Choiceless Awareness

🧶 Tags:: #literature_Notes
🗃 Resources:: The Almanack of Naval Ravikant (2020)
2026-06-10

You could also do transcendental meditation, which is where you're using repetitive chanting to create a white noise in your head to bury your thoughts. Or, you can just very keenly and very alertly be aware of your thoughts as they happen. As you watch your thoughts, you realize how many of them are fear-based. The moment you recognize a fear, without even trying it goes away. After a while, your mind quiets.

The one I found works best for me is called Choiceless Awareness, or Nonjudgmental Awareness. As you're going about your daily business (hopefully, there's some nature) and you're not talking to anybody else, you practice learning to accept the moment you're in without making judgments. You don't think, "Oh, there's a homeless guy over there, better cross the street" or look at someone running by and say, "He's out of shape, and I'm in better shape than him."

What I find is 90 percent of thoughts I have are fear-based. The other 10 percent may be desire-based. You don't make any decisions. You don't judge anything. You just accept everything. If I do that for ten or fifteen minutes while walking around, I end up in a very peaceful, grateful state.

If you stop talking to yourself for even ten minutes, if you stop obsessing over your own story, you'll realize we are really far up Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and life is pretty good.