101 Essays that will change the way you think – Brianna Wiest

Introduction

In his book Sapiens, Dr. Yuval Noah Harari explains that at one point, there
were more than just Homo sapiens roaming the Earth

In fact, there were
likely as many as six different types of humans in existence: Homo sapiens,
Homo neanderthalensis, Homo soloensis, Homo erectus, etc.
There’s a reason Homo sapiens still exist today and the others didn’t
continue to evolve: a prefrontal cortex, which we can infer from skeletal
structures. Essentially, we had the ability to think more complexly, thus
were able to organize, cultivate, teach, practice, habituate and pass down a
world suited for our survival. Because of our capacity to imagine, we were
able to build Earth as it is today out of virtually nothing.
In a sense, the notion that thoughts create reality is more than just a nice
idea; it’s also a fact of evolution. It was because of language and thought
that we could create a world within our minds, and ultimately, it is because
of language and thought that we have evolved into the society we have
today—for better and for worse.
Almost every great master, artist, teacher, innovator, inventor, and
generally happy person could attribute some similar understanding to their
success. Many of the world’s ‘best’ people understood that to change their
lives, they had to change their minds.
These are the same people who have communicated to us some of the
longest-standing conventional wisdom: that to believe is to become, that the
mind is to be mastered, that the obstacle is the way

Often, our most intense
discomfort is what precedes and necessitates thinking in a way we have
never conceived of before. That new awareness creates possibilities that
would never exist had we not been forced to learn something new. Why did
our ancestors develop agriculture, society, medicine, and the like? To
survive. The elements of our world were once just solutions to fears.
In a more cerebral context, if you consciously learn to regard the
“problems” in your life as openings for you to adopt a greater understanding
and then develop a better way of living, you will step out of the labyrinth of
suffering and learn what it means to thrive.