Most thoughts you have are not yours

Thoughts pop up randomly into your mind, but if you stop for a bit and analyse them, you’ll realise that most are not yours. They’ve been planted there from the outside. From a friend, a book, the internet, etc.
And more than that, when you analyse them, you might realise that the methods you use to analyse them are just as stereotypical and borrowed.

Having original thinking in our modern world requires a lot of effort and detachment from normal thought patterns. If you take a moment to step back and try to look at reality without attaching to the first thing that pops into your mind you will come up with new connections between experiences and previous knowledge. This is of immense power. If you do this enough, some of your ideas are going to be good.

This may be thought of as a sort of meditation, but instead of letting your thoughts pass, you want to inspect those that seem interesting, and see whether you can come up with new solutions to whatever problems you are trying to solve in your life.