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The book: 101 essays that will change the way you think
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,101ESSAYS
that will
CHANGE
the way
YOU THINK
BRIANNA WIEST
,THOUGHT CATALOG BOOKS
Copyright © 2016 by Brianna Wiest All rights reserved.
Published by Thought Catalog Books, a division of The Thought & Expression Co., Williamsburg,
Brooklyn.
Art direction and design by KJ Parish.
General information and submissions:
hello@thoughtcatalog.com.
Founded in 2010, Thought Catalog is a website and imprint dedicated to your ideas and stories. We publish
fiction and non-fiction from emerging and established writers across all genres.
Printed in Korea by Four Colour Print Group, Louisville, Kentucky.
ISBN: 978-1-945796-06-7
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
,101 ESSAYS
that will
CHANGE
the way
YOU THINK
Brianna Wiest
,Introduction
In his book Sapiens, Dr. Yuval Noah Harari explains that at one point, there
were more than just Homo sapiens roaming the Earth1. In fact, there were likely
as many as six different types of humans in existence: Homo sapiens, Homo
neanderthalensis, Homo soloensis, Homo erectus, etc.
There’s a reason Homo sapiens still exist today and the others didn’t continue
to evolve: a prefrontal cortex, which we can infer from skeletal structures.
Essentially, we had the ability to think more complexly, thus were able to
organize, cultivate, teach, practice, habituate and pass down a world suited for
our survival. Because of our capacity to imagine, we were able to build Earth as
it is today out of virtually nothing.
In a sense, the notion that thoughts create reality is more than just a nice idea;
it’s also a fact of evolution. It was because of language and thought that we
could create a world within our minds, and ultimately, it is because of language
and thought that we have evolved into the society we have today—for better and
for worse.
Almost every great master, artist, teacher, innovator, inventor, and generally
happy person could attribute some similar understanding to their success. Many
of the world’s ‘best’ people understood that to change their lives, they had to
change their minds.
These are the same people who have communicated to us some of the longest-
standing conventional wisdom: that to believe is to become, that the mind is to
be mastered, that the obstacle is the way2. Often, our most intense discomfort is
what precedes and necessitates thinking in a way we have never conceived of
before. That new awareness creates possibilities that would never exist had we
not been forced to learn something new. Why did our ancestors develop
agriculture, society, medicine, and the like? To survive. The elements of our
world were once just solutions to fears.
In a more cerebral context, if you consciously learn to regard the “problems” in
your life as openings for you to adopt a greater understanding and then develop a
better way of living, you will step out of the labyrinth of suffering and learn
what it means to thrive.
, I believe that the root of the work of being human is learning how to think.
From this, we learn how to love, share, coexist, tolerate, give, create, and so on. I
believe the first and most important duty we have is to actualize the potential we
were born with—both for ourselves and for the world.
The unspoken line of everything I write is: “This idea changed my life.”
Because ideas are what change lives—and that was the first idea that changed
mine.
Brianna Wiest — July 2016
1 Harari, Yuval Noah. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. 1st Edition. 2015. Harper.
2 Holiday, Ryan. The Obstacle Is The Way. 2014. Portfolio.
,1
SUBCONSCIOUS
BEHAVIORS
that are
KEEPING YOU
from HAVING
THE LIFE
YOU WANT
Every generation has a “monoculture” of sorts, a governing pattern or system of
beliefs that people unconsciously accept as “truth.”
It’s easy to identify the monoculture of Germany in the 1930s or America in
1776. It’s clear what people at those times, in those places, accepted to be
“good” and “true” even when in reality, that was certainly not always the case.
The objectivity required to see the effects of present monoculture is very
difficult to develop. Once you have so deeply accepted an idea as “truth” it
doesn’t register as “cultural” or “subjective” anymore.
So much of our inner turmoil is the result of conducting a life we don’t
inherently desire, only because we have accepted an inner narrative of “normal”
and “ideal” without ever realizing.
The fundamentals of any given monoculture tend to surround what we should
be living for (nation, religion, self, etc.) and there are a number of ways in which
our current system has us shooting ourselves in the feet as we try to step
forward. Here, 8 of the most pervasive.
