Don't Believe Everything You Think

by Joseph Nguyen

Truth comes in the form of a feeling. Look for that feeling. From that feeling will come the wisdom you seek, which will set you free. And that’s what we’re all ultimately seeking, isn’t it?

It is the feeling of discovering that which you already know.

The Buddha explained, “In life, we can’t always control the first arrow. However, the second arrow is our reaction to the first. The second arrow is optional.”

Reality is what is happening right now. It is the objective circumstance that is occurring without any meaning or judgment attached to it. And so what we experience is not reality itself but our perception of reality. Any meaning or thinking we give something is self-created and our choice.

Our experience of reality is created from the combination of the events we encounter and what we think about them. To reiterate, our emotions come not from external events but from our thinking about them.

But if we change our thinking about that same event, we can alter our experience of it and create a new emotional response.

When you change your thinking, you change your experience of life—without needing to change the event that happened.

true freedom isn’t in having complete control of our minds but in the ability to be unattached to whatever happens in it

an incredible job of keeping us alive, this same ability does not allow us to thrive.

Our mind’s duty is to keep us alive. Our consciousness’s duty is to help us feel fulfilled.

If you want to be free and at peace, then you will need to let go of only listening to your mind’s fight-or-flight thinking. You are not just a product of your environment but a co-creator of

Thoughts are the energetic, mental raw materials our minds use to understand and navigate the world.

Thinking, on the other hand, is the judgment or opinion we have about our thoughts. Thinking takes a significant amount of energy, effort, and willpower, which are finite resources.

But the moment we begin thinking about our thoughts, we get taken on an emotional roller coaster. This is what I mean when I say that thinking is the root of our suffering.

We may believe that thinking is useful, but it’s an illusion that causes us to experience negative, unwanted emotions.

Without the step of thinking, we can prevent all negative programming and judgments from tarnishing the initial thought of what we want to create.

The goal is to decrease the amount of time it takes for us to regulate our emotions and return to a state of peace

Positive emotions are not a byproduct of thinking but the organic result of being fully in the present moment and connected to life rather than thinking about it.

Children are innately open, curious, happy, and full of wonder and laughter. This is also the natural state of adults until we think ourselves out

but we don’t have to do anything to minimize our thinking; we only have to become aware of it and choose to let it go rather than hold on

What we resist persists. What we accept and let be will inevitably leave.

we let our thinking sit without disturbing it by trying to fight it—our internal version of filtering and boiling—the thinking will settle down on its own, and our minds will become free from thinking. The natural state of water is clear, and the natural state of the mind is also clear if we do not disturb it.

natural inner wisdom will guide us back to clarity and peace like it always has.

Take a moment and see what answer comes up for you. If you still haven’t had any insight from an answer, here’s another question that may help: When you love what you do and are so completely immersed in it that you lose all sense of time and space (in other words, enter a flow state), how much thinking is going on at that moment?

In other words, the state of peak performance for humans can be described as the state of non-thinking. It may come as a surprise to you, but we do our best work when we aren’t thinking.

it is a state where we are in direct connection and alignment with the Universe/God/Infinite Intelligence.

Only in the present moment can the truth be found.

In the Bible, when Moses asks God His name, He replies, “I am.” God doesn’t say He was or will be, because those don’t exist in the now. He simply says, “I am.” God, truth, the Universe, freedom, peace, joy, and love (these terms are all synonymous) can only be found, and therefore experienced, in the present.

An example of this would be having a goal of becoming famous in order to finally feel significant. Unless you address the internal root worry that you’re not good enough, achieving this external goal will never change how you feel.

Our goals feel like a calling rather than an obligation.

When we feel like this, we create from a place of abundance instead of lack.

This feeling of deep inspiration comes not from us but through us from something greater than ourselves. I call this feeling divine inspiration,

Isn’t it just one of the most amazing feelings in the entire world? Most of us feel this divine inspiration but then suppress it as soon as we begin thinking about bringing it to life. We begin to think ourselves into doubt,

soon as we begin to think about the thought of wanting to create, we completely shut off the source of that inspiration, and we go back to living life in desperation.

we also cut off feelings of abundance, vitality, ecstasy, joy,

and go back to feelings of doubt, anxiety, frustrat...

Goals and dreams that come in the form of thought are created out of inspiration. Goals and dreams that come from thinking are created out of desperation.

Goals of inspiration are aligned with your values, while goals of desperation contradict them.

For an author who values their craft but feels driven by a sense of insecurity, an example of a goal created from desperation would be to want to hit the bestseller list because it would finally make them feel like they were good enough.

goal created from inspiration would be to write a book because they love the act of writing with their whole being.

There are no right or wrong goals—only

What matters is the source of the goal, not necessarily the goal itself.

The key is in asking yourself, What does money give me or allow me to do that I value most?

There are an infinite number of ways for you to make your goals from inspiration a reality. It’s not about if you can do it but how you can make it happen.

The only difference between us and children is that we have learned to shut down these thoughts of inspiration.

But once the dam is removed, the ecosystem will heal and return to its natural state.

Just like how there are no wrong keys on the piano, there are no “wrong” decisions in life. Only different paths. All we have to do is choose which to take.

The actual truth is not subjective.

Look for what is universally true for every conscious human being on the planet,

What you obtain externally can always be lost, but what you find within yourself can never be taken away.