This blog post is about a book titled “That Little Voice in your Head” written by Mo Gawdat

Basics

The premise of the first chapter is that our default state is to be happy, and it is thought that makes us unhappy. Through a simple thought experiment, the author asks the reader to recall an unhappy incident and dwell on it, and then subsequently solve an anagram. This exercise demonstrates that we might oscillate between states of happiness and unhappiness purely because of our thoughts.

If we set our thoughts aside and substitute them with action, we automatically become more present and start paying closer attention to everything in life. This is perhaps the most important lesson from the chapter—and possibly the book: the realization that we are not the voice in our head. The inner voice is something our brain generates. Scientific experiments support this: the same brain areas are activated when we speak out loud and when we engage in internal dialogue. This indicates that the inner voice is a biological function.

But then, why do we give it so much importance? Shouldn’t it be treated like any other organ in our body—one we don’t consciously obsess over or strongly identify with? Why do we identify ourselves with the brain?

Historically, the brain helped us survive in the wild by constantly scanning for threats to our existence. In the modern world, where existential threats from wild animals or hostile tribes are rare, we have surrendered to the brain’s dominance and allowed ourselves to over-identify with it.

The first chapter provides a useful blueprint for the rest of the book. The author compares the brain to a computer—with multiple inputs, multiple processes, and multiple outputs. With this analogy in place, he invites the reader to continue exploring the book.

Part One

To fix a machine, first you need to find out what’s wrong with it. To fix the unhappiness your brain is experiencing, you need to find out what causes it. I believe that the reasons our brains make us unhappy can be summed up in a simple model: 4-3-2-1.

• 4 (wrong) Inputs that distort our perception of the truth.
• 3 (exaggerated) Defences that keep us safe but make us suffer.
• 2 (opposite) Polarities failing to stay in balance.
• 1 (harmful) Thought that causes all the unhappiness you have ever felt.

Repeat these often enough and you become really good at them because Practice Makes Miserable, when what you practice is your own unhappiness.

Chapter Two: Garbage In

Introduction

The chapter explores how the quality of our mental inputs shapes our beliefs, emotions, and actions. Using the computer metaphor Garbage in = Garbage out, Mo Gawdat explains that just like bad code corrupts output, invalid thoughts or cultural inputs corrupt emotional well-being.

You Are What You Think

• Just as food affects your body, thoughts affect your mental and emotional reality.
• Cultural messages, beliefs, and proverbs can deeply condition how you think and behave.
• Much of what we assume as truth is inherited, unexamined, or outdated.

Conditioning and Cultural Proverb Pitfalls

• Mo introduces the idea of conditioning: deeply rooted beliefs shaped by past experience and context.
• Examples:
  • “Stretch your legs only as far as your blanket allows” = Can discourage ambition.
  • “If you leave your past, you lose your way” = Can discourage progress.
• These once-useful ideas become dangerous when misapplied outside their original context.

The Five Inputs to Thought

1. Observation (the closest to truth)
2. Conditioning
3. Recycled thoughts
4. Trapped emotions
5. Hidden triggers

Observation – The Closest to Truth

• Islamic mysticism emphasizes 3 levels of knowing: knowledge, observation, and experience.
• What you observe firsthand is more trustworthy than what you’re told.
• Mo encourages verifying anything before accepting it as truth.

Conditioning – The Default Filter

• Past trauma, upbringing, and culture create strong lenses that distort reality.
• Example: A Google manager stretched himself thin due to childhood trauma from war and poverty.
• Beliefs like “Success is more important than happiness” result in long-term unhappiness.

Awareness Exercise: Delayed Gratification

• Reflect on statements like:
  • “I will be happy when I get promoted.”
  • “I will be happy when I lose weight.”
• Mo urges group discussions to uncover self-imposed barriers to present joy.

Recycled Thoughts & Trapped Emotions

• Recycled thoughts: Internal narratives we replay unchecked (e.g., “They don’t love me” ? “I’ll die alone”).
• Trapped emotions: Mood states like irritation or sadness spawn negative thoughts without reason.
• These inputs mix and distort our sense of reality and self-worth.

Mental Hygiene Analogy

• Just like computers need garbage collection, so do our minds.
• Periodically reflect, question, and discard toxic beliefs and inputs.

Hidden Triggers – The Most Dangerous Input

• Subtle influences from media, news, advertising, and social media hijack your mental processes.
• Example: In Wonder Woman, killing is normalized after a character is labeled “the bad guy.”
• This kind of storytelling reduces compassion and sensitivity to violence.

Hypernormalization of Reality

• Repeated exposure to abnormal events (violence, pornography, fear) makes them feel normal.
• Our brains are efficient but start ignoring critical anomalies when overexposed.
• Joy, awe, and empathy are numbed out.

