How to Stop Overthinking And Procrastination

 Why We Overthink And Procrastinate 

There are things you want to do in your lives, and you look around you see other people doing them, and your brain tells the story that it must be different for them, that they don't have the same resistance that we have. We tell ourselves that they must have less self-doubt, they must have more confidence. They must not get imposter syndrome, they must not have shame or fear. And all of that is nonsense because they are humans, and because they have human brains.

And so, for sure they have all the protests, all the objections and all the negative emotion that your brain offers you. And when we tell ourselves that it's different for them, different for somebody else, then it's really easy to give our brain and the emotions that it produces, like all the credit for us not getting what we want out of our lives. We're like, it's different for me, and we give our brain all the credit, and then we don't get the experiences we want. We become powerless in our own lives.

So our brains protest, and my brain is telling us I can't do it, our brains offer lots of negative emotions and that is totally normal, and we can still move forward. The difference is being scared understanding where it's coming from and then choosing what you want anyway.

How to Start Stopping The Overthinking And Procrastination 

So, at this milestone of 150 episodes, I think it's just a really fun opportunity to look at how we show up in our lives consistently enough to create the things we want. How do we go from talking about doing something to actually doing it from like wishing we had a podcast metaphorically to being 150 episodes in? How do we become a person that we can count on? Just today, I was on the treadmill it was, like, painful. It was a struggle my brain, and my body were protesting, and I just, like, wanted so badly to give in, to slow down, to give up, to say, like, today's is not my day. Like, you know, we'll try it again another day, it doesn't really matter, and my brain kept telling me, listen, this event that you're training for is more than six-months away. You have plenty of time today, doesn't really matter.

How do we stop this overthinking and tendency to procrastinate? 

I think, number one, the very first thing you have to understand is you really have to be able to separate yourself from your brain. What is happening when we stop, and when we quit? We are really confused about who is making that choice. It sort of feels like we're making the choice, it sort of feels like we're giving up when it's always our brain trying to talk us into it. And you have to be more and more aware of the point of choice. You have to know that you have more than one option. And when you aren't used to separating yourself, and what you want from your brain, when you don't have the awareness that those are two separate things, it's hard to see the second option. All we see is the quit option. All we see is the stop option.

But when you really start to get awareness that, there is me, and then there is my brain. And we are two separate entities, then you know that there is always another option regardless of what your brain is offering you. Regardless of the negative emotion involved, regardless of like all the cajoling and all the talking you into stopping, you know, there is another option. This was actually one of those things these were the main pain points for me before I found coaching. Like, I really could not count on myself, like, in any area of my life. Everything I said I was going to do, like I never did, right? And that I didn't know how to change that, I didn't know why I would, like, want things, and I would like, really desire things in my life and, like, declare that I was going to get them and then not, and then not show up. I didn't know why that kept happening. And I learned that it was because of my brain, I wasn't taking action consistently in my life because of what I was thinking. There was nothing wrong with me. I wasn't fundamentally, irrevocably broken, right? Like, very simply, I just wasn't taking action because I was thinking thoughts that didn't produce action, that produced giving up, that produced fear, enough fear to like have me not even try thoughts that caused me to stop whenever it got hard coaching. Did it ever give me new choices? All it did was reveal my real choices, the choices that were always there and that I was never taking.

How To Stop Overthinking And Procrastination, Step Two 

Okay, the second thing that I think you need to be able to count on yourself is courage. And courage for me means a willingness to feel bad. An awareness that you know, my brain is trying to stop me, it's going to produce negative emotion, and the courage to move forward anyway. After I got certified as a life coach, I had so much fear and insecurity about starting my business and starting to coach and and like my brain just offered me so many reasons to stop. And one of the very first things I did was hire a coach after I finished certification, because there were things that I wanted. I wanted to be able to create a business. I wanted to be able to help clients. I wanted to have this life in which I was a coach and I, you know, offered relief and also created a business for myself.

And I knew how much courage that would take, I knew what I was up against. I knew my brain was going to protest and that it was going to just it was going to tell me, like, that I should give up and that I shouldn't do it. And I knew that I was going to have to be able to choose courage anyway, that when my brain offered me all that inadequacy and all that self-doubt, I would have to be willing to move forward anyway. I think a lot of us think that, you know, in order to get what we want, in order to be able to count on herself, I have to have a lot less negative emotion. I have to be less scared and I have to have less self-doubt. I need to be more confident. We do. We really associate like I will be able to count on myself when I have less resistance to this, I will be able to count on myself when it's not so hard, I will be able to count on myself when I don't have so much negative emotion. And I just find that, you know, waiting for that negative emotion to go away, just like it hasn't happened to me yet.

Why Does Stoping Overthinking And Procrastination Matter?

So, the last thing that I want to talk about before I sign off here is just why any of this matters? Why does it matter if you can count on yourself? Why does it matter if you can create the things that you want in your life and consistently show up for yourself? And like I said at the beginning, like, it's the relationship with yourself that matters so much. And for each one of us, I'm sure you've had the experience in your life where you notice how you always show up for other people, when other people are counting on you, when other people ask you to do things, when other people need you to do. Things like you show up and do them even when it's hard and even when you don't want to, right? And you've probably had the experience where you notice, like, yeah, I show up for other people, but I don't show up for myself. And we kind of get down on ourselves because of that. And we're kind of like, why do I care what other people think? And then like when it's my goal, and when it's, you know, when it's showing up for me, I never do it.

And I just want you to know that that is biology, okay? Like you are programmed biologically to care way more what the group thinks, what other people think. At one point, if you got kicked out of the tribe would be very dangerous, right? Like there's way more at stake when other people disapprove of you. At least your brain believes that biologically it's not actually true anymore, right? But your brain believes it's way more dangerous, there's way more at stake. It's way more life and death to worry about what other people think than what we personally think. Now, of course, that's not true, but that's what your brain is programmed to believe. And so, the very fact that you care more about what other people think is totally normal, right? It's biologic and it's not a problem. But I just want to offer you that your relationship with yourself is one of the sweetest, most desirable things that you can work towards and that you can have.