Picture this: you’re scrolling through social media and see someone from high school who seems to have their entire life figured out. Within seconds, your brain starts its favorite game show – “Let’s Compare Your Behind-the-Scenes to Everyone Else’s Highlight Reel!” Before you know it, you’re spiraling into thoughts about how you’re falling behind, how you’re not good enough, how everyone else has it easier.
Sound familiar? Welcome to having a human brain – the organ that kept our ancestors alive by constantly scanning for threats, but now spends most of its time creating problems that don’t actually exist.
Here’s the plot twist nobody tells you: just because you think something doesn’t make it true. Revolutionary concept, right? But seriously – your thoughts are not facts. They’re just mental events, like clouds passing through the sky of your consciousness. Some are helpful, some are random, and some are straight-up lies your anxiety tells you at 2 AM.
Joseph Nguyen breaks this down beautifully in Don’t Believe Everything You Think, explaining that we’ve gotten so used to being at the mercy of our thoughts that we forget we have a choice in how much power we give them. That voice telling you you’re not ready, not smart enough, not worthy enough? It’s not the voice of truth – it’s just your brain doing what brains do: trying to keep you in your comfort zone where it thinks you’re “safe.”
The thing is, negative thoughts aren’t inherently bad. They’re just… thoughts. The problem starts when we believe them without question, when we let them drive the car instead of just being passengers along for the ride. When you start treating thoughts like weather – noticing them, acknowledging them, but not necessarily letting them determine your whole day – everything changes.
This doesn’t mean toxic positivity or pretending everything is fine when it’s not. It means developing what I like to call “thought literacy” – the ability to observe your mental chatter without immediately buying into every story it tells you. You can notice the thought “I’m going to fail this presentation” without letting it convince you to skip the presentation entirely.
As Nguyen points out in Don’t Believe Everything You Think, the goal isn’t to stop having negative thoughts (impossible and probably not healthy anyway). The goal is to stop giving them so much authority over your life. You can have the thought and still take action. You can feel anxious and still show up. You can think “this is too hard” and still keep going.
Your brain is going to brain – that’s literally its job. But you get to decide which thoughts deserve your attention and which ones you can just let pass by like background noise. The power was always yours; you just forgot you had it.
Next time your mind starts its greatest hits album of your worst fears and biggest insecurities, try this: “Thanks, brain, for trying to protect me. I hear you, but I’ve got this one.”
You’re not your thoughts. You’re the one observing them. And that makes all the difference.
Salt + Cedar Collective 