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

To help readers quiet their minds, Nguyen suggests the acronym PAUSE. The first letter is also “pause” (63), to stop and take deep breaths, become rooted in the present moment. Pausing creates “the opportunity to choose a new response rather than repeating the same conditional reactions that keep us in the cycle of suffering” (64). The second is “ask,” deciding whether or not it is necessary or helpful to remain in a state of suffering (and it may be so, but one should be aware that they have the option to stop when they’re ready). The third is “understand” that the choice is available to cease or continue suffering. The fourth is to “say” “thinking is the root cause of suffering” (64), helping to phase out the brain’s noise and focus on the choice of thinking or not thinking. The fifth step is “experience your emotions fully” (65), disentangled from all the thinking surrounding emotions. 

The body is capable of regulating the mind, thereby allowing emotions to flow more naturally and restore balance within the self. The PAUSE sequence can be repeated as often as necessary, and eventually it will become a habit. 

Nguyen suggests that other methods for reducing anxiety, such as therapy or meditation, can potentially make suffering worse because they involve thinking and work. Meditation might provide temporary relief, but does not “address the root of the problem” (68) and thinking returns immediately afterward. This is not to say that these methods can’t be helpful, but they should be seen as tools that contribute to the overall goal of letting go of one’s thinking.

It might not seem possible to live without thinking, but Nguyen asks the reader to consider how much they are thinking when they are engaged in something they genuinely enjoy. Thoughts might arise, but they are “neutral, constructive, or creative” (72). Just as high-performance athletes do not overanalyze their own performance in the moment, a person reaches their peak when they are simply doing and not subjecting actions to mental scrutiny. This requires simply being in the present, and not ruminating on the past or fearing the future: “In a state of flow, grounded in the present moment, we are free from the limitations of the ego and can create the most incredible things in the world” (74).

Without thinking, it might seem impossible to plan for the future or want things in life, instead taking on the life of a monk. However, it is important to distinguish ”goals created out of inspiration and goals created out of desperation” (77). Goals born of desperation generate more anxiety, and even if they are accomplished, tend not to be satisfying. Goals of inspiration, on the other hand, “feel like a calling rather than an obligation” (79). 

Like a child’s wish, they open up a sense of endless possibilities, cultivating the best parts of ourselves. Such goals are creative and do not derive from thinking (though obviously they come from thoughts). Someone desperate might believe that a goal is necessary to make them happy. A goal of inspiration makes one happy even if they don’t achieve it fully, because the pursuit of the goal is emotionally satisfying on its own. It is about living according to one’s values rather than believing that a change of circumstances will solve one’s problems. To make sure that goals derive from inspiration rather than desperation, Nguyen suggests working incrementally, and imagine “what would I do or create” if there were no limits at all—which might help one realize that there are fewer limits to what they want to achieve than they may have realized (86).

No decision in life is inherently good or bad, in the sense that there is no one correct path for one to take. There is no correct way to climb a mountain— whatever gets one to the top is as good as another path. There are universal truths, and people should “look for what is universally true for every conscious human being on the planet, no matter who they are, where they’re from, and what their background might be” (89). These truths lie within the soul and so should not be sought out from other people.