Thoughts are the ideas we have. Thoughts are the words or pictures we have in our brains. They are usually silent. We always have thoughts. We think about the people, places and things going on around us. Thoughts pass through our consciousness quickly so that sometimes it feels like we aren't aware that we had a thought.

We can often figure out what someone else is thinking about by observing what they are looking at. If you see your friend looking at his watch, he's most likely thinking about the time. If you're at work and it's getting close to the end of the day, you can be pretty sure he's thinking about going home.

If we know someone very well we might even say 'Hey I know what you're thinking!". We use our knowledge of the person, our social memory, and the information we are taking in from the situation to make smart guesses and predictions about others. For example, you and your friend usually eat lunch around 1 PM and she very often orders grilled cheese. If you notice your friend looking at her watch at 12:30 you're probably going to think that she's getting hungry and is ready to order that sandwich. If you turned around and said, ' I bet you're thinking about ordering lunch', you'd probably be correct.

Not everyone has the same thoughts or the same information in their brain. If we want to tell our friend about the movie we saw, we begin by saying that we went to the movies and tell the title. Then we describe/explain the story. We don't launch into a description without giving them a frame of reference for what we are talking about. They wouldn't understand or follow the conversation.