Opting Out – The Solution

• Mo shares his practices:
  • Avoids violent movies unless recommended by 5 trusted people.
  • Rarely watches the news or browses social media.
  • Follows only uplifting content.
• “Invest in your happiness, not in the lies of the modern world.”

Practice Exercise: Banishing Hidden Triggers

• Weekly 30-min reflection:
  • What inputs affected your mood or clarity?
  • Examples: celebrity behavior, social media arguments, fear from the news.
• Write an action plan:
  • Turn off notifications.
  • Stop watching violent or gory content.
  • Limit social media or toxic friendships.
• Track your commitments and reflect weekly.

Final Reflections

• Hidden triggers can contaminate thoughts for years if left unchecked.
• Use judgment to filter what benefits you and purge what doesn’t.
• “Be the change you want to see in the world."
• Share your experiences of opting out with others to build collective awareness and happiness.
• “Invest in your happiness, not in the lies of the modern world.”
• “Be the change you want to see in the world.”
• Regular mental hygiene is essential for clarity and peace.

Chapter Three: Under Attack

Brain’s Purpose and Overreach

The author says that the primary purpose of our brain is survival and we have pushed it way beyond its purpose and have used it to create discoveries, create instruments, create material goods and many more things to make our lives comfortable. There is a crucial difference between brain and any other part of human body. If there is some event that happens in the external world such as a nasty comment from a colleague, a bad behavior from your friend, your brain immediately gets into a mode that says that environment is threatening you. Your legs or heart or skin do not behave in that way. The brain has three kinds of defences and these are associated with three subsystems:

1. Reptilian brain that replicates the survival functions found in other mammals
2. Mammalian brain that avoids pain and seeks reward
3. Rational brain that involves the neocortex, responsible for logic, planning and self-concept

Three Sources of Suffering from Brain Subsystems

These three defense subsystems give rise to precisely three different reasons that make us suffer:

1. Reptilian brain gives rise to aversion. It creates a fear that makes you avoid many aspects of life that might be beneficial.
2. Mammalian brain gives rise to attachment where a focus on reward and pleasure and avoidance of discomfort or pain keeps us attached to what we are familiar with, regardless of how valuable it actually is or how little it contributes to our happiness.
3. Rational brain gives rise to All-Pervasive Dissatisfaction. We are forever unhappy with the current state and we desire more, more of everything—and that’s where the problem starts. The only way to get rid of this dissatisfaction is to practice gratitude. Every day, think of three things that you are really grateful for—life, people, events around you—because of which your life is much better than so many people in the world.

TEDx Talk Notes – Willoughby Britton

• Primarily positive qualities of mind – attention, patience, compassion

Contemplative Studies

• Contemplative practices
• Neuroscience

Why should the average neuroscientist be interested in contemplative practices?

• It would make sense that if we get everything we want, get rid of everything we don’t want, we will be happy. Completely wrong.
• Richer people are not necessarily happier than poor people.
• Psychiatry: Reducing unpleasant feelings does not mean more happiness.
  • Focuses on mental illness
  • Doesn’t define mental health

Key Ideas

• Happiness is inextricably linked to attention.
• We have this very pervasive habit of not paying attention to the here and now.
• Mind wandering is not serving us to make us happy.
• There is a direct connection between attention and happiness.
• The more problems with attention, the more unhappy you are.
• If we have a weak attention system, our emotions will be more reactive.

Neuroplasticity and Mental Habit Formation

• Experience-dependent neuroplasticity: we get good by practicing.
  • If we exercise, certain muscles get stronger.
  • Mental habits follow the same principle.
• Neuroplasticity: the most powerful way to change your brain is behavior— specifically mental behavior.
• We may unintentionally be making certain neural networks stronger.

Reflection Prompt

• What do we want to practice?

Chapter Four: Practice makes miserable

In Chapter Four, Practice Makes Miserable, Mo Gawdat introduces a powerful yet simple idea: what you repeatedly practice, you become. Contrary to the old adage “practice makes perfect,” he warns that practice can also reinforce destructive habits, leading to unhappiness or even misery. The chapter is centered on this truth—that our thoughts, actions, and emotional patterns wire our brains through repetition, shaping who we are, often without us realizing it.

Gawdat begins with the Cherokee parable of the two wolves—one good, one bad—fighting within each person. The wolf that wins is the one you feed. This story sets the stage for understanding how our repeated behaviors feed neural pathways, reinforcing either happiness or misery.

He reflects on his personal journey from extreme introversion to being perceived as a sociable public speaker and leader. This transformation was not innate—it was practiced. Faced with the demands of managing a team, Gawdat forced himself to learn social skills. He didn’t start by engaging with difficult conversations but practised talking to “low-risk individuals,” like baristas or strangers in elevators. Over time, these small, repeated social interactions rewired his brain, strengthening his social “muscles.” He uses this as an example of how deliberate, consistent practice—even in small doses—can change who we are.

