap ourselves and travel inside those giddy, all-watching, and button-like eyes that never truly rest and observe our peculiar surroundings with them. We see the towering bars of a certain prison extending on all four sides. Above us dangles the huge faces of our mommy and daddy. We scan the wide shape of their eyes, the wrinkles of their cheeks, the shifting manner of their lips, the sound of their high and low mumble-jumbles. Suddenly, our stomach is gurgling. We know that it is a sign. We must eat! We want our mum mum!
I want mum mum!
I want it now!
But how to get it? How to communicate this? What to say when we don’t know how to say? And more importantly, how is our mind even “telling” us that we are hungry? How can our little brain communicate such understandable thoughts to us without any knowledge of a legible “language”?
The answer is simple. We create one.
How?
It all lies behind the ways an infant experiences their world. It is a known fact that a baby, barely months old even, is able to recognize various distinct images and subtle verbal cues. It is the most prominent way they encounter their surroundings; visual imagery combined with auditory pitch fluctuations makes their alien world to be somewhat comprehensible to them. [1]
A frowning face followed by grunts and they know something isn’t right. Smiling lips tailed by laughter and they know it is a sign of happiness. And using these nimble nuances, they can create a basic “language” inside their tiny heads. Their own little thought-speak.
These thoughts further start to take shape with mostly image and sound as their guidelines. Thinking of fun-time may bring up watching daddy from above as he launches you sky high, while wondering about food may pop-up mommy’s big face as seen from below when she feeds you. These thoughts also combine the sense of touch, smell, and general feeling to make such thought-speak truly unique to each infant.
But remarkably, humans aren’t alone in showcasing such conscious brevity of their minds. Pets, especially cats and dogs, are notorious for displaying the same intricate level of developed thought-speak as infants do. These furry beings can form actual thoughts (yes, cats and dogs can think!), and can create their own thought-speak consisting mainly of grunts, barks, meows, and purrs of every kind. [2] [3]
This makes the notion clear that even if no intricate “speech” has been evolved, one can still “think” to themselves using their own thought-speak formed through such distinct audio-visual cues. But what about people who cannot see, or even hear? Are they incapable of forming complex thoughts and “talking” to themselves?
The answer may surprise you.
An Even Deeper Dive
Following the same principles that we have established before, we can begin to contemplate how one could “think” to themselves without any audio cues.
Since someone who was born deaf won’t know the sound of speech, they may primarily “talk” to themselves using sign language and elaborate images of scenarios instead. As it is mostly how they communicate with others, the images of sign language sprout in their heads when they speak to themselves or deliberately think about something specific as a word. Fascinatingly, someone who cannot hear can still understand rhythm and music to a certain degree. As music is fundamentally made from different sets of vibrations, and beats, in themselves, are nothing but big detectable thumps in the air, they are quite legible even to a deaf person. Combined with visual aids, they too can enjoy some form of music. [4] [5]
Similarly, someone who was born blind can still form vivid imagery in their head. (Yes, you read that right!) Even while experiencing no sight since birth, blind people can still dream in visual images. Sometimes only in flashes of lights, yet at other times it is more vivid than usual. How extraordinary is that? [6]
How a tree might look based on how it feels in their fingers, and how a leaf would fall off based on the sound it makes upon plucking it. Although their imagination or thought-speak may never align with the true sight of reality, they are still able to “talk” to themselves and form complex thoughts without any proper sight. Even if it involves abstract imagery.
But what about someone who is deaf, blind, and dumb altogether?
Well, their language of thought would only consist of things like touch, smell, and taste. Because that is how they experience the world. Our brains are extraordinary little things, aren’t they?
Now, directing back to our original query. It is abundantly evident that any written or spoken language we learn is just a tiny specter in the vast spectrum of our distinct thought-speak. Our individual senses form the fundamentals of how we “talk” to ourselves, and how our thoughts communicate through the sprawling electric fields of our neuron-filled minds.
But after unraveling such pivotal knowledge about our thought process, what can we do with it? Why was knowing this even of any importance? How can this help in the general betterment of our lives?
The Crucial Conclusion
Let me give you one word:
Gun.
What did you feel just now, speaking this word loud in your thought-speak? Did a certain image pop into your head? Is there a certain memory attached to this single word? Was the feeling rather negative, related to killing or dying? Or was it a thing quite positive; along the lines of saving one’s life from death?
The intriguing part about this small exercise is that a trained soldier might showcase safeness towards the word “Gun” while a normal civilian may grow uncomfortable with the level of danger this word portrays. Fascinating as it is, this word holds the same meaning in the dictionary, yet it engraves distinct personal feelings, distinct semantics in each of our heads. And understanding this intricacy is why unraveling the nature of our thought-speak is so direly important.
Our individual experiences forge these true semantics that exists in each strand of our thoughts. The word does not matter as much as the feeling it propagates. And this effect can also be shown through another example;
Success.
We all know what it means, but what semantics does it hold in our vivid thought-speak? Do we see success as a far-off, unreachable dream or something workable, achievable in our lifetime? Who decides these elaborate meanings, these engraved semantics that exists in our minds?
“My life experiences,” you may answer. “Things that I cannot control decide these meanings for me. It happens subconsciously.”
“True,” I would say.
But what is the subconscious, if not the conscious trying to retain?
