We all think. But most of us aren’t aware of how we think, or how our thoughts shape our choices, emotions, and relationships. Thought literacy is the skill of noticing, understanding, and managing your thinking. And when you practice it, a natural next step emerges: meta-thinking.
What Is Meta-Thinking
Meta-thinking is thinking about your thinking. It involves being aware of your thoughts and understanding how they influence your emotions and behavior (instead of just letting them run on autopilot). Meta-thinking isn’t just noticing a thought in the moment, it also includes reflecting on past thoughts to build self-awareness and learn from patterns.
Unlike metacognition, which focuses on problem-solving or learning in an educational context, meta-thinking is an everyday life skill. It gives a verb to an activity that previously had no clear name: deliberately engaging with your thoughts to guide how you respond and grow.
Why We Needed a Word
While we have terms like metacognition, which describes thinking about thoughts in the context of problem-solving, there isn’t a term for thinking about thinking in everyday life. Thought literacy is a skillset for noticing, understanding, and managing thoughts. Practicing it naturally leads to engaging with your thoughts daily. At first with effort, and over time effortlessly and habitually.
Naming this action matters. Words shape attention. Once we can name meta-thinking, it becomes easier to notice it, practice it, and recognize how it shapes our emotions, decisions, and relationships.
Meta-Thinking in Everyday Life
Meta-thinking can be simple. It’s noticing a worry before it spirals into stress. Recognizing a snap judgment before it affects a conversation. Pausing to question whether a thought reflects reality or is an old response coming from a different, but similar situation.
Thought literacy teaches the awareness. Meta-thinking names the action. Together, they turn thinking into a skill you can practice, refine, and use to guide your life with clarity and self-awareness.