The science behind this transformation is grounded in two concepts: neuroplasticity and neurogenesis. Neuroplasticity refers to the brain’s ability to rewire itself through repeated use, while neurogenesis is the birth of new brain cells. Both occur throughout life, debunking the myth that brain development halts in early adulthood. Gawdat emphasizes that the brain, like a muscle, strengthens what is used and prunes what is not.

To explain how memories and behaviors form, he uses both metaphor and science. The “telephone switchboard” metaphor illustrates how neural pathways are formed: neurons communicate through neurotransmitters, and repeated firing between two neurons strengthens their connection. Over time, these connections become structurally embedded in the brain. This is why practice leads to improvement—but also why bad habits become hardwired. As neuroscientist Donald Hebb famously said, “Neurons that fire together wire together.”

A vivid example comes from Gawdat’s emotional memory of listening to the song Life is Beautiful by Sixx\:A.M., which he associates with his late son Ali. The repetition of this moment—sitting in a specific chair, hearing the same lyrics, smelling coffee—has created a permanent neural circuit. The same principle applies to acquiring skills or habits: repeated exposure and recall solidify those patterns in the brain.

Crucially, Gawdat stresses that learning doesn’t require external practice alone. Mental rehearsal and recall are just as powerful. Professional athletes and performers benefit from this mental practice, and so can anyone trying to reshape their thinking patterns or behaviors. However, this can work against us, too. Recalling a memory with distortions or repeatedly practicing a poor technique can ingrain negative or flawed habits.

He points out that learning happens not from intensity but from repetition over time. Just as lifting a massive weight once won’t build muscle, a single intense moment of effort doesn’t rewire the brain. Consistent, small efforts matter far more.

But what if what you’re practicing is harming you?

That’s the danger of unconscious habits. Gawdat calls these unnoticed, repetitive actions “stickers,” like the small, annoying labels on apples. They may seem insignificant, but over time they accumulate and become influential. Examples include ruminating over negative thoughts, frequent self-criticism, watching violent media, or constantly comparing yourself on social media. These actions, repeated daily, shape a brain that is excellent at being miserable. Our brains don’t discriminate—they strengthen whatever we feed them.

He also explains how habits become invisible through habituation. Our brains filter out background tasks to conserve resources, which is useful—but dangerous when destructive habits like negativity, fear, or judgment go unnoticed. When such behaviors are repeated over years, they alter our personality and disposition, leaving us more cynical, anxious, or aggressive.

Gawdat warns that many of us unconsciously practice self-criticism more than self-love. This imbalance becomes deeply ingrained, affecting how we see ourselves and behave. Worse still, when we strengthen one set of neural pathways (e.g., for criticism), we weaken others (e.g., for compassion or confidence). The end result is often unhappiness—and we may not even realize why.

Modern society exacerbates the issue. From violent entertainment and toxic online culture to relentless ambition and fear-based news cycles, we are constantly practicing negativity. We rationalize these habits as “entertainment,” “motivation,” or “engagement,” but the brain doesn’t care about the label—it simply learns what it experiences. The cumulative effect is a collective decline in happiness and emotional health.

The chapter concludes with a call to action. Change, Gawdat insists, begins with awareness. He encourages the reader to become mindful of what they are repeatedly practicing—and whether those practices are leading toward joy or misery. His suggested group exercise, “The Mirror,” helps uncover unhelpful habits and replace them with empowering ones. He urges us to pick small, positive commitments and practice them daily, allowing neuroplasticity to work in our favor.

In short, Chapter Four is a wake-up call. You are what you repeatedly do—not just in action, but in thought, emotion, and attention. Happiness, like any other skill, is a practice. And if you are not consciously practicing happiness, you may be unconsciously practicing misery.

Chapter Five: Both of You

Chapter Five of That Little Voice in Your Head explores the profound imbalance in how modern society engages the two hemispheres of the human brain. It draws a vivid comparison between personal computers—specifically the CPU and GPU—and the human brain’s left and right hemispheres. While both are essential for optimal functioning, society tends to favor one over the other: the left hemisphere. This side handles logic, analysis, structure, and execution—traits highly valued in capitalist, performance-driven cultures. However, the right hemisphere—associated with creativity, empathy, intuition, and emotional depth—is often underutilized or suppressed.

Mo Gawdat shares his personal story, recounting how his upbringing and career focused almost entirely on the “masculine” left-brain qualities. Though this led to external success, it also resulted in internal misery, depression, and disconnection from his loved ones. It wasn’t until he began listening to his right-brain qualities—greatly inspired by his son Ali, who embodied emotional intelligence and balance—that he started his journey toward healing and happiness.

