101 Essays That Will Change the Way You Think

These pieces of advice urge the reader to practice radical honesty and invest in one another. To know someone better, one must involve themselves in that person’s life, walk in their shoes, read the books they read, create together, and travel together.

Wiest notes that people tend to worry about how they are perceived and, as a result, hold themselves back from real happiness. Instead, if they enjoy each individual moment, they will be truly happy.

Wiest begins with the fact that most thoughts are just repetitions of previous thoughts and that most beliefs are blindly accepted. Her advice to overcome this includes reflecting on the origins of one’s own opinions, considering other ideas, and doing research.

The purpose of a relationship, Wiest argues, is to see yourself more fully. When you choose to love someone who cannot love you back, you do so to show yourself that you deserve love despite your own inability to love yourself.

Wiest discusses the gap between how a person believes they should be loved and how they are loved. People leave, fight, and hurt each other and also love each other. Love appears in countless different ways, some logical and some not.

To tame one’s demons, Wiest asserts that one must acknowledge and understand them. There is nothing to self-blame for, only things to be aware of.

Here, Wiest lists reasons why, despite wanting to, people are unable to change their thought patterns. These include the false notion that positivity is naive, the constant reinforcement of negative thoughts, and that people pay more attention to negative thoughts because they are impossible to understand.

Wiest clarifies that non-resistance is not simply allowing anything and everything to happen to oneself. Rather, it is striking a balance between what one can control and what one can’t. Using a metaphor, she says that one must “steer the ship along with the current, not against it” (387).

Wiest discusses the common practice of anticipating what others could dislike in yourself so that you cannot be hurt by it. She argues that this is ineffective and even harmful since there is no way to protect yourself from a lack of kindness from the world, and the result of that practice is only self-hatred. Being kind to yourself when you may not deserve it is the best, simplest, and really the only way to consistently feel good about yourself.

In this essay, Wiest breaks down the mistakes the brain tends to make. She introduces and explains concepts including overgeneralization, filtering, catastrophizing, and the fallacy of control.

Wiest lists 101 things that give perspective on some common smaller worries, like how one’s body looks. They include completely separate ideas like the importance of kindness and morals as well as ideas that relate more directly to body shame, like the fact that food is nutrition and that your body lets you experience the best things in the world.

Wiest breaks down ideas in Zen Buddhism that may seem unapproachable. These principles aim to disconnect one’s mind and one’s essence. They emphasize the importance of being in the moment, maintaining awareness without attachment, and knowing that one is connected to the rest of the world.

Wiest lists six signs that can be misinterpreted as negative qualities but actually show signs of having a healthy relationship with others. They include wanting to be alone, saying no to plans, having social anxiety, and keeping your circle small.

Wiest explains her own problems with perspective, sharing that she always aims for some later time when she might be comfortable forever. But this practice is directly opposed to what she knows to be true, which is that this moment right now is all there is, whether it feels good or bad.

While agreeing that living in the moment is important, Wiest also addresses the over-logical lens with which most people view the world. Rather than leaving room for mystery and uncertainty, people try to learn, reason, and understand everything. Rather than over-thinking in this way, she urges the reader to sit comfortably in uncertainty, as this is a key part of mindfulness.

Wiest explains the difference between thoughts and emotions: Thoughts are meanings we attribute to emotions. Instead of thinking about every feeling, she argues that one must simply feel in order to prove to oneself that emotions are not inherently “good” or “bad.” With this knowledge, one can feel all emotions without judgment.

Wiest lays out the argument for the importance of negative thoughts and emotions. To ignore them is to give them power, and to accept them is the only healthy path forward. The problem a person experiences is not the real problem. The problem is the fact that they see it as a problem.

Wiest puts forth 24 steps one should take to heal one’s anxiety. These steps include reconnecting with life, accepting and seeing the purpose in discomfort, treating oneself with kindness, and feeling all emotions and sifting through the thoughts that come alongside them.

Wiest offers the idea that happiness is something you become, not seek. Chasing happiness lands someone in a perpetual state of thinking that happiness will come next. In the same way, if one runs from pain, one is also running from happiness. In chasing happiness, one remains in perpetual pain.

Wiest reminds the reader that when changing their ways, they must let go of people and old versions of themselves. They must rely only on themselves, continue to love themselves, be comfortable in uncertainty, know what feels true, and embrace their struggles.