Don't Believe Everything You Think: Why Your Thinking Is the Beginning & End of Suffering

Most people are very familiar with feelings of acute self-doubt, Nguyen says, sometimes bordering on self-loathing. Low expectations of one’s abilities result in settling for the familiar, even if it’s unpleasant, rather than taking risks that could end in disappointment. People stay in jobs they hate because they don’t think they can get a better one, constantly doubt whether their friends actually like them, and are envious of everyone who seems to have it all figured out. By the end of the day: 

all you want is a moment of peace. To be able to let go of the anxiety and overthinking that consumes your days. The vicious cycle of doubt, shame, and anger. To be able to feel the joy, fulfillment, and peace that always seem just out of reach (15). 

Life starts to seem hopeless. 

Nguyen has learned that there is more to life than suffering. His purpose in writing this book is to help others come to that same realization and “find peace, unconditional love, fulfillment, and an abundance of joy in life” (17). He aims to offer practical benefits for work and relationships, and to help people understand how their own minds work and that the key to happiness lies entirely within themselves. The book, he says, is merely a guide to help people find what is already there—it does not contain information but, rather, insights. It reveals emotional truths that are felt rather than known, simple truths that can be applied to everyday life. Learning to practice these ideas will help to make change not just likely but inevitable.

The first step in ending suffering is to understand what it is. Unlike pain, which involves physical anguish, suffering occurs entirely in the mind and is therefore entirely avoidable. 

One cannot simply choose not to suffer. At first Nguyen read materials and experimented with various practices, such as eating vegan and meditation. But no matter how hard he tried, “I still felt anxious, fearful, unfulfilled, irritated, angry, and frustrated every day” (24). On the brink of giving up hope, he thought of the Buddhist parable of two arrows—the one which strikes the body and causes pain, and the second which is only an emotional reaction to having been struck. This helped him gain insights into human psychology and how people reconstruct their own experiences.

A person’s sense of reality has a great deal to do with their thinking. Two people in the exact same physical circumstances may be experiencing reality very differently based on their state of mind. Even though reality consists of objectively defined conditions, people have subjective perceptions of the world around them. Something like money is an objective fact of life (albeit a socially constructed one), but nobody thinks about it in exactly the same way: “It’s not the events that happen in our lives but our interpretation of them that causes us to feel good or bad” (27-28). 

Even when one is engaged in a pleasant activity like watching television with loved ones, thoughts of other, less pleasant activities (like a hard day at work) can completely reshape how one experiences that moment. Furthermore, even a hard day at work does not necessarily have to cause so much stress—some may find excitement in the challenges of a difficult job. Nguyen offers a thought experiment: “How would you feel if you didn’t think that you hated your job?” (29). One cannot instantly change their thinking. However, if they did, their suffering would end because “the root cause of our suffering is our own thinking” (30). A different emotional response to the exact same external event creates an entirely new experience. The best course of action is to let go of thinking entirely, to experience reality simply as it is, which leads to peace. 

Nguyen turns to the story of a young Zen monk who was having trouble concentrating during his required daily meditations. He is constantly aware of external disturbances, and gets angry that they are distracting him. He tries to find a quieter space, but then hears a flock of birds. He finds more success meditating on a boat in the middle of a lake, but then a few days later, another boat strikes his. He is initially furious that someone carelessly hit his boat, but then he sees the boat is empty and thus no target for his anger. He learns the following lesson: “all the people or situations that upset me are like the empty boat. Without my reaction, they don’t have the power to make me angry” (35). He learns to meditate in spite of his distractions, to the satisfaction of the elder monks.

The human mind is designed to scan for threats, based on an assessment of one’s environment compared with the accumulated knowledge derived from past experiences. Human beings have evolved to make the individual condition themselves to the group, as social cohesion was necessary for survival in prehistoric times. Life now is more about the possibility of happiness and not just the need to stay alive, but the brain is still rooted in that earlier time. As Nguyen writes: “If we keep allowing this thinking to direct our lives, we will stay in a state of fight or flight, anxiety, fear, frustration, depression, anger, resentment, and negative emotion because the mind views everything as a threat to our very existence” (39). To be happy, one must gain some distance from patterns of thought that see everything as a life-and-death situation.

Thoughts are simply the activity of one’s mind, while thinking “is the judgment or opinion we have about one’s mind” (41). One can instantly imagine something they’ve always wanted to do but haven’t yet done, which is a thought, but thinking would entail a detailed consideration of what it would take to make this thing happen and why it has not happened yet. The latter exercise is far more tiring and demoralizing than the simple thought of a presumably positive activity. A dream cannot cause suffering, but thinking extensively about it can. 

As another example, Nguyen proposes the thought “it is raining” with the pattern of thinking “why does this always happen to me? This is the worst. This ruined my day” (44). Thoughts are a creative expression that tend to excite positive emotions, while thinking tends to bring about a “cascade of negative emotions” (46). Nguyen provides a side-by-side chart of thought and thinking, such as “Source: Universe [thought] Ego [thinking] and Quality: Creative [Thought] Destructive [Thinking]” (47).

Nguyen is not suggesting that people lose all negative thoughts, which in the right situation can have positive outcomes and help one navigate out of difficult or painful situations. The problem is dwelling on negative emotions out of proportion to any real problem. Some suggest that positive thinking is a good alternative, but this would be no less exhausting, and would still root a person in their thoughts rather than their actions. As Nguyen writes: “The truth is that you do not have to have thoughts or think to feel positive emotions” (51). 



Positive emotions simply occur, whereas positive thinking has to be manufactured. People are generally happier when they are thinking less, and unhappier when they are thinking more. The key to happiness is not finding a different way to think, but rather to remove the obstacles to the enjoyment of a happiness which is a part of humanity’s natural condition.