Lesslee Dort

I’ve been thinking about working on becoming more at peace in my mind. And yes, thinking about working at peace is different from actually doing it. But here we are. Still, the older I get, the more I understand the patterns that live in my head and where they came from.

I’d long thought a ‘good mother’ was someone who worried about everything – real or imagined – and did so loudly enough for everyone to hear. Quiet suffering did not count. I also believed that if I could gently steer someone’s life toward my idea of happy, things would feel calmer for everyone. I know how that sounds; I’ve reread it. But it wasn’t completely about control. It was the only coping skill I had: if I could manage the world around me, maybe the world inside me would settle.

Over time, I realized this kind of ‘peace’ sometimes comes at the expense of someone else’s autonomy. And it contradicts something I also deeply believe: everyone deserves the freedom to walk their own path, make their own decisions, and learn from their own consequences. Reconciling those two beliefs, trying to help while also letting go, has taken years of unlearning. Some days, I’m still wrestling with the script: A good parent worries loudly. A good parent suffers publicly. Maybe you’ve picked up a script or two of your own.

But inner peace doesn’t live in those old storylines. You’ve probably heard the saying: depression lives in the past, anxiety lives in the future, and peace lives in the present. The encouraging part is that we can retrain our minds. The hard part? No one else can do it for us.

Don’t Believe Everything You Think, by Joseph Nguyen, is a small but potentially powerful book. Its focus is singular: helping us understand the difference between thoughts and thinking. A thought on its own is neutral. It’s the mind’s raw material. But when our minds start twisting, stretching, or manipulating that thought, we end up somewhere very far from neutral.

In other words, it’s rarely the thought that causes the problem. It’s the mental gymnastics we perform afterward.

Nguyen reminds us that our natural state at birth is joy, peace, and love. Everything else – worry, fear, inherited anxieties – is all learned. Conditioned. Habits we have practiced so long, we’ve mistaken them for personality traits.

This idea is evident across a multitude of disciplines, psychology, Buddhism, philosophy, and neuroscience, to name a few. Consider the Buddhist parable of the two arrows. The first arrow that strikes is life’s unavoidable pain. The second arrow, the suffering we add, is optional.

Many of us know exactly where our worries began. And although the past cannot be changed, the conversation around mental health has changed considerably. Access to support is far better today – still imperfect, but better. If you need help, please reach for it. You deserve care; you deserve peace.

Over the years, I’ve collected more resources on worry than I care to admit – books, articles, workshops – but applied them with the consistency of someone who buys home exercise equipment only to let it collect dust in a corner. This book sparked something in me. Many of its principles draw from Buddhist teachings, which provide a wonderful primer on developing qualities like kindness, compassion, and wisdom. The focus is less on belief and more on awareness.

Serenity isn’t about stopping life; it’s about stopping the spiral. Letting our natural peace rise to the surface. Simple in theory, harder in practice. Some days worry can feel like a hamster wheel that cannot be stopped. Maybe you know that wheel, too. That constant churn can affect our health, our relationships, and our sense of self.

After all, it’s not our thoughts that create suffering; it’s that we’re thinking about our thoughts, over and over, until they become something larger than life. The only time we are not at peace is when we are tangled in our minds.

Shakespeare said it beautifully in Hamlet: “Nothing is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” Our interpretation is what shapes our experience.

Do not wait for something outside of you to give you permission to feel how you want to feel. Here are some tips I’ve borrowed and applied in my own life. Perhaps they will help you start your journey:

Pause and label the thought. It breaks the spell.

Ask, “Is this happening now?” If the answer is no, return to the present.

Replace spiraling “What ifs” with grounding “What is true right now?”

Physically reset: slow exhale, relax your jaw, drop your shoulders. Worry hates a relaxed host.