Why You Shouldn't Believe Everything You Think

Ever felt your cerebral cortex resist an idea so hard that it feels like it'll explode?

I am suspicious of self-help books. Self-help bestsellers doubly so. But something about the book that's the subject of today's edition, and the story of its author, pulled me. Perhaps 'pull' isn't the right verb because this isn't one of those books that grab your attention and squat on your head until you finish reading them. This is a book that extends its fingers towards you gently and waits patiently to see if you'd accept. I did. I picked it up from a second-hand bookstore in Bangalore (though I bought a new copy) and finished it in less than a day. And it shifted something in my heart.

Joseph Nguyen's Don't Believe Everything You Think: Why Your Thinking Is the Beginning and End of Suffering challenged some of my most hardened ways of, well, thinking. It challenged my politics. It challenged my scepticism. It left me feeling restless as I resisted its simple-sounding insights and furiously highlighted section after section with a neon pen. Could all this be making sense, after all? How could it? I hadn't felt this kind of agitation over a book in ages.

Then, something wild happened. I got an email from Nguyen's publicist, Emily Lavelle, asking if I'd like to speak with him. (Thanks Emily. I have no idea how you knew what the book had done to me, but I am glad you reached out.) I had to say yes, if only to confront him with the full force of my skepticism. How dare someone suggest that thinking and not inequality and injustice is at the heart of human suffering?

That's in fact the first question I invite you to unpack with Nguyen and me today. Below, you'll find edited excerpts from our long (long) conversation, in text interspersed with videos. We explore Nguyen's personal journey through suffering, the difference between thought and thinking, why positive thinking and manifestation aren't what most people think they are, how to create a nonthinking environment, how to move from goals born out of desperation to goals born out of inspiration, if Nguyen is anti-Freud and a lot more. (BTW, some of these topics, eg 'positive thinking', are so alien to me and Sanity that I've checked the spelling of each individual word five times.)

Know that the objective of this exercise wasn't for me to change my convictions. I still have a lot of questions, and it's completely okay if you feel the same way. I urge you to experience this conversation – and the book – simply because we, who have the privilege to do so, owe it to ourselves to tell our cerebral cortex to relax from time to time. And to meet lovingly extended fingers, if only for a minute.

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If you can't read the entire interview, watch this video for a quick introduction to Nguyen's story and the central tension in the book for me

Complete interview begins

Tanmoy: Great to have you Joseph. Let me start by asking: Who is Joseph Nguyen, and how did this young person come to write a book about the perils of thinking?

Joseph: Thank you Tanmoy, I appreciate you having me. I don't enjoy talking about myself that much, but just to give you some context, I have a background in advertising and marketing. I started an ad agency and scaled that quite well, but eventually I grew out of love with it, lost my passion for it, and really started to despise it. I'd accomplished almost everything I wanted. I’d built a business after dropping out of college. I’d made money. But I was more unhappy and stressed than ever before. 

That puzzled me and made me question everything, because I’d thought that just hard work and discipline would allow me to escape emotional turmoil — but it didn't. It only amplified and exacerbated it.

So I spiralled. I had constant anxiety. I couldn’t sleep. My girlfriend at the time, who’s now my wife, developed a chronic illness and had to be hospitalised multiple times. She had to get a feeding tube. At that point, I hit rock bottom. My business partner and I split, I went 50,000 dollars in debt at the age of 21, didn't really know what to do anymore, and lost all purpose and hope.

I tried everything I could to help relieve this anxiety, this mental chatter that just wouldn't go away. I tried therapy, hypnotherapy, a tonne of meditation, vipassana, transcendental meditation. I went on a 7-day retreat in Cancun to study more of this stuff. I tried acupuncture, shadow work. I even went vegan for a while.

Tanmoy: How did that go?

Joseph (laughs): I lost 10 pounds and became pretty underweight.

The interesting thing about most of these experiments was that they worked — but then they stopped working. I’d do a certain practice in the morning, and as soon as it ended, boom, all the anxiety, stress, self-doubt, and insecurity would come rushing back.

So I wondered, why can’t I sustain this peaceful feeling? Almost anyone can experience a sense of calm with a few minutes of meditation, it’s not too difficult. The hard part is holding on to that feeling. I asked myself what I could do to remain in a meditative state through the day.

That’s when everything flipped, and slowly things started to shift for me. So yeah, it was after exhausting all the external options that I looked inside — questioning my own thinking, my own judgments, my own beliefs, and that was my turning point and became the core idea of the book. 

Tanmoy: So tell us about that core idea. Thought v thinking. How do you separate the two?

Tanmoy: I’m curious: When you say things flipped in your mind, were you taking a DIY route to changing your thinking, or did you have a teacher?