the beauty of our thought worlds

2024-02-23 • est. reading time 6min • #thought space

Basic construction of my thought world and how I can explain it. Part one of an introduction to my thought world, defined from the ground up to allow me to see more connections between thoughts and things I discover.

A picture of the night sky, from the earth.
via pixabay

Think of the night sky, there are stars, planets, moons – a part of the universe, a wonderful, fascinating, unknown world. Let each planet now be a discovery we have made on our world, and a star a thought. We can discover connections between the different planetary systems, some are closer to each other, others are further away. It's similar with our thoughts. Some of them form a link so that when there are enough of them, there is a huge mesh network. From different points of view and at different times, we can make different discoveries.

Allow me to introduce you to the world of my thoughts – my universe, and our worlds.

This is how I think right now about this topic. It'll might change in the future.

I think we all live in our own world. These worlds are based on the part of the world one lives on, one's education, experiences, cultural and moral values and much more. The world can be seen as a concept that summarizes the differences between our views of the world – the earth – and how we live together on it. I think it's fascinating to find out how my world differs from other worlds. But what is my world and how do I explain it?

Organization is the first important step to a more clear view of a world. I try to organize my world by writing it down. There are different types of notes I use, that serve different purposes.

The first are basic notes that come from thoughts or content that I've read, heard, or seen. These notes are meant to quickly sum up a thought so that it doesn't become lost. They may not be relevant to you if you are able to remember your thoughts for a longer period of time, or have the ability to do take the next step directly. Still consider taking basic notes, at least for consumed content, as they allow you to reflect on what you learned from it. These notes can be used for anything, in general, if you think, think about writing down the thoughts.

The other main type of notes are meta notes, which can be differentiated into concepts and meta thoughts, among others. Meta notes are the reason why I'm actually interested in all this as they're the main part of how I try to explain the parameters forming my world.

A possible scenario might be that you gathered some thoughts about what you want in life and also some ideas you found while reading about that topic. I split these thoughts into three concepts "Psychological needs", "Expectations" and "Wishes" (note that these are my names for that, and not the correct scientific terms). See an excerpt of my – still work in progress – definiton for the concept of "Psychological needs":

Psychological needs are similar, but not equal to wishes and expectations. They describe a deep need you have, something you need to have in your life to be happy. They have an immense value, compareable with the one of good and strong relationships.

Examples:

Counterexamples:

It should be a goal to find out what the own psychological needs are. That way you can try to satisfy them. They can change over the course of a life.

Psychological needs have a value. They shouldn't be fulfilled by any person, but with special and trustworthy ones. Otherwise there is a high risk for the other person to influence you negatively or to use you.

I try to build the description of my world like a mathematical book. Concepts are like definitions that allow me and others to understand the differences between our worlds. They are the basic building blocks for all thoughts.

There're several ways to formulate the thoughts that become meta notes. For me they mostly emerge from conversations or alternatively during chilly times when I reflect. The basic notes I have taken previously are a massive win now. I read these again before I begin reflecting, to remind myself of forgotten thoughts too.

For me it's super fascinating to see the links between all the topics of our world, the meta levels are what interest me. We all only experience our own world, but that's not the only one. Note taking helps me to better understand my own world, making me better in communicating it. With communication I can also try to understand your world, maybe I will even learn through some key differences, that I have a very limited view on one topic. The first time I noticed that I have psychological needs was in a conversation. It helped me a lot to understand myself better, and to find situations in which I can live them out. These and many more learnings bring pleasure to me and to my world. It's one of my needs.

If this interests you, observe the world, try to discover oddities, talk to others about your world. I hope you will enjoy it :3

My enemy was starting with note-taking. I fell into the depths about theories of knowledge management and still haven't quite made it out again. I tried to write my notes before I even wrote one; that's something you all warn people about, but I tried to ignore it. You don't need to do it perfectly on the first or even nth try! Start writing your notes in some form, and you'll find the right structure over time.

This and the other posts, especially the posts that will follow in this series, are also a call to talk to me about your idea of the world, about what you notice, what you think about my thoughts. I'm happy to talk with you :3