We spend an inordinate amount of our lives acting as the gatekeepers of our own minds, treating every stray thought, anxious whisper, and unsolicited mental image as a personal failure or an accurate reflection of who we are. When a heavy or jarring thought enters the consciousness, the instinctive reaction is to clamp down, to interrogate it, or to wage an exhausting internal war trying to evict it. We assume that because a thought happens inside our own head, it must belong to us, defining our character, our stability, or our worth.