Don't Believe Everything You Think

Don't Believe Everything You Think

Joseph Nguyen, 2022

A summary for English-speaking professionals who feel busy but never settled.

The chair, the empty bowl, and the quiet sentence

Joseph Nguyen was twenty-something, in California, sitting in a chair in his apartment, and not okay. He had read the books. Atomic Habits, Tony Robbins, Eckhart Tolle, half a shelf of Eastern philosophy, a rotation of self-help podcasts on the way to work. He had tried the 4am alarm, the cold shower, the green smoothie, the gratitude journal, the spiritual retreat, the shadow work weekend, three different therapists, and a personality framework whose name he no longer remembered. He had meditated. He had visualized. He had cleaned up his diet. He had listed his values on an index card and taped them to the bathroom mirror.

He still felt anxious every morning before his eyes were fully open.

In the book he calls this period his darkest hour, and the phrase is corny enough that you almost skip past it. Then he describes the texture of it. Heaviness in the chest. A constant low hum of frustration. The feeling that everyone else had a manual he was missing. He was a young entrepreneur trying to coach other people out of suffering while quietly drowning in his own. He writes that he felt purposeless, hopeless, directionless. He did not know who else to talk to or what else to read. He had run out of strategies.

Then a coaching mentor said one sentence to him that he could not unsay. Roughly: it is not what you think about that is causing your pain. It is that you are thinking. The content of the rumination does not matter. The activity of the rumination is the problem.