101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think

is here to
HELP YOU: 
HOW INTRINSICALLY 
MOTIVATED PEOPLE 
become the
BEST VERSIONS 
of
THEMSELVES
The single most powerful, liberating thing any one of us can do is
choose to believe that everything is here to help us.
If you want to understand why you perceive your life the way you
do, ask yourself what you think the point of it is. This isn’t a lofty,
philosophical question that you can maybe entertain if you ever
develop a penchant to do so. This is the underbelly of how you think
and behave.
You either see yourself as a victim of what happens to you, or as
someone given opportunity to change, grow, see differently, and
expand. You either see uncomfortable feelings as suffering you have
to deal with or signals you have to learn from. You either see the
world as something makes you feel, or you see your interpretation of
the world as a projection of your feelings.
When we think there is a purpose for our pain, the discomfort of it
dissolves. It turns from an annoyance to an opportunity. Our suffering
ceases.
The difference between this mindset (intrinsic) and the opposite
(extrinsic) is whether or not we believe that we create our
experience, or that our experiences are created for us (and imposed
on us) from an external force. We spend most of our lives being
taught that the latter is true—and there’s a reason for this.
Society (likes to believe) it thrives when we are extrinsically
motivated. At least, this is how capitalism runs, this is how people

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stay in power, this is how we are kept small. When people believe
that they are victims, they forfeit their power.
They funnel their energy on other people’s ideas, dreams,
products.
Do we know for certain that there is some higher plan in which we
confront obstacles in order to grow? Nope. But we never will. What
we do know is that people who are able to create happy lives for
themselves right here and right now are the ones who think that way.
Unbearable suffering awaits us all. A brief glimpse through history
can confirm: None of us is guaranteed a happy life. If we want
meaning we have to create it. If we want to find peace, we need to
know there’s a purpose for suffering.
You will either sit in discomfort for the rest of your life, or you will
grow and be better for the things that are most difficult. It is very
clear who does what.

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24
HOW TO KNOW 
when the only
THING IN THE WAY 
of your
HAPPINESS 
IS YOU
01. The only problem with your life is the way you think about it.
Objectively, you have everything you could ever want or
need, yet your unhappiness simply comes from a lack of
appreciation (which is a cultivated trait, if not a practice).
02. The solution to most of your problems is just changing the
way you think about them. For example, learning that
people’s opinions of you are largely projections of how they
see themselves would solve your problem, which is
evaluating your life through the idea of how other people
could perceive it.
03. You’re mentally lazy. You know you should be more present,
but you won’t put in the effort to practice it. You know you
should meditate and learn to train your brain to focus so it
doesn’t become engulfed by negativity, but you head to the
gym instead. You’re lazy in the way it matters most, and that’s
your biggest problem.
04. You’ve accomplished things you thought would make you
happy and immediately shifted them from “goals” to “notches
on the belt.” Once you achieved something, you immediately
started to think of it as “another thing done” rather than
“another thing in my life to enjoy.”
05. You haven’t practiced holding the emotion of happiness. We
all have a tolerance for how “good” we’ll let ourselves feel,
our “upper limit.” To go past it, we have to actually practice

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letting ourselves feel—otherwise, we’ll self-sabotage to bring
ourselves back to our comfort zones.
06. You care more about comfort than you do about change.
You’d rather remain moderately uncomfortable than deal with
the uncertainty that is making a real change in your life.
07. You consciously choose to spend time with people who aren’t
“good” for you. Meaning: They don’t really care about you, or
they inspire you to behave in a way that is counter to what
you’re trying to achieve. In other words, they bring out the
worst in you, yet you continue to see them anyway.
08. You won’t let your idea of yourself evolve. You’re stuck in only
being comfortable thinking of yourself the way you were 3, 5,
10 years ago, because that’s how other people are
comfortable seeing you.
09. You choose what you think should be right rather than what
actually is. You’re more loyal to the ideas you have about
things than the honest reality you know them to be.
10. You won’t apologize. To yourself nor to others. You’re not
open to being wrong, and certainly not to taking the ego-hit
that is admitting you didn’t always do your best. Yet doing this
is the first step in changing that.
11. You haven’t fully taken responsibility for your life—you’re still
waiting for something to come and change how you feel.
Often, people choose to suffer loudly because they believe it
is a “cry to the universe,” as in, if they are transparent enough
about how bad things are, something or someone else will
eventually have to fix or change them.
12. You’ve ascribed happiness to a level of accomplishment
rather than a state of being. You think that only some people
can be happy because their life circumstances are ideal,
rather than choosing to seek happiness in the moment and
realizing that has nothing to do with it.
13. You think that “happiness” is a sustained state of feeling
“good,” when it is really a higher “baseline” for perception.

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You are better able to process every emotion, and because
you do so healthfully, you return to your general state of
contentment quickly.
14. You accept what you’re taught even if it doesn’t feel right.
You’re more trusting of dogma, teaching or religion simply
because you knew it first, not because it resonates or helps
you in a real way.
15. You have a good life, and you know you have a good life. At
the end of the day, you know it’s just about choosing to focus
on it more.

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25
THE PSYCHOLOGY