#2 - THINK STRAIGHT: Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life
A book about conquering and taking back control of mind.
Before reading this book. To be frank, with the look of the front page I was not really sure that this book would have help me in stopping the useless mind chatter.
But I can vouch for the fact that if you were like me, suffering with the mind chatter and unable to control it. Your mind gazing with thoughts and making the mind restless and burdensome. This book can help you. It can help you make your mind quiet and get rid of useless thoughts. It can make your mind more focused and more productive for your life.
And if you ask me, this is the type of the book that you should purchase to keep a local hard copy to read it whenever you feel burdened by the thoughts. It will make that stop because the funny thing is our mind can’t retain anything for long time. For that you need constant revision.
If you want to purchase the book, here’s the link : Link
So here are the highlights. These highlights are not sorted chapter wise. They are just highlights for the whole book. Sorry for that. These highlights were taken before I read a blog post mentioning you should take highlights keeping the book structure intact. It will help you when you are revising the highlights after a long time.
THINK STRAIGHT: Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life
Highlights
What’s more the mind is single most important tool you have. And if you want to use that tool properly, you must train the mind. Stoic philosopher Epictetus put it best: “ The life of wisdom is life of reason. It is important to learn how to think clearly. Clear thinking is not a haphazard enterprise. It requires proper training.
One way to train your mind is by learning new things. We’re creatures of habit who prefer relaxing our mind instead of straining it. Well the point is train your mind just like your train your body to keep fit.
If we want to think straight at times, we must stay grounded, listen to other people’s perspectives, and only then draw practical conclusions.
The true is that which works. But that doesnt mean we should believe everything we hear or read. That makes us delusional.
We often make decisions based on gut feelings, emotions, and without having the right information.
We usually think of ourselves as sitting in the driver's seat, with ultimate control over the decisions we made and direction in our life takes; but, alas, this perception has more to do with our desires - with how we want to view ourselves than with reality.
You have the ability to decide what you think. And since the result of your life depends on your thoughts, I think the most important thing in life. When we improve the way we think, nothing is impossible to achieve. That simple realization changes everything. Many great thinkers have written about the importance of thoughts. But william James's godfather, Ralph Waldo Emerson, put it most simply "You become what you think about all day long."
The emphasis is on deciding and that's what this book is about: With practice, you can get better at controlling your thoughts, so you can decide what you think.
"If you can change your mind, you can change your life."
We’re always so quick to judge and draw conclusions based on our assumptions. We’re all human beings. We make mistakes. We change our minds. And we assume things that are not true all the time. That’s normal. What’s not normal is to let your mind go out of control.
The quality of your thoughts matters the most.
And many philosophers argue that the quality of your thoughts determine the quality of your life.
His most important idea is that we should question the source of our beliefs, not the belief itself. Because most of our beliefs are based on our or other people’s perception.
At the core of thinking lies our ability to separate the truth from falsehood. What is true, what is false?
“The attitude of looking away from first things, principles, 'categories,' supposed necessities; and of looking towards last things, fruits, consequences, facts.” Thoughts should serve a useful purpose. If they don’t, they’re useless. That’s straight thinking.
“Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.” Thinking is not only hard—it’s the single most important thing in life.
The quality of our thoughts determines the quality of our lives. And our decisions are a result of our thoughts.
Also, achieving a goal never happens linearly. Most of us believe there’s a straight line from where you are to where you want to be.
Understanding that life is not linear helps us to change the way we think.
The point is that there are multiple ways to achieve your goals. Also, if everyone is doing one thing, that often means you shouldn’t.
“You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.” - This is most famous quote said by Steve Jobs at a graduation speech in 2005.
If you want the dots to connect in the future, you have to make sure you form dots in your brain. The only way you form dots is by learning, doing, making mistakes, reflecting, or anything you can do to feed your brain with the input it needs to give you the output you want.
A heuristic is a strategy we derive from previous experience with a similar problem.
