Overthinking is not good for you! I imagine you already know this. When your mind is cluttered and ramped up, you suffer. Overthinking leads to stress. Do a quick google search and you can find study after study showing the damage that overthinking can cause.
Harvard psychologists believe that humans spend about 47% of waking hours lost in thought and this tendency leads to reduced happiness. They conclude this:
"A human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind." Killingsworth and Gilbert
Today, I want to share with how ramped up thinking works and what you can do instead that will help you settle your mind so that you can experience more ease, flow, and clarity.
Let’s look at the Thought Cycle starting with this thought: “Business is down this month. I’m failing!”
Here is the thought: “Business is down this month. We are failing.”
Can you see how the stressful thought that “we are failing” leads to the stressful feelings, then to the stressful behaviors, then to the stressful results, and then it REINFORCES the original stressful thought that “We are failing”?
Many people attempt to change the undesired outcome by intervening at the level of result, behavior, or feeling, but the most effective intervention happens at the LEVEL OF THOUGHT.
Let’s change that stressful thought just a bit. Instead of the story “We are failing” let’s see what could happen if we get CURIOUS about business being down.
Getting curious instead of buying into the story that you are failing can change everything. Now you are in the flow! Now you are flexible, able to pivot when needed, able to tweak, able to work well with your team, and much more.
The original thought of curiosity leads to feelings that open you and give you more flexibility, which leads to behaviors that are helpful and lead to better results. These better results lead to NEW, FRESH THOUGHT. Now you have much more clarity, ease, and flow.
You see, negative thought ultimately reinforces negative thought leaving you too narrowly focused, too weighed down. It’s like you’ve put blinders on yourself.
Positive, or even neutral, thought, on the other hand, reinforces positive emotions, behaviors, results, and NEW fresh thought! You are able to tap into your creativity, flow, resilience, resourcefulness, and much more. You can pivot if need be. You can ride the wave if need be. You are able to find your way no matter how difficult the situation looks.
In the original Thought Cycle diagram, the fact is that business is down. Anyone in business knows that the world of business is a roller coaster ride. The problem in this situation is not that business is down. The problem is the story you attach to business being down. Deciding in that moment that you are failing actually impairs your ability to get creative and curious about what may be going on.
If the thought occurs to you that you are failing, you don’t have to take it so seriously. You don’t have to take it so personally. You could let it move through you.
You could get curious instead and see where that curiosity takes you. This will serve you. This will bring you back to clarity more easily and you’ll find your way to more flow, flexibility, and ease as you deal with a down month.
Riffing on Realness episode 5 is live here on my site and will be live on all the major podcast platforms tomorrow. In this episode, entitled Creativity: The Hidden Cost of Dogma & Rigidity, Juliet and I take a deep dive into how dogma and rigid thinking can hinder creativity and flow. Take a listen!
I am Carla Royal, a mindset and performance coach working with high achieving, high-performance entrepreneurs and business owners who are quietly dealing with hidden anxiety and stress. I help my clients find more head space, be less guarded, value mistakes, sleep better, find more meaning, be less judgmental, be more confident, and lead more effectively. If you’d like to learn more, set up a FREE Clarity Call where we will explore what’s going on for you and how I can help.