The chapter discusses the dangers of societal overemphasis on “doing” rather than “being.” This overdrive of activity, planning, and achievement often masks a lack of awareness and emotional connection, leading to burnout and unhappiness. Jill Bolte Taylor’s TED Talk and book A Stroke of Insight are cited to illustrate the lived experience of functioning purely through the right brain—one of peace, euphoria, and interconnectedness.

Gawdat introduces the concept of feminine and masculine archetypes to describe brain functions, not genders. Feminine traits such as empathy, intuition, and creativity are labeled “right-brain,” while masculine traits like focus, linear thinking, and discipline are associated with the “left-brain.” He emphasizes these are not gender-bound but are characteristics accessible to all humans. A powerful metaphor is presented: each of us has a unique blend of qualities on a spectrum—like countless shades of grey. Thus, the goal isn’t to fit into a binary category but to embrace one’s own category of “you.”

The chapter promotes several awareness and practice exercises. One helps individuals identify which traits dominate their behavior—feminine or masculine. Others encourage practicing the opposite side’s perspective, cultivating respect and understanding, and using both hemispheres in concert through a “Be–Learn–Do” framework. This model is about first attaining awareness (be), gaining knowledge (learn), and then taking action (do), rather than defaulting to premature action without insight.

Ultimately, Gawdat argues that the imbalance between left and right brain usage is a root cause of many societal issues—from unhappiness to climate crises and exploitation. By empowering the suppressed right-brain/feminine side—empathy, connectedness, awareness—humans can regain balance, meaning, and collective healing.

The chapter closes with a tribute to his son Ali, whose integrated feminine wisdom helped Mo begin his own transformation. Gawdat affirms that recognizing and harmonizing both sides of our brain is not only essential for personal happiness but may well be humanity’s greatest untapped solution.

``Be before you learn and learn before you do.''

Chapter Six: Talk Talk Talk

The Power of a Single Negative Thought

The chapter talks about the power of a single negative thought that can give rise to incessant thinking. It is a loop of obsessive rumination in which you replay the same thought again and again.

• The defining character of incessant thinking:
  • Thoughts are self-generated.
  • They are often directed at ourselves or our loved ones.
  • In the absence of deliberate attention, thoughts look only within us to find more fuel—to think more about ourselves.

Awareness Exercise – Meet Becky

I found the awareness exercise Meet Becky fascinating, as it led me to really understand something strange about the way our mind behaves.

• When we acknowledge our thoughts and ask the brain to come up with a fresh thought, it usually goes silent.
• I tried this exercise for 15 minutes and realized very quickly that my brain stopped incessant thinking after the first few minutes.

Practice – Deliberate Attention

I found the exercise of deliberate attention also very interesting.

• It includes cultivating deliberate attention every day for 21 days.
• A practice that helps counter obsessive, self-focused thinking loops.

Part Two

We are all engulfed in various thoughts as we go about in our lives. There are also tasks that require absolute attention and during these thoughts we often have focused thoughts about the way to accomplish the tasks. However, the regular thoughts we have in our lives when we are not focused in the here and now, usually fall in to a category where they make us unpleasant, give rise to many negative emotions. Yes, we do often engage in thoughts that are joyous, fulfilling, grateful, peaceful, content etc. But if you ask a random sample of people to truly rate their quality of thoughts and emotions, most will tend to agree that we tend to think more negative thoughts than positive thoughts. Well, this is something that is a gift of our brain’s evolution. The main function of brain for several thousands of years is human survival. Hence the default mode of our brain is to invoke negative thoughts, put is in flight for safety mode. This worked well in times when humans faced physical threats from wild animals, nature etc. In our current lives, we are long past that threat. There are actually far few physical threats and hence most of the threats that brain does invoke are of different nature

The author takes us through the side effects of thoughts in part 2 of the book. There are three chapters in the book and here is a brief summary of each chapter

