(over) thinking cant do it alone

You don’t end up supporting over-thinkers if you don’t know a thing or two about moving from being stuck in your head to genuine presence and body led confidence – too.

My mind is always on, I suppose that’s how it works. My mind sure helps with a lot: executing grocery lists, coming up with ideas, having meaningful conversations, reflecting on successes and failures, crafting plans of action, imagining new worlds, solving worthy problems.

We love her.

My mind got me really damn far in life – it powered through the survival mode of my teens and twenties, it climbed the corporate ladder, it earned hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, it built meaningful relationships professionally and personally.

This version of me was so cerebrally driven that thinking distracted me from fear, from presence, from my body, from my heart.

Eventually life stabilized, survival mode subsided, and I got to know my other parts…including my desires, how I wanted life to look and feel from the inside out.

I eventually had space to acknowledge that how I got to that point in my life – wasn’t going to get me where I wanted to grow next.

I wanted:

• genuine presence in my backyard
• courage to change careers
• confidence to start something new and put myself out there
• pleasure of a satisfying day-to-day
• clarity when it came time to make a decision
• less making myself and my dreams smaller in the name of practicality

And thinking harder about these desires wasn’t going to create them for me – not alone, anyway. Moving from overthinking to presence and confidence meant learning that my mind could be part of the process without being the entire process.

Your other parts that know confidence, presence, and enjoyment

In order to have these things I wanted – I couldn’t rely solely on my mind.

This new, fuller, richer, more authentic chapter needed something different. It needed:

• My body to tell me what feels good
• My heart to inform and receive what I actually loved, desired, yearned for
• My intuition and a deeper knowing to guide the overall direction
• And a clear mind (not just a noisy, reactive one) that can differentiate between my truth and anxiety
• And a whole lot of self trust – to listen to something quieter and act on it.

When building lives that are authentic, that feel freaking good – a deeper, self-sourced clarity needs to come first – then the brilliance of your mind gets to step in and bring it to life.

Tools for moving forward

001 // Relationship

Let’s be clear – this isn’t an “anti-mind” campaign – this is an invitation to reframe the relationship with your own thoughts, so they genuinely become something you control based on how you respond to them.

The transition from blindly operating from my head, from overthinking and second-guessing my way through life, from reactively doing…to where I am now, the intentional pace, the satiating days, the integrated inner experience…was built slowly.

And through a constant practice of curiosity, reflection, and rerelating to the thoughts that once sat in the drivers seat.

002 // Making space via integration

It was also built by making space in my mind for less overthinking and less inputs – and more integrating and distillation of what’s already there.

Yes deepening into those other “parts” has been a part of my journey through yoga and meditation – but what if instead of adding anything to the mind, to the routine, to your already full plate – make space in your head.

Often times to access these other more grounded and intuitive – or even spontaneous and confident – states of being, we can’t force our heads into them, the mind will overtake these experiences.

003 // The energetics

Instead, try getting all that pent up energy that’s living in your head – OUT. Journal your thoughts. Voice note to yourself or a friend. Talk to yourself on a walk. Get the thoughts and excess air energy out first, and then try reaching for another practice if you want to. (This blog shares more about using the elements and energetics in practical rituals like this!)

For me, journaling has been a life saver. My evening sesh doesn’t feel like a chore or something I need to think about – it just happens and it allows me to rest easy at night without any thoughts keeping me up at night.

For when youre particularly stuck on something and can’t think your way through it – take your “expel the thoughts” practice a step further and reread the entry or relisten to your voicenote.

It’s easier to catch your own patterns when you’re slightly removed from them.

I see this all the time in integration coaching – when your own thoughts are mirrored back to you through paper, audio, or another person – you’re able to find your own truth within it 10x faster.

Once you see the pattern underneath the noise that’s operating in your own head, you don’t have to keep thinking your way to the answer, it emerges naturally. What to do next, a more confident action step forward, that feeling of groundedness – comes from there.

There’s no perfect order; just your process

It really doesn’t matter what comes first. Maybe you start with releasing the thoughts. Maybe you ground into the present moment, or incorporate yoga (shameless plug), or tune into your heart space before tapping into your head.

You’ll have your own process for how these parts of life come together.

Allow that process to surface naturally and intuitively. Like how before I sat down just now to refine this blog post, I paused. I moved my computer to the side and moved into my senses: birds chirping, cozy cushion underneath me, heart beating.

As I let the anticipation to do, think, write, produce go – I grin. All of me is here. The grounded, confident action flows rom here, and I type.

And I hit publish with confidence. Not because my head did this on it’s own and decided randomly it was ready based on logical metrics only – but because it’s coming from that more integrated, personally truthful place.

Obviously my mind typed this blog – but since it wasn’t ONLY my mind, I won’t second-guess it later.