Eric-Jorgenson The-Almanack-of-Naval-Ravikant indd

Was there a moment you realized you could control how you 
interpreted things? I think one problem people have is not 
recognizing they can control how they interpret and respond 
to a situation.
I think everyone knows it’s possible. There’s a great Osho lec-
ture, titled “The Attraction for Drugs Is Spiritual.” He talks 
about why do people do drugs (everything from alcohol to psy-
chedelics to cannabis). They’re doing it to control their mental 
state. They’re doing it to control how they react. Some people 
drink because it helps them not care as much, or they’re pot-
heads because they can zone out, or they do psychedelics to 
feel very present or connected to nature. The attraction of 
drugs is spiritual.
All of society does this to some extent. People chasing thrills 
in action sports or flow states or orgasms—any of these states 
people strive for are people trying to get out of their own heads. 
They’re trying to get away from the voice in their heads—the 
overdeveloped sense of self.
At the very least, I do not want my sense of self to continue to 
develop and strengthen as I get older. I want it to be weaker 
and more muted so I can be more in present everyday reality, 
accept nature and the world for what it is, and appreciate it 
very much as a child would. [4]
The first thing to realize is you can observe your mental state. 
Meditation doesn’t mean you’re suddenly going to gain the 

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superpower to control your internal state. The advantage of 
meditation is recognizing just how out of control your mind 
is. It is like a monkey flinging feces, running around the room, 
making trouble, shouting, and breaking things. It’s completely 
uncontrollable. It’s an out-of-control madperson.
You have to see this mad creature in operation before you feel a 
certain distaste toward it and start separating yourself from it. 
In that separation is liberation. You realize, “Oh, I don’t want to 
be that person. Why am I so out of control?” Awareness alone 
calms you down. [4]
Insight meditation lets you run your brain in debug mode until 
you realize you’re just a subroutine in a larger program.
I try to keep an eye on my internal monologue. It doesn’t always 
work. In the computer programming sense, I try to run my 
brain in “debugging mode” as much as possible. When I’m 
talking to someone, or when I’m engaged in a group activity, 
it’s almost impossible because your brain has too many things 
to handle. If I’m by myself, like just this morning, I’m brushing 
my teeth and I start thinking forward to a podcast. I started 
going through this little fantasy where I imagined Shane asking 
me a bunch of questions and I was fantasy- answering them. 
Then, I caught myself. I put my brain in debug mode and just 
watched every little instruction go by.
I said, “Why am I fantasy-future planning? Why can’t I just 
stand here and brush my teeth?” It’s the awareness my brain 
was running off in the future and planning some fantasy sce-
nario out of ego. I was like, “Well, do I really care if I embarrass 

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myself? Who cares? I’m going to die anyway. This is all going to 
go to zero, and I won’t remember anything, so this is pointless.”
Then, I shut down, and I went back to brushing my teeth. I 
was noticing how good the toothbrush was and how good it 
felt. Then the next moment, I’m off to thinking something else. 
I have to look at my brain again and say, “Do I really need to 
solve this problem right now?”
Ninety-five percent of what my brain runs off and tries to do, 
I don’t need to tackle in that exact moment. If the brain is like 
a muscle, I’ll be better off resting it, being at peace. When a