Overthinking is overrated. It seems to have become your favourite pastime as you do it all the time without even realising. It has become such habit and part of being busy. You aren’t giving your mind a rest. It is thinking 24/7, because it has become impossible to switch it off. It is time to give yourself permission to disconnect from those thoughts and keep them at arm’s length.

overthinking

It is that simple. Yet, it takes discipline and practice to tame your wild mind and only allow the ones you want in. When you are in business there is always something to do, somewhere to be, a problem to be solved, or meetings to attend. There will always be some reason or other as to why you can’t find the time to sit still to quieten your mind. Or rather you don’t give yourself the time to sit and be as there appears to be no value in that or profit.

Wrong! When you are rushing round you aren’t present in the moment. You have too much going on in your mind. That is when mistakes happen or you forget to do something vitally important. Your mind it too full with stuff. A bit of trivia for you: It is a now known that the average person has between 50, 000 – 70,000 thoughts per day.

Furthermore, according to some research, as many as 98 percent of these thoughts are exactly the same as we had the day before. Talk about being exhausted creatures of habit! Even more importantly, 80 percent of these thoughts are negative. No wonder you lose touch with yourself and what you are doing.

You create to-do-lists, you have your calendar all set up with all your appointments, and you can still miss something. You are not being present. You are not connected to what is important. How can you be when there is so much going on in your mind that is junk and serves no purpose?

This applies to all entrepreneurs, no matter where you are at. There are always going to be things to do and learn as you go through each growth stage. To refer to Shakespeare’s Hamlet: ‘To Think, or Not To Think’ – this impairs his judgement and ability to reason leading him to suffer from analysis paralysis. A decision is never made, because he over analyses every situation. It is so easy to do as Entrepreneurs.

Start taming those thoughts now. It takes 21 days to change a habit and create a new one.

3 easy tips to support your overactive mind:

‘Take Five: take five minutes of quiet time each morning before you get into your day to set your intentions. This creates calm and focus.

Sit still and listen. Once you feel you can sit still and ‘take five, you will be able to see what your thinking is all about it. You get a feel for when you start to dwell on stuff and why. That is what is important: the why. Sitting in stillness is very calming and soothing, even if your mind is still busy over dwelling and over processing. Here is a lovely short guided meditation to support you in connecting to your busy mind.

Create space between your thoughts. According to Claude Debussy, it is that “space between the notes, that makes the music.” Pause and take a breath to create a circuit breaker. This helps you make room in your mind before you run off with your next train of thought to fill it with the ‘music’ you want.