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

The heart of Nguyen’s thesis is that what he calls “thinking,” more specifically overthinking, is the chief cause of human suffering. Whereas pain is an objective reality that manifests as a physical sensation, suffering is a mental response that takes its shape depending upon the kind of narratives a person tells themselves. The mind cannot make pain go away—and pain can be emotional as well as physical—but the mind can decide how to understand that pain beyond its immediate effect. 

A person has much more control than they realize over their own mental state. As Nguyen states: 

Our perception of reality is very real. We feel what we think, and our emotions are real […]. What I am saying is that how we feel will like look like an inevitable, unchangeable reality until we recognize the role that our thinking plays in creating it […]. We are only ever one thought away from transforming our lives and letting go of our suffering (30). 

Nobody can control what happens to them, but they can largely control how they think about it. According to Nguyen, the thinking mind is trained to see the world in terms of threats, both to one’s physical health and to one’s sense of belonging within a group.