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Overthinking as Work · Fierce Encouragement

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hey there, my name is Mark Walker, and this is my podcast called Fierce Encouragement.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for tuning in.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: I help people build mental strength so that they feel a sense of flourishing in their work and in their life.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Burnout, quiet quitting, imposter syndrome.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: I've suffered from these a lot in my career and in my life, and they're all symptoms of a mind that lacks focus on its true meaning or deeper purpose.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: So here we are.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: We have a meaning crisis on the personal level, and it's hard to communicate with people.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard to connect with people.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I am simply here to offer what I've learned from my own explorations and meditation in music as a life coach and a life transformational coach the past three plus years.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about this.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: Overthinking.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: When I say the words overthinking, what does that bring up in your mind?
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: For me, it brings up the fact, and quick personal aside, doing this podcast has been difficult the past few days.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: Showing up and recording, trusting that it'll come across okay, not wanting to offend people, but then just having that inner sense of anxiety and fear, just wanting to literally go turn this off and go down to the couch and forget about this, to give up, to go uh have comfort, right?
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: To run away from it.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: So to me, overthinking has that procrastination feel, but maybe a more in-depth look at it if I look back past the past few days.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: But one of the extreme virtues I'll go to, like in learning, I love I have 10 books going at all times.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: I have four or five emails that I'm reading, I have threads I follow.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to do 10 or 12 things in my life.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: And the difficulty for me is overthinking and having too many things to do.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: Non-focused work.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm getting better at that, but overthinking to me means more planning, more things that are unattached to the outcomes that we want to have.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: So, for instance, if the outcome is to cook a good, tasty meal for friends, we can overthink by reading another recipe, looking at other people's Instagram meals or Thanksgiving meals or amazing feasts.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: We can distract ourselves with these stories of how our mother was a better cook or our father was a not as good a cook.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: We start to get pulled into these threads in our heads.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: We start to manufacture this discontent or this excitement.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: We get caught up in thinking and planning and ingesting more information and learning that we're honestly just pulling ourselves away in a really subtle but profound way from those things that we want.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe instead of a meal and a recipe, we can overthink our relationships, can mistreat them and not remember the gravitas or the importance of people's presence in our lives.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: And it's the holiday season here in the U.S.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: at the moment, it's Thanksgiving time, and I'm reminded of my relationship with my father.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: He passed away just under two years ago, but I miss him.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: We had great Thanksgivings.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: It was always filled with cheer and connecting and good food and having a big family around and connecting with family and sitting around the table and playing cards and having a good time, lots of laughter, lots of relaxing, lots of talking and reconnecting.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: We can overthink our relationships by not thinking about them at all.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: And we can get really dismissive of those things if we stop and pause that are deeper.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe this is where I can step back and talk about the next point I wrote down here: creating space.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: So when we overthink, it's a symptom of delaying or fearing what step we want to take next.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I guess in my mind, before that or upstream from that, is that procrastination.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: And upstream from procrastination, I think about what is there?
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: What is damning the river?
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: What did we put in the river that averts its flow to whatever degree?
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: What are we procrastinating on?
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: And that thing we throw in the river or the item that is holding us back is often a time or a piece of us that needs to be recognized.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's a part of us that can be nurtured and listened to.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: It might be a younger part of us that had missed out on something or senses some lack.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: It might just be that feeling in our hearts or in our bodies when we sit quietly, literally sit quietly for three minutes and perhaps just put all the podcasts.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, turn this off.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: But listen to this first.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: Put our stuff down.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: We are continually looking outward with our fingers and our eyes and our need to touch and attach and have and consume that we can hardly just ever stop and rest and be.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: So the second point I wrote here was just space.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: Can we create space for ourselves when we start to overthink?
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: Can we have one of those thoughts say, hey, what's going on inside here?
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: By in here I mean in your head.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: If we can't stop and watch the content and quality of our thoughts as it flows through our consciousness, then what good is our life if we cannot stop and consider the implications of our thoughts and how we show up for people and how we connect to people and how we can treat ourselves with more kindness and more inner encouragement in a loving, fierce way.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: So we create space for those things, those payoffs that we're getting from procrastination and delay and overthinking.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: These are all on one side of the field, and they all are parts of us.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: They are just a part of us that needs some space to breathe and tell us what they want or what they need.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: And more than likely we'll have to work with them multiple times over multiple years.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: But space to me, as a coach and as a client of myself, my own first client, and I tell you, being my own coach, it means you have to wake up every day and work with that, what's coming up.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes it's really tough.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: But one of an amazing teacher, Michael Singer, look him up.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, one of the things I remember collecting from his book is just that this idea of working with what is coming up in your life now.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: This idea of seeing what's the most painful thing for me today?
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: What am I pushing back or pushing away?
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: And why do I want to overindulge in these things?
