Don’t Believe Everything You Think – and Other Revolutionary Acts of Inclusion
- Georgina Brown (hershe)
- Jul 12
- 3 min read
A BARDO Brain-Dance Through Joseph Nguyen’s Bestseller
Let’s start with a bold truth bomb:
Most of your thoughts aren’t yours.
They’re inherited. Absorbed. Recycled. Culture-drenched, fear-filtered, and dressed up as logic.
Joseph Nguyen’s Don’t Believe Everything You Think isn’t a typical self-help book. It’s a neon-lit EXIT sign from the mental hamster wheel, inviting us to stop trying to think our way out of overthinking, and instead unthink our way back to clarity.
Yes, really.
And it has everything to do with inclusion.
The Neuroscience Bit: Thoughts ≠ Truth
Inclusion starts in the brain. But here’s the kicker:
Our brains are lazy little pattern-loving machines. They create shortcuts (hello, bias), make predictions (hello, stereotype), and recycle emotions as beliefs (hello, "I’m not good enough").
Nguyen’s central premise, that our suffering comes not from circumstances, but from believing our thoughts about them, aligns beautifully with what neuroscience has shown for decades:
“Neurons that fire together, wire together.” – Hebb
So, if we keep thinking exclusionary thoughts (“She’s too quiet to lead,” “They’re too different to understand,” “I’m not smart enough to speak up”), we literally reinforce those thought-pathways.
They become habits.
Then systems.
Then cultures.
What Joseph Nguyen Offers (That Most EDI Frameworks Don’t)
Instead of handing us new thoughts to think (“Just be inclusive!”), Nguyen invites us to watch the mind without attaching to it.
It’s mindfulness on a deep-clean setting.
This is radical in the world of diversity and inclusion, where the instinct is often to fix others’ behaviour with new rules or new data or a new policy.
But as BARDO’s work in NIMM (the Neuro-Inclusive Maturity Model) has shown:
Change that sticks doesn’t start with a EDI policy. It starts with interrupting unconscious mental habits.
Nguyen calls this “returning to your natural state”—a place beyond judgement, beyond analysis, and definitely beyond fear-based compliance training.
Bias, Trust & Identity: The Mind’s Favourite Soap Operas
When your thoughts are running unchecked, they’ll tell you stories like:
“They looked at me funny, must be judging me.”
“We’ve always done it this way.”
“This new hire isn’t a ‘culture fit’.”
Nguyen teaches us that these are interpretations, not truths.
Just electrochemical theatre.
Neuroscience agrees: dopamine fuels confirmation bias, cortisol fuels defensiveness, and serotonin scarcity creates imposter syndrome. What we feel becomes what we think, and what we think becomes how we act.
So what happens when we question the source of those thoughts? When we say:
“Maybe this isn’t my voice. Maybe it’s culture. Or trauma. Or fear.”
We create space. And space, dear reader, is the birthplace of inclusion.
How NIMM Echoes Nguyen
At BARDO, the Neuro-Inclusive Maturity Model (NIMM) was never about box-ticking. It was about creating neural plasticity in culture, giving teams the tools to notice their own wiring and gently, joyfully, rewire.
Nguyen’s book beautifully complements this. He gives us permission to:
Disengage from inherited scripts.
Watch the mind without identifying with it.
Choose new patterns that align with love, not fear.
Inclusion isn’t just inviting others in, it’s about unhooking yourself from the stories that kept them out in the first place. Read that again!
Favourite Quotes That Hit Like a Hug
“Your thoughts are not reality. They’re only reality if you believe them.”
“The truth is quiet. The mind is loud.”
“You don’t have to find peace. You only have to stop believing the thoughts that disturb it.”
If every leader read these lines before their next hiring decision, we’d see workplaces transform.
Reflection Questions (Because Nguyen Would Want You To)
What thoughts about inclusion, difference, or leadership do you keep believing on autopilot?
Whose voice is that in your head? Is it yours? Or culture’s?
What belief would you let go of, if you truly trusted your natural clarity?
In Summary
Don’t Believe Everything You Think is a quiet revolution.
It’s a call to observe, unhook, and rewire, with compassion and clarity.
At BARDO, we’re all in on that.
Because when you think differently, you lead differently. And that’s where inclusion begins.
Want to go deeper? Join the Inclusive Thinking: The Neuroscience of Bias, Trust & Influence course or explore how NIMM can rewire your culture, not just your to-do list.
And remember:
You’re not your thoughts.
You’re the one watching.
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