Our thought process is so embedded in our brains that we think almost without any conscious effort. Encased deep inside our subconsciousness this act rests, quite like how we breathe unaware of its happening. But only through our conscious acts does our subconscious gets fed. And only by making conscious decisions in our lives, do we develop the distinct semantics of our thought-speak.
Love. Life. Fear. Failure. They all may mean something in the English dictionary, but they all hold drastically different meanings for each one of us. Believe it or not, the way we think about such words and concepts, about everything in fact, the semantics of our thought-speak defines each conscious choice that we will ever make. No one should underestimate the influence that our thought-speak encompasses. It is the biggest driving force behind our decisions.
And I am here, telling you this monumental fact because once we finally understand our distinct thought-speak, once we crack the code of our subconscious thoughts, we can then use it to rewire our brains entirely!
Yes, it is true, and it is achievable. But before I tell you how one could perform such a total rewiring, let’s recap the crucial points one should take away from this writing -
Key Takeaways
1. Each one of us possesses a distinct language of thought; Thought-speak, which helps our thoughts to form and communicate with one another, and to our own minds.
2. Speaking and written languages capture a very small part of our thought-speak. They do not limit our thinking capabilities, only alter them variably.
3. Even a blind, deaf, and dumb person can think vividly since thought-speak develops solely through the ways that one perceives the world.
4. The semantics of thought-speak, though existing in our subconscious, are mostly in our control. By altering these semantics, one can alter the neural pathways of their brain and possibly achieve everything they ever wished to achieve.
Now, as promised, below you can find the simple exercise on how to begin your thought-speak alteration and rewire your brain from its fundamental level.
The Exercise
An important disclaimer: The below exercise will only ever work for those who are actively looking to change their ways of thinking, who want to become the best versions of themselves ever to exist. If you are not one of these people then please skip this one. And if you are, then here we go!
Take a blank piece of paper and write down some, or better, all of the aforementioned words one below the other.
Love. Life. Death. Purpose. Passion. Work. Success. Failure. Money. Fear. Happiness. Sadness. Motivation. Rejection.
Make a column adjoining it and label “What does it currently mean?”. Then make another partition and mark “What do I want it to mean?”, and the rest is self-explanatory.
In the first column, write as briefly as possible what meaning the certain word holds currently in your life. Think hard about this because it will require sheer singular focus in its entirety. It will force you to know how your brain integrally thinks and works when it comes to a word, a concept, and its significance.
Then in the next column, jot down what you actually want this word to mean. If it matches the previous column then well and good. If it doesn’t, that is when this exercise comes into play! Our goal is for the last (want) column to eventually match the previous (current) column. And somewhere in the middle of that matching process, we would have gone through a fundamental rewiring of our brains. Now, how would we achieve that?
Through the singular power of a consistent habit.
The two columns signify the integral difference between what we currently have and what we eventually want. In this case, it is the meaning that a certain concept, an idea, or a word holds in our thought-speak. We want to change it from within. And as for how one implements true change, we will need consistency at the core of it.
The consistency of looking at the last (want) column and its word at least once a day is recommended. Since we are aiming for a strict habit, our goal should be to repeat this act daily in ideal circumstances, or 4–5 times a week in practical instances. Follow this for 4 straight weeks and our beautiful, gooey, and ever-changing brains will have formed entirely new neural connections, reconditioning our minds to think in a certain way instinctively about a singular word or concept.
Wish to check if this exercise has truly worked? Recreate the list after 4 weeks and see the difference yourself. The changes may be subtle, but they will definitely show. And the beauty of this practice is that this can be done with practically any word and concept you could think of! It is not restricted to the words I mentioned before. If you think of something new, make the columns and see the magic of this activity happen.
For further clarity, let me show a quick example of how this may look -
Following the aforementioned steps, the rightmost (want) column is what I would focus on, glancing at it at least once a day along with its word. Continuing this for 4 weeks will lead my brain to learn the new meaning of Failure almost by heart. And whenever I think of it, whenever I experience the slap of failure in life, I might instantly remember to not be embarrassed and scared of it, but rather be positive and learn from it.
It seems trivial, yet the simplest of things tend to make the biggest difference if done daily. The power of habitual consistency is immensely underrated.
Now, I have given you the tools. And I have provided you with the knowledge on how to use these tools. But that is all my powers would ever allow me to relegate. Whatever changes one wants to inscribe in themselves has to come from within. So, by the end of this, I would only wish that I have helped my readers either through my words, or through the intention behind my words, for I am still learning the distinct ways our lives can be improved, one small action at a time.
Feel free to try my exercise, and feel free to share your progress. Whether it worked for you or it didn’t, I would be glad to know about your unique experience with this activity. My only goal with this article is that we learn about the importance of our thought-speak and use its incredible influence to practically clench our lives with our bare hands and turn its untamed wheel into the true direction that we want. Seems rather impossible to think, yet is entirely possible to perform.
All we need to do is tap into that possibility and wield the untapped power that is our thought-speak.
Thank you so much for reading!
I hope this unique post instills grave thought among my readers and makes one realize the brain-rewiring philosophies that seldom hide under the most mundane of things within our daily lives.
I wish you all to stay safe and have a great life ahead. Please leave your claps and thoughts in the comments below. I would really appreciate it!
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