Chapter Seven: Endless Emotions

• Your brain chooses when a certain thought starts and when it gets repeated. Like a true dictator, it controls everything within your physical form and as a result it fully controls you. The tools it uses include emotions, chemicals (hormones) and electrical signals, and repetitive thoughts – which we will call loops – and groups of thought that cluster together, which we will call subroutines
• Many of us have become good at hiding emotions, essentially numbing down the emotions
• Our thoughts trigger emotions
• Emotions are predictable
• Neuroplasticity applies to every process that is initiated in the brain. The parts of your brain that you use more often become stronger. This means that, just as with memories and skills. The emotions you practise, over time, become easier to feel.
• Be Learn Do Model for practicing
• We have been conditioned to believe that emotions are just things we randomly feel – that they arise without a cause. Success here is when you learn to pay attention to this important link between thoughts and emotions. Keep practising until you see how each different thought triggers a different story, a different drama and a different emotion.
• The biggest skill to learn here is how to bring any change in your mood instantly to your attention.
• There are four distinct reasons why we have created a world that’s so devoid of emotions. These are societal traditions and pressures, emotional storms, emotional camouflage, and emotional discomfort.
• You can’t improve what you can’t observe.
• Every emotion is unique in its physical signature.
• You have to acknowledge your emotions and trace its physical signature
• Remember the golden rule: embrace how you feel but don’t immediately act on it. Then, when the time is right, think: I’m open to making things better. When that becomes your reality, only then, start to talk or do.
• Committed happiness practitioners learn to separate what they feel (pure being) from what they want to do.
  • Stay Hungry
  • Resist the urge to talk for a week
  • Say something positive or say nothing at all
• It’s not the toughest of trees that survive the hurricane. It’s the ones that can sway with the wind and not resist. By learning to sit with simple urges such as an itch or hunger, you learn to sway with your emotions. The more you do it, the more ready you become to experience a storm of emotions and . . . sit with it.

There are many of us who numb our emotions because of several reasons. The author categorises the reasons in to

• Societal pressures: Modern society seems to look down upon individuals who display their emotions. The norm seems to be that we need to be calm, emotionless and hyper efficient machines at work places. Displaying strong emotions or for that matter any emotions openly in public and professional settings is an exception than norm
• Emotional Storm: We are usually engulfed in a range of emotions rather than a specific emotion and hence most of the time we don’t know what specific emotion we are dealing with. We bunch everything together in to a few categories and we don’t even want to analyse them
• Emotional Camouflage: Most of the time emotions are camouflaged and are hidden. They manifest as some rather vague feeling and hence we tend to ignore them as we don’t take time to understand them
• Emotional Discomfort: Dealing with emotions and taking time to understand them and analyse is not so much a pleasant experience as compared to ignoring them or escaping from them

The author suggests that we take the route of consciously acknowledging them and suggests a few ways to do it

• Be an observer to the drama inside your brain
• Sit with an emotion and feel it viscerally instead of escaping from it
• Watch physical signature of the emotion
• Try not to talk for a week and only talk when needed
• Talk but only talk positively
• White noise detox
• Re-live a memory

All the above hacks are meant to look at the various thoughts that arise in us and try to connect it to some emotion

The key idea behind all the above suggestions is that every emotion arises from a dominant thought. The emotions further give rise to other thoughts that can then go on repeat mode

One of my takeaways from the chapter is the author’s spin on using concepts from brain’s neuroplasticity to suggest ways to deal with the emotions. The fact that our brain changes as we put to use for various tasks is not something new. The author suggests that thinking negatively also reinforces certain neural networks in our brain and our brain starts getting better at feeling the emotions that result from negative thoughts. If you are constantly watching something that is about rage, violence, catastrophes, it is likely that you are making that part of neural network strong and you will most likely display those emotions in your own life.

Take for example, let’s say you binge on some Netflix series that is all about violence, drugs and crime. Once you binge watch it, it is very likely that you will experience negative emotions in your own lives, with in your family, within your office environment. In that sense, cutting down negative media completely will help you cut down the use of those neural networks and hence as a result you will become so much calmer inside as external thoughts are no longer helping you exercise those parts of your brain.

Be-Learn-Do is a useful construct to keep in mind when you start thinking about way to manage your thoughts and emotions. By being fully aware of your thoughts, and then being able to connect it to your own emotions, it is likely that you are able to able to learn about it and finally do something about it

This chapter talks about the endless emotions and incessant chatter that we have in our lives. This situation can be episodic, i.e. an event can cause such a tendency or it could be a recurrent pattern where the thoughts stifle us and trap us from doing anything

Active Recall after a week of reading this chapter

• Our brains are hard wired for remembering and highlighting negative than positive
• If we let our brains take control of us, they will spin a thought and if we experience any unpleasant feeling, the brain is quick to spin another negative thoughts and so on until we are in this incessant cycle of negative thoughts.
• Emotions - We are bound to feel emotions of all kinds. When there is positive emotions such as love, compassion, gratitude, we are naturally at ease with the physical sensations it creates. We feel good, our body becomes relaxed and we are usually calm and peaceful. However when the emotions are not of the positive kind, it creates several manifestations in our physical body that we become restless and endless chatter
• The way to stop this suffering cycle is by taking action. Once we take an action that requires our deliberate presence in the here and now, there is no place for thoughts. You are focusing on the task at hand and there is no way any external thought will bother you
• Thought is nothing but a memory with a timestamp. If there is no time stamp, then our brain has no way to retrieve it. It is only when there is a timestamp that our brain tries to retrieve it
• Suffering cycle is a manifestation of endless emotions

When I reread the chapter I realized that I missed the main idea of this chapter; the importance of embracing the emotions and to stay with it, observe it. The key is to observe the emotions arising out of our thoughts and having some physical manifestations

Chapter Eight: Alchemy

Overview of the Nervous System

This chapter talks about the structure of the nervous system and provides a 10,000 ft view of the different types responsible for various kinds of thoughts. There are three primary nervous systems in our brain:

• Autonomic Nervous System – functions without conscious control.
• Sympathetic Nervous System – triggers the fight-or-flight response.
• Parasympathetic Nervous System – induces calm, peace, and happiness.

