You can’t control the first thought, but you can control which thought gets the microphone.

You do not choose what appears. The first thought is produced by everything that has already happened to you, and it arrives without asking. What remains yours is what happens next, which one you amplify, return to, and build the next hour around. Attention is the only part of the process you actually operate.

When an unhelpful thought turns up, do not fight it, because fighting is a form of attention. Give the microphone to something else deliberately, a task, a person, a piece of work that needs you. The first thought fades from lack of use rather than from argument.