Don't Believe Everything You Think

by Joseph Nguyen

Truth cannot be intellectualized; it can only be experienced. It is within everyone and everything. But you must look beyond the form (the physical) to see and experience the truth (the spiritual).

If you want to find the truth, look for simplicity.

what we hold on to perpetuates our reality what we let go of creates new possibilities

how long are you going to keep holding on to the story you don’t want to keep reliving?

One who looks around him is intelligent; one who looks within him is wise. —Matshona Dhliwayo

We live in a world of thought, not reality.

Sydney Banks once said, “Thought is not reality, yet it is through thought that ou...

the meaning we give something is the filter through which we see life.

It’s not the events that happen in our lives but our interpretation of them that causes us to feel good or bad.

Our feelings come not from external events but from our own thinking about the events.

The root cause of our suffering is our own thinking.

how we feel will look like an inevitable, unchangeable reality until we recognize the role that our thinking plays in creating it.

Event + Same thinking = Same experience Event + New thinking = New experience

However, while we can change our thinking, the most ideal path to serenity is to let go of our thinking entirely. Without our own thinking about an event, we find peace because we are experiencing exactly what reality is without our own judgments, stories, or expectations of it.

Event + Thinking = Perception of reality Event without thinking = Reality Event without thinking = Peace

“Do you know what is really making you angry?” Now he knew he had his answer. “It’s not other people, situations, or circumstances. It’s not the empty boat but my reaction to it that causes my anger. 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.”

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

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. And it is this tendency of our minds that leads us to the torturous thinking at the root of our suffering.

Thoughts are intrinsically neutral. 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. The initial thought of your dream didn’t cause any suffering until you began thinking about the thought.

As soon as we begin to think about our thoughts, we cast our own limiting beliefs, judgments, criticisms, programming, and conditioning onto them.

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.

It’s not what we’re thinking about that is causing us suffering but that we are thinking.

The only time we don’t naturally feel at peace are when we begin to think about the thoughts we’re having, thereby blocking our direct connection to the present.

Thinking takes us away from the present moment and into the past or future, which are the only times regret or anxiety exist.

most of us are chasing external things so that we can feel something inside innocently forgetting that all feelings are generated within us

The goal is to minimize the time we spend thinking about our thoughts so that eventually, we can get to the point where we spend most of our day not caught up in our thinking and live in a harmonious state more often.

This may surprise you, 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 to it. Most of us have been conditioned to “fight” our thinking, which only worsens things and leads to the agonizing experience we call “overthinking.” The solution is not about doing more but about not doing what’s causing the suffering. It is not a process of force but one of flow.

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

if you want to know who you are look beyond your thoughts to experience your true nature

ask yourself, “Is this thinking making me feel the way I want?” or “Do I want to keep suffering?”

understand that you have the choice to stop and let go of your thinking.

say and repeat to yourself, “Thinking is the root cause of suffering.”

experience your emotions fully.

Suffering comes not from our emotions but from the thinking we attach to the emotions.

one of the greatest powers we possess is choice

Anxiety is thought without control. Flow is control without thought. —James Clear

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?

you cannot think your way into flow just as much as you cannot think your way into love both are a natural occurrence when we let go and allow the full authentic expression of ourselves to come forth they are a byproduct of surrender and trust

There are no limitations to the mind except those we acknowledge.

As we discussed previously, each has a different source: thoughts come from the universe or our higher selves, while thinking comes from our own egos. The source dictates whether it causes suffering or not.

There are two sources of goals: goals created out of inspiration and goals created out of desperation.

When we create goals out of inspiration, it’s an entirely different story. In this state, we are creating because we feel deeply moved, inspired, and expansive. Our goals feel like a calling rather than an obligation. We feel like a powerful force of life is coming from within us, wanting to be expressed through us and into the physical world. This is why painters paint, dancers dance, writers write, and singers sing even if they never get paid or make a living from it. We feel pulled instead of forced to create something. We gravitate toward it. We feel compelled to do it. When we feel like this, we create from a place of abundance instead of lack.

When we create goals out of inspiration, we are not creating from a place of lack. We don’t create because we feel like we have to or we need more. We create because we want to. This type of creation is an overflowing of love and joy for life.

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.

Love will take you further than sheer effort ever will.

What matters is not how long you are doing it each day but that you are doing it to some capacity every day.

If I had infinite money, had no fear, and didn’t feel the need to receive any recognition, what would I do or create?

To a mind without the limits of thinking, anything is possible.

if you want to stay alive nourish your body if you want to feel alive nourish your soul