I suspect I'll be recommending this book a lot. We can benefit from less mental suffering and the ideas and perspectives Joseph Nguyen offers in this book are incredibly helpful. This is a self help book, written in a very approachable, straight forward way. It's gentle, to the point and provides lots of little quotes that can help make those points memorable.

This is not a science based book. There's no real references outside of some memorable quotes. So if you are needing convincing of the ideas here, this book likely won't change your mind. For me, most of these concepts I have already discovered from many other scientific and philosophically sound books. The ideas shared align heavily with my past research on ways to improve mental health while I struggled through a tough mental timeframe of my own. They overlap what I've learned about depression, meditation, stoicism, over thinking and other Buddhist ideas around suffering and meditation. Since I had so much background in these ideas already, the book didn't need to convince me. Instead it provided me another resource and most importantly a different lens to view these ideas through.

Nguyen offers a perspective of mental suffering and overthinking as a result of "Thinking." He differentiates "Thoughts" vs "Thinking." He highlights how thoughts, which are our intuition, tend to be uplifting, positive, inspiring and most importantly, non suffering. It's only when we betray those thoughts with "thinking" do our minds start to cause suffering on ourselves. He offers the stoic concept that we control our reactions and emotions to what's happening around us, and thus we can control our mental suffering. But I've never quite heard it through a lens that attacks "thinking" as the culprit. "I think and think and think, I've thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.” — Jonathan Safran Foer.

Example: Consider a dream, or a goal you have for yourself. Think of one right now. What feeling did that "thought" just give you? Uplifting? Exciting? Hopeful? Now, start to think about making that dream come true, what would it take? How would you get there? ... Our minds start "thinking." Did you start to think of how hard it would be? All the obstacles you'd have to over come? What feeling did "thinking" start to give you? Did your dream start to feel bad? Not inspiring? Difficult? Deflating? This book is a gentle attack on "thinking." It's everything I've already known but through a different terminology that was awkward at first, but really hard to deny as the ideas set in. “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” - William Shakespeare

There are some criticisms around the idea of trusting one's intuition. It's valid to question if our intuition is well calibrated to our realities. However this is not an invention of the concept either. 2 of the most impactful self help books I've ever read are: Leadership and Self Deception, and, The Anatomy of Peace. Both revolve around the same idea, of honoring our intuition, and when we betray that intuition is when we start to justify our poor human behavior and start to go "in the box" with how we treat others. This is not an invention of Nguyen's. It's a thought out philosophical concept, that's shown a lot of benefit in real human lives. Yes, certainly there will be people who have miscalibrated intuitions. Those people likely are aware and are not the masses. The masses of us are mentally suffering, betraying those intuitions, and these concepts can help. Nguyen offers a simplistic version of these deep philosophical ideas and his version can still be quite powerful.

“To a mind without the limits of thinking, anything is possible.”

There's a few chapters that are farfetched. One on unconditional love felt out of no where and misplaced. But the book is so short, there's no reason to dwell on a few paragraphs that just didn't land for me.

At times I felt it was a little too hand wavy. And I'm not sold on the "flow state" as much as the author sells it, though I do understand it. I also think there's ways of applying the ideas not discussed in the book which is great, it's not a definitive guide on the idea. But the last few chapters give very concrete guides on how to reduce thinking, practices, mantras, journaling techniques, and ways to go after you goals. These are small, but incredibly practical. Some align heavily with some Tim Ferris suggested practices from years back on going after your goals. If the hand waviness wears on you, know there is some practical guides at the very end, I wish he would have mixed those in a bit more into the middle of the book.

This book is not a proof. It's not science. It's a way to reduce our mental suffering, and I think it could be really effective for myself and for those around me. So even though it's not the best book ever, it's short, it's approachable, and seems incredibly helpful. I suspect I'll be recommending it a lot.

4.5 stars - Not because it's the best book ever. But because I think the ides are incredibly valuable to us as flawed thinking human beings. And there's not too many things more important from my perspective than to help us all reduce our mental suffering.