Brianna Wiest - 101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think

Essays
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.

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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

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101 Essays
that will
Change
the way
You Think

Brianna W iest

Introduction

In his book Sapiens , Dr. Yuval Noah Harari explains that at one point, there were more than just Homo sapiens roaming the Earth. In fact, there were likely as many as six different types of humans in existence: Homo sapiens, Homo neanderthalensis, Homo soloensis, Homo erectus , etc.

Theres a reason Homo sapiens still exist today and the others didnt 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; its 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 todayfor 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 worlds 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 way. 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 withboth for ourselves and for the world.

The unspoken line of everything I write is: This idea changed my life. Because ideas are what change livesand that was the first idea that changed mine.

Brianna Wiest July 2016

Subconscious
Behaviors
that are
Keeping You
f rom 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.

Its easy to identify the monoculture of Germany in the 1930s or America in 1776. Its 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 doesnt register as cultural or subjective anymore.

So much of our inner turmoil is the result of conducting a life we dont 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.

1. 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 incapable of being able to predict what will make you happy.

   Your brain can only perceive what its known, so when you choose what you want for the future, youre actually just recreating a solution or an ideal of the past. When things dont work out the way you want them to, you think youve failed only because you didnt 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 isnt a lofty ideal reserved for the Zen and enlightened; its the only way to live a life that isnt infiltrated with illusions. Its the only thing your brain can actually comprehend.)

2. 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 were wired to believe that success is somewhere we get towhen goals are accomplished and things are completedwere 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 youre rushing toward is death. Accomplishing goals is not success. How much you expand in the process is.

3. 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.

4. You needlessly create problems and crises in your life because youre 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 youre afraid of. Youre 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.

5. 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.