It’s only been a month of 2026 and already the world feels heavy. In trying times like these, a lot of us will feel the great pull of withdrawing from the world, choosing to stay in the comforts of our own thoughts and headspace.
But sometimes this can grow into something unhealthy when we begin to dwell and overthink. Especially at the start of a new year, when new years’ resolutions are all over social media and dominate discussions between friends, family and colleagues.
The usual adage is this: get out of your head. Be more present. Touch grass.
While we definitely need to do more of this, it’s also important that “being present” doesn’t turn into escaping the necessary work of tending to our own headspace. We can all go out and socialise with others, take a walk, hike, exercise. But at the end of the day, we return to ourselves and our thoughts, so let’s make sure it’s a place and source of calm.
When Your Mind Becomes Another Self-Improvement Project
The new year has a way of turning everything into a project, including your own thoughts. I get sucked into this as well, especially as so many companies look to make money off of our need to be better this year. Buy this journal, it’ll make you 10x more productive! Buy this set of dumbbells, you’ll be able to exercise in the comfort of your own home! Buy this online course, you’ll be a millionaire in no time if you follow our 14-step process!
Think better, be more positive, control your mindset, develop a growth mindset, stop spiralling, stop ruminating, and the list goes on.
As we keep bringing up on the Good Enough series, the culture of optimisation runs rampant in today’s world, even encroaching on our mental lives, as if peace will only arrive once we’ve engineered the perfect headspace.
But we have to remember that we’re not devices. Our minds aren’t productivity apps whose sole purpose is to make us into well-oiled machines. Our minds are living, shifting, very much human spaces that are at times calm, occasionally loud, and quite often messy.
We need to learn how to be okay with that.
One Book to Sit With Your Mind Differently
If you want a gentler relationship with your thoughts this year, start with Don’t Believe Everything You Think: Why Your Thinking Is the Beginning & End of Suffering by Joseph Nguyen.
The central message is disarmingly direct: much of our stress and suffering doesn’t come from life itself, but from the thoughts we automatically believe about life. This is especially meaningful for overthinkers because in its brevity and accessibility, it softens the struggle with coming across negative thoughts.
One chapter, “How Do We Stop Thinking?” offers a useful reminder, which is that we are not the same thing as our thoughts. It includes a poem that I think captures this quite well:
thoughts are transient
they come and go
but You always stay
if you want to know who you are
look beyond your thoughts
to experience your true nature
Nguyen doesn’t turn the new year into a reinvention project. He doesn’t ask you to conquer your mind. Rather, he invites you to notice your thoughts with a little more space and a little less urgency to “fix” them. This shift alone can make your headspace feel more inhabitable.
The book is short and accessible. If you do decide to read it, don’t feel pressured to read everything in one go or even from beginning to end. It’s set up as if meant to be picked up during times of need where a page or two is enough to reset your headspace.
Let Your Mind Be Good Enough
Consider this an invitation to make peace with having a human mind. One that wanders, worries, and doesn’t always cooperate with your own plans.
If all you do this year is to become slightly less entangled with your thoughts, that would already be good enough. You don’t have to escape your mind to live well. It’s enough to stop believing everything you think is the truth.
Rinni Amran
Hi! I’m a cultural writer-researcher with over 10 years’ experience in academia. From the warmth of Brunei to the mindfulness of the Nordics, I tell stories that help us reconnect beyond screens and beyond the scroll.