Evolutionary Perspective

• From an evolutionary standpoint, the Sympathetic Nervous System helped us survive physical threats in the environment.
• Even though we face fewer immediate threats in modern life, the brain still prioritizes the sympathetic response, leading to anxiety and hyper-alertness.

Analogy

• The Sympathetic Nervous System is like a loudspeaker announcing perceived threats.
• The Parasympathetic Nervous System is like a calm chat over Microsoft Teams—quieter and localized.

Is the Sympathetic Nervous System Bad?

• Not at all. It’s doing what it was designed to do—protect us from danger.
• However, in today’s world, we rarely make time to activate the Parasympathetic Nervous System.

Key Insight

• Thoughts and nervous systems exist in a loop.
  • Calming and peaceful thoughts help activate the Parasympathetic Nervous System.
  • The more we consciously engage it, the more relaxed and balanced we become.

Recommendation – Exercise the Parasympathetic System Regularly

This chapter emphasizes the importance of deliberately activating the Parasympathetic Nervous System through consistent habits:

• Get enough sleep at night
• Relax your mind periodically during the day
• Practice meditation
• Cultivate gratitude:
  • Appreciate where you are in life
  • Thank the people who made your life possible today

Chapter Nine: In Limbo

Subroutines and Auto-Pilot Tasks

In our life, we do certain tasks—or categories of tasks—in auto-pilot mode. The author refers to such tasks as subroutines, drawing an analogy with functions in programming languages.

What’s That Got to Do with the Voice in Our Heads?

• In many situations, our thoughts—or a combination of them—run in an infinite loop, much like calling a subroutine endlessly.
• Most people have experienced incessant negative thinking at some point in their lives.

A Useful Hack – Make a Contract with Becky

• The highlight of the chapter is a mental technique suggested by the author:
  • He names his brain Becky to create distance and recognize that the brain is a separate entity.
  • The hack involves making a mental contract:
    • Acknowledge the thought
    • Then request your brain to offer a better thought
• While the hack might seem silly at first, if approached with an open mind and practiced consistently for a few days, it can become a helpful tool to escape incessant thinking.

The Visual – Focus as a Way Out

• The visual at the end of the chapter is especially powerful.
• It shows that whenever a flood of thoughts enters our mind, deliberate attention to the task at hand is the key to avoiding their negative consequences—especially incessant thinking.

Personal Reflection

• I can completely relate to the visual.
• There have been many times in my life when I was troubled by incessant thoughts.
• I have always found that doing something—anything—that requires focus and attention helps me move away from those crippling thoughts.

Part Three

A brain is always welcomed when it brings up a joyful thought. Otherwise, the only thoughts allowed are useful – experiential thoughts, problem-solving, being in flow and giving. This is the shortest path to make the world better and make yourself happier. The next four chapters talk about ways we four ways we can experience happiness