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's maybe it maybe it is too much inputs, but maybe it's too much shopping, maybe it's too much alcohol, maybe it's too much of a certain type of emotional quality that you carry throughout your day, like judgment or gossip.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: Literally judge people moment to moment, you know, and again to look into my mind for moments.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a terrible driver from an anger standpoint because I if people cut in front of me, my initial reaction is to like go right after their heart, to like say, what the is wrong with this person?
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: They did that to me.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know if you see that in yourself, but that's the place where we work.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: That is where the rubber hits the road when we're watching our inner reactions.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I think if we start to play on that platform and watch our inner emotional reactions and challenge what those are and give them space.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: Again, give them space.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: What is what am I needing here?
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: So, in the case of me getting cut off, maybe that's my safety.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: There's a part of me that feels threatened and scared when you're going 70 miles an hour and somebody kind of cuts you off.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's a pretty big deal.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's a my literal beingness is being threatened.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so maybe it's just like somebody coming at me, I would, you know, have this emotional visceral reaction.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: So space is a big one.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: Our emotional reactions aren't an ingrained part of us unless we let them be that way.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: So when we start working in those moment-to-moment situations, and even if we can interrupt our thinking one or two times more today than we did yesterday, we can see how we might be judgmental or we might be pointing that at ourselves, being judgmental with ourselves, where we can stand back and say, it's okay, let me create space for myself here.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: But if we were to look at it more productively and we wanted to be past that, like, okay, how do I, how can I use this poison as medicine?
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: How can I alchemize this into something that is positive for me in the long run?
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: And here's one tool from a productivity standpoint, and this is what I've been using just to stand here and speak, is to say to myself, all right, I'm gonna treat you like a robot.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a great tool from a great coach, Stephen Chandler, another amazing author.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: But he talks about just giving yourself an instruction like a robot.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to be more productive, just unattach the emotion.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: Give yourself that space, see what needs to be said from yourself to yourself, bring it to your awareness, create that space, that meditation, that insight time, that me time.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: And again, three minutes a day will fundamentally change your life.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: Go check out my three-minute mindset that's at markwalkercoach.com.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: Grab that.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's got a guided meditation on there.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: But three minutes can fundamentally change that relationship with yourself.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so when clients come to me and say they have that bad self-talk, it's imperative that we get good at flipping that switch of seeing when we're off and then remembering to take one mindful breath.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: At the least, see when we start to rage on the road.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: And it was, it was, I tell you, man, it was the Eden, uh, the Kennedy in Chicago at rush hour on a Friday.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: You tell me you hold it together.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: But what an opportunity to practice, right?
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: Right now, wherever you're at, if you're listening to this on the road, again, taking that time for yourself and realizing that you are reacting and not being impatient with ourselves in that quick hit, because within that we start to judge ourselves.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: And now, this is a nuanced point for some people and clients and conversations I've had over the last three years.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: What I've noticed is our first reaction is often the negative reaction.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not talking about the big long drawn-out dialogue that we paint for ourselves after thinking about how we were offended last year or how some conversation tore us down.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: And again, I got those.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: I got I got a couple I play in my head.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: But when we get like emotionally charged within that conversation and take it personally, like it's some permanent part of ourselves and that it's unchangeable, in that like little reaction, that's actually a very creative place to play and to learn.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: So when we have that emotional reaction, we give ourselves an instruction like a robot, we tell ourselves to go do it, we find ourselves off protocol as a robot, and we do our best to move right back towards it.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: And we time ourselves, perhaps, or put a time limit on it so we're not oscillating.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: We take that half hour of deep work, we take that 60 minutes of deep work, and we come back to it when we need to.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: But the real idea is to give ourselves that space and to ultimately to have that fierce encouragement for ourselves.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: How else is a life better spent than fiercely encouraging ourselves, pumping ourselves up over time and doing that one or two percent more today?
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: Let go of the perfectionist that needs to overplan, let go of the procrastinating, learning, more research, and give yourself a deadline, give yourself some time limits, push yourself past the fear, which is the hardest thing, the fear and doubt.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: You can kind of get on a wave of momentum of getting things done and just letting it fly.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: So this has been wonderful.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh thank you for sharing your time with me.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: I hope this was helpful.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: And just to close out, I am a coach who helps people build up their mental strength so you can feel more of a sense of flourishing and presence in your life, in your love, your work, and your job.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: And honestly, just in those micro moments I was talking about, how can you work in that area?
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: If you need help with that, I focus a lot on inner meditation and mindset, journaling, and helping people kind of manage their emotions and also helping people go through life challenges.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: So get in touch with me.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'm at mark at markwalkercoach.com.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: Please let me know if I can help you.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: And again, if you're interested, I do have a free three-minute mindset meditation series that I'll be sending out via my email.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: So please let me know how I can help you.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: And feel free to take some time and write back.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: And thank you to those that did this past week helping me to kind of focus in on the topic.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: Let me know how this lands with you.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'm really curious what my listeners' experiences are with overthinking, but with encouragement and self-encouragement and that self-image.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: Send an email to mark at markwalkercoach.com.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you have a great day wherever you're at, and thanks once again for listening.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: Take care now.