I am what I think, so I choose to think positive thoughts

A river is not the water in it. Point at any particular litre and it has gone downstream by the time you have named it; the river is the shape the water keeps making.

Something similar holds for a person and their thoughts. The ugly one that surfaced in the queue this morning is not a disclosure about who you are. It is water. Everyone's river carries some.

What does describe a person is the pattern — what gets returned to, what gets acted on, which thoughts are given a chair and which are allowed to pass.

Choosing operates at that level, not at the level of what appears. You are not responsible for what arrives. The residency is a different matter entirely.