Chapter Ten: Welcome to the Real World

• We experience the world with five senses and hence the knowledge that we gain from these five senses are going to be form a vastly different knowledge repository
• Sympathetic and Para Sympathetic brain are the ones that kick in whenever we develop a heightened sense of fear
• Reptilian brain is that part of brain that alerts us to flight or fight behaviour. It is always on the look out of environmental threats and is forever ensuring our survival. Needless to say there are many false positives that it creates. Hence in our current world where the physical risk arising from the environment has gone down, this part of brain sometimes exaggerates the threat and keeps us in incessant mode of thinking.
• Default mode network thinking is that state of thinking which arises when there is absences of deliberate attention. Some of the psychologists believe that this gives rise to a lot of undesirable mental states such as depression, anxiety, worrisome state etc. On the other side of DMN is the task focused thinking where we are focused on a specific task and by default there is less score for rumination and mind wandering. The author says that the key to happiness and life is to remain in this task positive network
• Deliberate attention is the key ingredient that switches on your ability to observe inward and outward. This switches off your Default Mode thinking and automatically increases your sense of calm, peace and happiness
• There are three reasons why the brain cannot be in default mode network and task positive network
  • Limited resources: As soon as you start paying attention to any task, the brain lacks enough power to keep other thoughts running at the same time. It automatically stops thinking or doing other tasks and focuses on the task that you have chosen to focus. Everyone who has tried solving a hard problem in a noisy environment will know that ambient known noise is a killer to our concentration whereas once we switch to ambient white noise where we cannot make anything of immediate environment, our brain’s ability to focus on a task increases exponentially
  • Switching costs: Whenever we switch across tasks, there is a cost associated with it in terms of loss of energy, focus and the time it takes for the brain to reorient itself to do another task
  • Processor speed : Our brains move up and down the energy spectrum based on the task at hand. For incessant thoughts, it consumes so much energy that it neither is emitting delta waves or gamma waves, i.e. neither it is in state of deep restful sleep nor is it state of extreme deliberate attention where it is paying massive attention to something. The hack suggested by author is to either speed up or slow down your brain’s activity
    • Meditation is a great way to get in to either of the states
  • It appears that the best way to get out of useless chatter and incessant thoughts is to get in to deliberate attention mode. One of the best ways to get in to this mode is via meditation. Once you meditate, your brain automatically loses the power to do anything but the immediate task of paying attention to whatever is your object of meditation; your breath, a dim candle in a room, whatever it is.
• Meditation needs to be done with discipline. The benefits of meditation cannot be felt if you skip the practice or keep it irregular or you do it in a way where your day is mostly chaotic but for the time slot when you choose to meditate. We cannot be like monks who meditate for hours together. There are some hacks mentioned in the book where we can increase the times we meditate in our daily lives
  • Focus on one beautiful thing and then get absorbed in it for a few minutes each day
  • Listen to good music
  • Look at every number that you come across during a commute
  • Set up me time for yourself
  • Practice directing your attention to the parts of your body that have become tense
  • One thing at a time
  • Do it like it is the first time
  • Experience the storm of emotions that you feel at various moments of your day
  • Try to make human connection. That is the best way to pay deliberate attention to something that is outside you
  • Practice self healing by listening to your body

The takeaway of the chapter is that we must experience life in totality by paying attention. It brings our default mode thinking to halt and automatically creates a situation where our brain moves away from incessant thinking and chatter

Chapter Eleven: The Engineer in You

This chapter focuses on reminding on the importance of deliberate attention and the way we can engage in Task Positive Network . Often we think that in a meditation session ,we can stop thinking completely and focus on a specific object or a specific activity like breathing. However it becomes obvious that in any meditation session, the mind keeps jumping to many things. It is obvious that this exercise of bringing it back to the original meditative activity is after all what we mean by meditation. It is not that we have to completely devoid of thought. If we are actually to achieve that state, then we have reached so called monk state. In all likelihood, we are always snapping between various thoughts, the drama keeps going on in life. It is this drama and dialogue that we need to keep bringing back to our breath. This awareness of creating the awareness back is meditation. The second important function of our brain is problem solving. The chapter goes in to explaining the BE-DO cycle where one has to be aware of the thoughts, experience the emotions, develop the clarity on what’s triggering such an emotion. It is only after going through this being state, one can start focusing on DOING state. This entails taking deliberate action so that either we take care of the core triggers of the thoughts or we commit to accept the new state of our lives

Chapter Twelve: The Artist in You

I think this chapter is all about understanding the importance of flow in life. Be it any activity that you do, if you are doing for the first time, there will be some sort of struggle. You will have to slog through to understand various aspects of science. It is only when you struggle through and understand the subject, that you will be able to truly apply what you have learned. In the process of learning it is important that you seek out tasks that challenge you, that provide feedback and make you better.

Flow can be defined as a stage when being and doing merge in to one. Usually we are observing, absorbing and trying to be aware of the environment in experiential thinking stage and you are in a focused mode when you are in the problem-solving stage. In the flow state, you are actually in a sweet spot when both get merged in to one

It is also found that the parts of pre-frontal cortex that give rise to unhappiness, distraction and negative talk are all silenced when engaged in flow activities

This is a wonderful way to look at timing your tasks:

“Set a timer, not with the intention of telling you when to stop, but rather how much time needs to pass before you allow yourself to stop. Once the reminder is set, you won’t feel the urge to check the time any more and that is when you will let go and fully commit to the task at hand.”

You are using the time to set your intention of getting in to a flow state.