Look at the “true is what works” idea as a filter that you can apply to all the information that goes into your brain.
“Will the outcome of a decision change the way I live?” If you ask that yourself consistently, you’ll find that you automatically filter out useless information and only make decisions that have an actual impact on the outcome of your life. You force yourself to use whatever works—what’s useful. And what impacts your habits.
Those type of thoughts are not helping us. But we all have them. So how do you get rid of them? Well, I’ve learned that you can’t get rid of them. Remember? We can’t control our consciousness. We can only control what thoughts we follow through on.
It’s better to be aware of your thoughts and decide what you will ignore, and what you will give importance to.
Only think about things you can control. That automatically eliminates about 99% of your thoughts because there’s very little you control in life. Anything out of your control and without a useful purpose.
I’ve discovered two main types of useful thoughts:
Thinking about how you can solve problems. A problem is just an unanswered question. Put your brain to use and think about how you can solve problems. There are a lot of those on this earth.
Understanding knowledge. That means this: Try to internalize knowledge and think about how you can use that knowledge to improve your life, career, work, relationships, etc.
Ask yourself: “Is that worth it?”
Commit to stop thinking about useless things. Start taking control of your mind.
All that worrying about the past and the future is not going to help you. It never did. And it never will.
A cognitive bias is a systematic thinking error that impacts judgments, and therefore, our decisions.
My favorite cognitive bias is the “Attentional bias.” It’s scientific evidence for the idea that your life is a result of your thoughts. The attentional bias states that our perceptions are affected by our thoughts. And naturally, our perceptions determine our actions and decisions, which make up our lives. If you have negative thoughts, you also have a negative perception of life. That’s what it says. Our mind might be illogical, but it’s also simple at the same time.
Take one of the most well-known cognitive biases, the confirmation bias.
What it comes down to is this: Avoid making decisions based on beliefs, obvious logic, and even science.
“The pragmatist clings to facts and concreteness, observes truth at its work in particular cases, and generalizes.”
Whatever you do, never waste your thoughts on other people’s ill-informed opinions and guesses.
"There are no facts, only interpretations."
“It’s a common belief that your first reaction is the most honest, but I disagree. Your first reaction is usually outdated. Either it’s an answer you came up with long ago and now use instead of thinking, or it’s triggering a knee-jerk emotional response to something that happened long ago.”
Training your mind happens in stages—and before you can move on to the next phase of your learning development, you have to get through a wall. I believe that both learning skills and developing yourself happen in stages.
Today, I know myself better than I did ten years ago. And in ten years from now, I’ll know myself better than I do today. Knowing yourself is step one. Step two is acting on that knowledge.
When I started daily Journaling, I began with writing my own autobiography. It’s not meant for publication. It’s meant for reflection and learning. If you don’t know what to write about—write your life story. I’m sure you’ll learn more about yourself with every paragraph you write.journal and make sure to read my notes once a week. That’s all I mean when I talk about reflecting. I do it for three reasons: It helps me to uncover my mistakes, so I can avoid them in the future. It helps me to value my progress when I read my past achievements. To get my thoughts in order so I can second guess myself. That helps me to make better decisions.
There’s only one condition: Invest in your skills. It’s naïve to think we’ll always be able to find a job or make money. It takes effort. But since when is that a surprise?
I simply don’t buy everything I like.
Remember: Money is a replaceable resource. When you’re out of it, you can earn it back. You can’t say the same for time. Don’t spend too much time thinking about money.
This doesn’t make sense at first sight, but when you think too hard, you often come up with bad ideas. That’s because you can’t actively think your way out of everything. We’ve all had good ideas while taking a shower. That’s because we’re not actively thinking.
However, only one thing is critical: You don’t need anything to relax but yourself.
It’s not this or that in life. You can have this and that.