01. You believe that creating your best life is a matter of deciding what you
want and then going after it, but in reality, you are psychologically
incapable1 of being able to predict what will make you happy.
Your brain can only perceive what it’s known, so when you choose what
you want for the future, you’re actually just recreating a solution or an
, ideal of the past. When things don’t work out the way you want them to,
you think you’ve failed only because you didn’t re-create something you
perceived as desirable. In reality, you likely created something better, but
foreign, and your brain misinterpreted it as “bad” because of that. (Moral
of the story: Living in the moment isn’t a lofty ideal reserved for the Zen
and enlightened; it’s the only way to live a life that isn’t infiltrated with
illusions. It’s the only thing your brain can actually comprehend.)
02. You extrapolate the present moment because you believe that success is
somewhere you “arrive,” so you are constantly trying to take a snapshot
of your life and see if you can be happy yet.
You convince yourself that any given moment is representative of your
life as a whole. Because we’re wired to believe that success is
somewhere we get to—when goals are accomplished and things are
completed—we’re constantly measuring our present moments by how
“finished” they are, how good the story sounds, how someone else would
judge the elevator speech. We find ourselves thinking: “Is this all there
is?” because we forget that everything is transitory, and no one single
instance can summarize the whole. There is nowhere to “arrive” to. The
only thing you’re rushing toward is death. Accomplishing goals is not
success. How much you expand in the process is.
03. You assume that when it comes to following your “gut instincts,”
happiness is “good” and fear and pain are “bad.”
When you consider doing something that you truly love and are invested
in, you are going to feel an influx of fear and pain, mostly because it will
involve being vulnerable. Bad feelings should not always be interpreted
as deterrents. They are also indicators that you are doing something
frightening and worthwhile. Not wanting to do something would make
you feel indifferent about it. Fear = interest.
04. You needlessly create problems and crises in your life because you’re
afraid of actually living it.
The pattern of unnecessarily creating crises in your life is actually an
avoidance technique. It distracts you from actually having to be
vulnerable or held accountable for whatever it is you’re afraid of. You’re
never upset for the reason you think you are: At the core of your desire
to create a problem is simply the fear of being who you are and living the
life you want.
, 05. You think that to change your beliefs, you have to adopt a new line of
thinking, rather than seek experiences that make that thinking self-
evident.
A belief is what you know to be true because experience has made it
evident to you. If you want to change your life, change your beliefs. If
you want to change your beliefs, go out and have experiences that make
them real to you. Not the opposite way around.
06. You think “problems” are roadblocks to achieving what you want, when
in reality they are pathways.
Marcus Aurelius sums this up well: “The impediment to action advances
action. What stands in the way becomes the way.” Simply, running into a
“problem” forces you to take action to resolve it. That action will
inevitably lead you to think differently, behave differently, and choose
differently. The “problem” becomes a catalyst for you to actualize the
life you always wanted. It pushes you from your comfort zone, that’s all.
07. You think your past defines you, and worse, you think that it is an
unchangeable reality, when really, your perception of it changes as you
do.
Because experience is always multi-dimensional, there are a variety of
memories, experiences, feelings, “gists” you can choose to recall…and
what you choose is indicative of your present state of mind. So many
people get caught up in allowing the past to define them or haunt them
simply because they have not evolved to the place of seeing how the past
did not prevent them from achieving the life they want, it facilitated it.
This doesn’t mean to disregard or gloss over painful or traumatic events,
but simply to be able to recall them with acceptance and to be able to
place them in the storyline of your personal evolution.
08. You try to change other people, situations, and things (or you just
complain/get upset about them) when anger = self-recognition. Most
negative emotional reactions are you identifying a disassociated aspect
of yourself.
Your “shadow selves” are the parts of you that at some point you were
conditioned to believe were “not okay,” so you suppressed them and have done
everything in your power not to acknowledge them. You don’t actually dislike
these parts of yourself, though. So when you see somebody else displaying one
, of these traits, it’s infuriating, not because you inherently dislike it, but because
you have to fight your desire to fully integrate it into your whole consciousness.
The things you love about others are the things you love about yourself. The
things you hate about others are the things you cannot see in yourself.
1 Gilbert, Daniel. Stumbling on Happiness. 2007. Random House.
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