There are many times I can get in to flow stage when solving a specific problem. The other day I remember entering a flow state for four hours where I was solving a tricky problem at hand. Managed to get in to the details of the problem, peel out step by step where the problem could be coming from and then managed to get stuff working after an intense four hours where i did not bother much to look at time. I knew that I was making progress as the task was progressively getting easier. If I have to recall the components of the task that made me enter in to a flow mode, they are

• the problem that needed to be reasonably difficult
• the solution path takes me a few dead ends, a few near hits, etc
• the problem yields itself incrementally there is a decent amount of effort that goes in to getting the solution to the problem
• there is a reasonable certainty that the solution that has been put in place is right
• there is no scope for distractions Each micro task when resolved takes me one step closer to to the solution

Chapter Thirteen: The Mission is on the right

The chapter talks about the importance of giving. Each one of us might have a mental model of what giving entails. The author presents a nice breakdown of the various ways in which giving needs to be relooked at. The four questions that will help us understand giving are

• Is there something to be gained by giving ?
• Is there a cost to holding on ?
• Is the gift even yours ?
• Is there a difference between us ?

By questioning the above critically, one might realize that giving is probably the best one can do to be happy in life

Quotes

It’s the thought that makes us unhappy

No event in your entire life ever had the power to make you unhappy unless you granted it that power by turning it into a thought and running it through your head over and over to make yourself miserable.

If anything requires attention - the voice in your head stops

Conditioning is the summation of all the beliefs and traumas we develop or encounter throughout a lifetime. Your conditioning affects the way your thoughts flow, the way your decisions are made and, at a deeper level, it affects the way you see the world in the first place.

Incessant thinking is defined as a loop of obsessive rumination in which you replay the same thought again and again and again. It’s called rumination because the act of repetitive thinking is similar to the regurgitation of cud by ‘ruminant’ animals such as goats, sheep and cows. It’s the act of bringing back an old thought to chew on it one more time . . . Yuck.

Incessant thinking has a very particular character. These thoughts are self-generated and directed at ourselves or our loved ones. In the absence of deliberate attention, our thoughts look only within us to find fuel to think only about us. This gives us a clue as to the reasons why we ruminate.

A wandering mind is an unhappy mind

Deliberate attention can be learned.

In that sense, our brains are like a little beast in the making – a Pitbull puppy, if you like. Train them well and they become loyal and wonderful pets that protect you and make you happy. Let them go astray and they may bite you and everyone in your path.

Deliberate attention is the backbone of happiness, and focus is the backbone of achievement and success in life.

Your brain’s left hemisphere and right hemisphere are designed to perform totally different functions. They are each really good at what they do but are terrible at what the other is capable of doing.

Imagine your two brains as two humans. For the sake of argument, let’s call them Lefty and Righty. They would be very different people. Lefty will tend to be analytical; Righty will tend to be intuitive. Lefty will want to talk – in words – about the details, while Righty will describe a more poetic picture of the whole. After a rational analysis of the situation, Lefty will recommend a cautious plan while Righty might take a more adventurous approach and act on impulse. As Lefty will attempt to invoke some discipline using short, logical statements, Righty will paint a vision using imagination and creativity, which will not mean much to Lefty who will just turn around and start to do things while Righty will lean back to just be and stay true to what they feel

I would choose to empower the right (sometimes known as the correct) side of humanity’s brain. I believe that this one strategic move would completely change the state of our planet and fix most of our world’s current problems.

Anything that you practise repeatedly, in bite-size tasks over an extended period of time, improves. It’s just the way our brains operate.

Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections to better perform its tasks.

The day I first read about neuroplasticity was a happy day for me. As a self-development junky, it felt good to know that I can continue to invest in myself, learn, develop and improve, regardless of the age of my brain. I believe that it is my life’s purpose to become the best possible version of myself. I am nowhere near there yet, so I need lots of neuroplasticity to keep moving forward.

The easiest way to picture how neuroplasticity works is to think of early telephone switchboard systems. Till the early 1900s, phone calls were made by picking up the headset to inform an operator who you wanted to speak to, and she would physically patch the wire coming from your telephone to the one connecting to the telephone of the person you were calling.

Your brain behaves in a very similar way. When you are practising a skill or logging a memory that requires two or more parts of your brain to work together, your brain starts with signalling. In the switchboard days, the operator used a patch wire to connect the call. Your brain uses chemicals called neurotransmitters instead.

``Give. It’s the smartest thing you can ever choose to do.''

``Nothing is ever really yours to keep.''

``Things are only ours when we use them.''

``The feeling of freedom from attachment is one of the highest joys.''

``Detach from things. Nothing is ever truly yours.''

``Giving might be one of the most selfish things you can ever do.''

Takeaway

This is one of the best books I’ve read this year. It offers a wealth of valuable advice for anyone looking to better understand—and tame—the little voice in their head. I found many of the exercises insightful and genuinely transformative.

This isn’t a book to rush through. Its full value lies in engaging deeply with the material, especially the practical exercises. I took my time, reading it slowly, chapter by chapter, over the course of a month. That deliberate pace made all the difference.

It’s a book that demands your attention and effort—but it absolutely rewards both. I’ve gained a lot from it, and I’m certain I’ll revisit it again later this year.