The point is that not striving for perfection becomes a habit. Don’t worry about being a perfectionist—there’s no such thing. More often than not, people are the opposite. Perfectionism is merely an excuse. In reality, we’re scared of what people think of our work. Either way, there’s no point in asking “why” when you deal with obstacles, challenges, or mistakes. Instead, think about what you can do to overcome or prevent the things that are holding you back.
Thinking about details is nothing more than doing your job. If you’re a writer, your job is to write the best book you possibly can. If you’re a designer, your job is to create the best design you can. You’re not here to write one book and call it quits. Or to design one product and retire. If you want to grow—financially, spiritually, mentally—you must revisit the details all the time.
The best way to make sure you act more is to rely on habits. Take exercise. I’ve struggled with staying in shape for all my life. And I was overweight for years. I always played mind games with myself about exercise and diet.
When you combine a few rules, you have a system. And a system helps you to take the thinking part out of the equation. The only thinking you need to do is when your system doesn’t give you the results you want. If my system would make me feel bad or gain weight, I would rethink it. And even if it works, a system is never perfect. That’s why I regularly think about what I can change or how I can improve my systems.
But the most important lesson I’ve learned was that you don’t regret what you did in life, you regret what you didn’t do.
I’d rather eat rice and beans so I can do the things that I love instead of having a job that makes me miserable, but pays well. At the end of the day, this is your life and the only way you can live with yourself is to follow your strongest desires. Just make sure you think straight so you eventually act on those thoughts.
However, I intend to live now. And I know I’m successful because I never have the urge to relive the past.
When we hold on to a lot of things in the past, they form an obstacle to living in the present.
The only useful purpose I can think of for looking back is to learn.
Make a decision. Stand by it. Move on. And only look back to learn. So yes, look back, but don’t stare for too long. Life happens now.
Thinking is a double-edged sword. It can help you. But it can also destroy you. The outcome depends on how you use your thoughts. Your mind is an instrument—nothing more, nothing less.
At the end of the day, thinking by itself is useless without action. But like we talked about earlier, action follows thought.
Effective thoughts? Effective actions.
We’re collectively thinking so much we’re missing out on life. And it has nothing to do with fancy things other people do. We all know that the beauty of life lies in the small things. Did you notice the sunshine this morning when you woke up? Or the raindrops? Did you notice the smell of your coffee? Did you feel the texture of your cereals?
Stop thinking and start feeling.
There’s only one end goal to all of this: Inner calm. No matter what you experience in life, and no matter what happens to you, your mind should stay calm under all circumstances.
That’s the ultimate prize in life. Mastery of the mind means that we control our mind. Remember: You can only achieve that through daily practice. Some people call it meditation and others might call it mindfulness. No matter what you call “finding inner calm,” please don’t over complicate it. You don’t need a ten-thousand-dollar course to learn how to find some peace inside your head.
Just sit down, be one with your thoughts, observe them, and then, ignore them. That’s all there is to meditation.
Pragmatism means that one must look at the practical value of ideas. James believed scientists wasted their time on abstract ideas and theories that had no impact on people’s lives. Would you change the way you lived if a scientist proved how the earth was created? Louis Menand, author of Pragmatism: A Reader, says of the principle of pragmatism that, “We can never hope for absolute proof of anything. All our decisions are bets on what the universe is today, and what it will do tomorrow.”
“The greatest use of a life is to spend it on something that will outlast it.”
Practically speaking, there’s no purpose to doing something that outlasts you. You won’t be there to see it anyway. But that’s not the point. If we live our lives every day with that idea in mind—that we should strive for doing/creating useful things that matter to others—we end up spending our time on things that actually make a difference. When you do that, life automatically has meaning—to everyone.
And that’s it. Hope this helps to you if you are reading till the end.
And it would mean the world to me if you share this post with someone you think needs to read this. By the process of sharing you would have done the good deed of improving someone’s life who needs this to read. If a single person’s life gets improved by reading this, purpose of this newsletter is fulfilled.
Stay tuned for next post. That book is somewhat special to me.