We are so intimate with our thoughts that we never really stop to pay close attention to our wandering minds. When we do look at our thoughts, they turn out to be more interesting than we imagined.

A 2013 review points to huge individual differences between people in how much time they...

There are five categories of inner experiences:

• Inner speaking, which comes in many forms
• Inner seeing, which comes from things you've seen in real life or imaginary visuals
• Feeling, such as happiness or anger
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Not everyone is convinced that people think accurately. Philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel argues that people are prone to considerable introspective error under any condition.

Further studies revealed that what people say they are thinking about does match up with what is real...

Inner speech plays an important role in self-regulation behavior, problem-solving, critical thinking, and future thinking.

There's also growing evidence that inner speech is useful for self-reflection. Learning to tune in to your thoughts is a way to communicate with yourself using a m...