The brain does not want you to be happy. It wants you to survive. This is the fundamental distinction Stefano repeats across his letters: every time you hear the internal voice saying "you are not ready," "it is too risky," "wait a little longer," you are listening to an organ programmed for survival, not for fulfillment. The brain lies when it tells you that staying still is the safe choice, because the real threat is to stop growing.
What Stefano says about when the brain lies
From Letter 01 — Here we go again
My mother would say: "stop playing grown-up games." It was her way of saying don't hurt yourself. The world is like this. Accept it.
These letters are born for those who still believe. For those who despite everything are sure it's possible. For all those who keep searching, door after door.
From Letter 02 — Choosing who to be
Because the habits you inherited are not you. The beliefs you accepted without thinking are not yours. Every "that's just who I am" deserves to be questioned.
If you strip away everything — the habits you didn't choose, the beliefs you accepted wholesale, the tension of being who you think you should be — and focus your energy on what you truly want, you become energy. And where to channel it is yours alone to decide.
From Letter 03 — The price no one wants to pay
The brain lies. The brain wants to survive, not grow.
The brain is programmed to always choose the second. To push away pain. To avoid immediate conflict. To survive, not to grow.
From Letter 04 — Week 4 of 54 — Happiness is a habit
I've always been afraid of being alone. My greatest strength is independence, but it implies my greatest weakness: being alone.
When you're alone, memories resurface. That person. That missed opportunity. That gesture you didn't make. And your brain tells you that you should be sad.
From Letter 05 — Week 5 of 54 — The real cancer
"I don't believe in myself, so I always have to prove things to others to make them true."
And that's exactly how you survive as a child. You look at who knows and you learn. You look at who has and you understand that infinite possibilities exist. Without comparison, no learning. No culture. No progress. Just absorbing.
From Letter 06 — Week 6 of 54 — Monkey mind
October 24, 2021 — "My greatest strength is independence, but it implies my greatest weakness: being alone."
Because monkey mind plays only one game. Chaos. The more noise it produces, the less time you have to ask yourself why. It's its perfect trick. It keeps you busy suffocating it, so you never go to see where it comes from.
From Letter 07 — Week 7 of 54 — The art of defining your boundaries
┌────────────────────────────────────────┬───────────────────────────────┐ │ Without perimeter │ With perimeter │ ├────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤ │ Everything is negotiable │ Some things are not │ ├────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤ │ Open to everyone │ Close to few │ ├────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤ │ Reactive │ Chosen │ ├────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤ │ Always available │ Available when I've decided │ ├────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤ │ I confuse curiosity with laziness │ Curious within an identity │ ├────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤ �� I feel everywhere │ I know where I am │ ├────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤ │ I grow noise │ I grow weight │ └────────────────────────────────────────┴───────────────────────────────┘
There's no absolutely right column. But for those who grow up in a life of too many possibilities, too many flights, too many people, too many tables, the right column is a form of survival.
From Letter 08 — Week 8 of 54 — Those who don't come down from the mountain
And in those ten minutes something happened to me that hadn't happened in a while: I realized my brain had nothing to do.
And this thing, seen from someone like me, is almost more alien than a language I don't understand.
From Letter 09 — Week 8 of 54 — Those Who Don't Come Down from the Mountain
And in those ten minutes something happened to me that hadn't happened in a while: I noticed that my brain had nothing to do.
And this thing, seen by someone like me, is almost more alien than a language I don't understand.
From Letter 10 — Week 9 of 54 — The music we keep inside
Those children too, in some way, are little Williams. Maybe without a written plan, but with direction anyway: in the village, everyone knows what they'll do when they grow up, because everyone does it, because their father does it, because their mother does it, because it's in the air.
From Letter 11 — Week 10 of 54 — The Man on the Roof
The more I grow, the more I start to suspect something else.
From Letter 12 — Week 11 of 54 — The traffic light
Exactly where I wanted to get twenty seconds earlier — except I got there later, and I got there because he told me to. Not me.
That's the thing that drove me crazy. Not the traffic light. The fact that I have the brain to understand by myself what's right for me — I have it, it works, I know how to do the analysis — and then I outsource to the first stranger who passes the job of giving me the green light. As if my decision, alone, wasn't worth enough. As if I always needed someone else's signature at the bottom of the page to say "ok, you can go."
From Letter 13 — Week 12 of 54 — Head on the Pillow
Except this time I did something different. I left the phone alone and opened the Kindle. I was reading a book — one of those motivational books, personal growth, self-help, call it whatever you want.
(I know what you're thinking, because I used to think the same thing: nonsense. Guys telling you to believe in yourself and that you'll get rich. You half-read them and half feel ashamed for reading them.)
From Letter 14 — Week 13 of 54 — The Punishment
There's a lie they tell you as a child, with a smile, convinced they're protecting you.
I wrote it one evening in Dublin, at dinner, alone, after closing an incredible month that ten years earlier I would have thought impossible: