The Mindset Mentor - One Simple Tip to Stop Overthinking

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast. I am your host, Rob Dial. And if you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so that you never miss another podcast episode. And you've probably heard me ask you to do this before, but if you love this podcast, please do me a favor. Give us a rating and review. However you listen to us, pull your phone out right now. It takes just a few seconds. The reason why is because the more positive ratings and reviews that we get, the more that those platforms show this podcast to people who have never listened to it before. So that way, this podcast can be listened to and impact people who have never heard of it. So that would be a great way for you to pay it forward if you would

Starting point is 00:00:39 do that for me. Today, I'm going to be giving you one simple tip to start overthinking. I've never heard anybody else talk about this. This is something that I came up with years ago that really, really helped me out when I was in a massive place of fear and uncertainty when I was first starting my company. And, you know, one of the things that I get at least every single day on Instagram is at least a few messages asking me how to stop overthinking. So many people are stuck in the confines of their own mind thinking and then thinking about thinking and thinking about thinking about thinking and thinking and then judging themselves for the way that they feel and the way that they think. And they go deeper and deeper and deeper. And then a few hours pass

Starting point is 00:01:17 and they realize they literally did nothing at all except for make themselves feel like crap. So today I'm going to give you one simple tip that will help you with the overthinking. But first off, let me ask you this question. Why do you think that we overthink? Why do you think that you overthink? Why do you think that the average person overthinks more than they actually do take action? Because if you can understand this first, it will make it so much easier to work through your overthinking. And when you notice your overthinking pop up, you can go, oh, yeah, this is what that one podcast dude was talking about. Why do we overthink? More than anything else, when I analyze, when I go through and I talk

Starting point is 00:01:53 with people, the thing that I have come down to find overthinking is just a protection mechanism. It is your brain trying to protect you from something? What is it trying to protect you from? Well, that's what you have to figure out. And you'll probably figure out as we go through today's episode. Okay. Our ancestors were most likely quote unquote overthinkers. You know, we call it overthinking right now in today's day and age, they were probably just thinking of every possible outcome to simply stay alive. So if you look at the way that our ancestors were, there is massive evolutionary benefit to quote-unquote overthinking, aka thinking through every possible outcome. It kept them away from danger. And the ones that didn't think of every possible outcome are the ones that probably

Starting point is 00:02:47 were the ones that were killed by tigers and falling off of, you know, rocks thousands of feet in the air. But the thinking through every outcome kept our ancestors away from danger. And so it made them decide to do something that wasn't dangerous or to stay away from something that was dangerous, something that would have killed them. So a few hundred thousand years ago, there's massive evolutionary benefit to it. But today, when you don't have to worry about tigers, when you don't have to worry about eating the wrong berries, when you don't have to worry about walking by water and being attacked by some crazy massive animal, it doesn't serve you.

Starting point is 00:03:25 So today we call it overthinking. Back then, it was just thinking through every possible outcome. Today, it doesn't serve you. To them, it did serve them. So if it doesn't serve us, why do we still do it? Well, the interesting thing about it is, you know, now that we don't have danger everywhere, fears everywhere, we create our own. Our mind as a protection mechanism creates our own dangers. It creates our own fears, things to be afraid of. So people create fake circumstances in their heads to try to, quote unquote, stay safe from them. But most people don't know this is what

Starting point is 00:04:05 they're doing. They just think, oh my God, I can't stop thinking about the, you know, this thing that I want to post on Instagram. I think everyone's going to judge me. Our external environment has changed a lot since our ancestors. Our internal environment has not changed very much. Over the past million years, the external environment for a homo sapien is way different than it was four or five hundred thousand years ago, however far back you want to go. But our brains have changed. They've gotten bigger. We can do more computing and all that stuff, but we still have the fears. We still have the amygdala inside of our head, that thing that's inside of our head that creates all of our fears to try to keep us safe. Now, we don't overthink deeply about how to keep the tribe safe.

Starting point is 00:04:50 We overthink if we're going to be judged for putting up a photo wearing a different outfit that's different than what you would normally wear. Maybe it's more, quote unquote, risque, right? Overthinking always holds people back from taking some sort of action. And the other thing about overthinking is you're not overthinking all of the amazing things in your life. If you were overthinking all of the amazing things in your life, it wouldn't be a problem. So today, overthinking is to try to keep you away from fears that you are creating in your own head. Yes, you are creating these fears. You are creating these dangers in your head because 85% of what humans worry about, according to psychologists, never even actually

Starting point is 00:05:29 happens. And so you're overthinking things that statistically 85% of the time will never actually happen. So it's a safety mechanism that the brain continues to overthink something because of the fears that you have. So let me put some context to this, make much more sense. Okay. If you want to be, let's say you want to be a fashion influencer, right? And your biggest fear is getting judged or your biggest fear is getting rejected. And you work at an accounting job downtown and you're like, you know what? I just really want to be a fashion influencer. I want to start my fashion Instagram and my blog and start writing about it and start putting my stuff up on YouTube and talking about what to wear depending on what season it is. So you'd spend all day thinking

Starting point is 00:06:15 about the perfect outfit, thinking about how to put your video together so you can put up on YouTube and you spent hours trying to pick the right one. You spent hours finding the right outfit, putting them all together, typing it up, making sure everything is perfect, making sure that you do it. And you start thinking to yourself, well, maybe no, maybe now is not the right time. I'm running out of time. Maybe I should do this another time. Maybe I should put this off a couple of months. I've got something else coming up. Maybe people are going to judge me. Maybe people are going to, you know, think about me in the wrong way. Maybe mom's going to be like, what the hell?

Starting point is 00:06:45 You went to school to be an accountant. Why the hell are you putting up videos of you in fashion on Instagram and YouTube? Right? And you start thinking and thinking and thinking and thinking and thinking and thinking and it just does not stop. And then you're like, you know what? Maybe I should just do what I'm doing now. I went to school for it.

Starting point is 00:07:00 No big deal. And you just overthink all of it. And then one day you're like, you know what? I am going to post this video on YouTube. And then you post the video on YouTube. You finally decide school for it. No big deal. And you just overthink all of it. And then one day you're like, you know what? I am going to post this video on YouTube. And then you post the video on YouTube. You finally decided to do it. You post it on YouTube. You're so excited. And then you're constantly looking back to see how many likes it has, how many views it has, how many likes it has, how many views it has. Oh my gosh, it's only got 74 views in the past week. Maybe it's not good enough. Maybe I should delete it. And you think, and you think, and you think, and you think,

Starting point is 00:07:21 and you think. It's the same thing as perfectionism. It's literally the exact same thing as perfectionism. Perfectionism and overthinking are just masks that you're wearing to cover up some fear. It is a mask that you're wearing to cover up some fear to keep you safe. But you're afraid. Maybe I do it wrong. What if I do it wrong? There's no such thing as doing it wrong. I'm about to flip everything up over on top of its head, okay? There's no such thing as doing something wrong. People are like, I don't want to take imperfect action. Imperfect action is perfect action because doing it wrong shows you where you can do it right the next time. You can't do it right unless you do it wrong. So both of

Starting point is 00:08:05 those, perfect action and imperfect action, are perfect because they're both working in the exact same direction, which is figuring out how to do something right. Because it's a major piece of figuring out how to do something correctly. Today's program is brought to you by Athletic Greens, the health and wellness company that makes comprehensive daily nutrition really, really simple. AG1 by Athletic Greens is a category-leading superfood product that brings comprehensive and convenient daily nutrition to everybody. Keeping up with the research, knowing what to do, and taking a bunch of pills and capsules is hard on the stomach and hard to keep up with. To help each of us be at our best, they simplify the path to better nutrition by giving you the one thing with all of the best

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Starting point is 00:09:27 you're using overthinking to protect yourself from some sort of fear. The fear of rejection, the fear of failure, the fear of judgment, the fear of other people's opinions, the fear of not being loved, the fear of not being good enough. And that overthinking is then making you not take action because you're too busy thinking that you don't do anything and it paralyzes you. You get paralysis by analysis. Therefore, you're avoiding the fear. So you're over, see how your brain works? Your brain is so damn smart. Most people can't usually put the pieces together. You're afraid of something. So your brain overthinks and you overthink so much, you don't take any action. Therefore, your brain has got you to avoid the thing that you're afraid of. Pretty ingenious, isn't it?

Starting point is 00:10:05 Like it's smart. When you really take a step back and you look at it, you're like, wow, my brain is really smart. It's actually consciously, I'm consciously trying to figure myself out and it is tricking me every single step of the way. But the problem is, it's stopping you from taking the action that you want. And you have to take action to create the life that you want. So let me give you my very simple tip. And now that we understand overthinking, now that you understand exactly how it works, hopefully you now understand how

Starting point is 00:10:34 it is a protection mechanism and how to work through it a little bit. Now I'm going to teach you how I ended up finding this. I kind of stumbled upon it. Okay. When I first started my company, this was 2015, I was doing everything. I was the only person, you know, and I had a ton of fear. Now we have 27 people that work in my company, but back then it was me doing everything and I wasn't making much money. I had little money, lots of fear. And I would sit there and every morning I would meditate. And when I would meditate, my brain would not stop. Everything was going through my head. Everything would pop into my head. It would be my to-do list, my fears, all these fake scenarios of how I was going to fail and how I was going to run out of

Starting point is 00:11:17 money and I wouldn't be able to pay for my house and I would lose my house and lose my car. And my girlfriend would be like, oh my God, you're a loser. You don't have a house and a car and you're living on the streets. I'm going to leave you. So then it was like all of these fears would come up. So I'm trying to meditate to be like, you know, like I thought that's what meditation was. And then everything came up. And then one day I was like, damn, you know what I should do? I should just write everything down that comes into my head. And so what I did was I closed my eyes, I closed my eyes and I had a pen and paper. I had the blank piece of paper in front of me, notebook, and I just clicked the pen open and I kept my eyes shut the entire 15, 20 minutes, whatever it was. And any thought that came into my head, anything that was a fear, anything that was something that

Starting point is 00:12:01 I had to do, I've got to do the laundry later. I've got to take the dog to the vet, whatever it is. Every single thing that I had that popped into my head, I wrote it down. And I didn't open my eyes to write it down. So I'm writing it down with my eyes closed. I'm trying to, you know, when you end up getting done with this, you look at the piece of paper and you're like, yeah, this is a mess. But you can still kind of read what you said if you take your time. And so I would sit there and I would meditate. And I call this my to-do list meditation. I'll tell you how I use it. Everything that was running through my head, my to-do list, but also everything else that popped into my head as well. Sometimes those amazing ideas that pop into my head. And I would get done with the meditation. I'd be like, oh my God, what was that idea? I can't remember what it

Starting point is 00:12:39 was. Anything that pops into my head, write down pen and paper. And then what I do is when I get done, 20 minutes, or at least until I feel like I'm done thinking about all the things into my head, write down pen and paper. And then what I do is when I get done, 20 minutes, or at least until I feel like I'm done thinking about all the things, my thoughts, my fears, my limiting beliefs, everything, I would open my eyes and I would take a brand new sheet of paper and I would write down every single thing that I could legibly read from my to-do list meditation that I called it and put it down there. And now I had this list of everything that needed to be done. And then I would prioritize the most important things, number one, number two, number three. And then I would tell myself, hey, stop overthinking. All you got to do

Starting point is 00:13:14 is take action on number one and number one only, don't do anything else. What was really interesting is the more that I did this, the more that I did this, the more that I did this, the less my mind started to do, the less overthinking that I did throughout the day. And what happened was my mind, it was real crazy. There's times that I'd sit down to meditate. I would do the to-do list meditation. I'd be like 12, 13, 14 minutes in. I feel like I got everything from my head in. And then I was just in this place of just like peace. I was in this place of like almost no thinking. Now it's not every time, but sometimes I would get there and be like, oh my God, my brain has nothing to worry about.

Starting point is 00:13:52 My brain has nothing to think about. My brain is just literally existing. I was like, holy shit. It's like the holy grail. How do I get back here here all day long and i've never found a way to stay there forever but it's crazy because once you take all of the things that are bouncing around in your head it's just bouncing and bouncing about it's like have you ever seen the videos of the they pick lottery tickets and the way they pick the lotteries they have those little balls that are rolling around inside of the the glass container and you can see all the that's like your thoughts all of the time and when you write down one of them it's like taking one of them out, taking one of them out, taking one of them out because your brain can feel like it can, Hey, it's on this piece of paper. I can release it.

Starting point is 00:14:32 It's on this piece of paper. I can release it. It's on this piece of paper. I can release it. And eventually it's the point where there's like, there's nothing else that I need to think about. So just enjoy this for a second. Enjoy this place of no thought. And it was cool. And I've told this to many, many people over the past, you know, seven years now. So many people use it and they're like, I can't believe how well this works. I was like, I know it's like some secret sauce that we found. So if you're someone who's an overthinker, it's a simple strategy. You sit down, you close your eyes to meditate, you know, put on some meditation music if you want to, whatever it is, have a blank piece of paper and then click your pen open and write down anything.

Starting point is 00:15:10 Don't ever, ever, ever open your eyes as a thought comes in. Don't ever open your eyes. Just write it down. It's all messy. No big deal. Write it down and keep your eyes closed. You sit there for a minute. There's no thoughts.

Starting point is 00:15:23 And then there's, oh, I got to do this. I got to call the doctor. Okay. Call the doctor. You get no thoughts. And then there's, oh, I got to do this. I got to call the doctor. Okay. Call the doctor. You get a couple minutes and then something else comes in. And sometimes when you first do it, it's like rapid fire. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. All these thoughts, all these ideas. After a while, your brain kind of calms down. That is when meditation can be really enjoyable because you're like, oh, I can just sit for a second and not constantly feel like I have to be thinking all of the time. But then what I would do, so that's the secret to

Starting point is 00:15:50 help yourself with overthinking, is that you put everything from your head onto a piece of paper so that your brain can release it. That's the first piece. And then the second piece is to then take that piece of paper, make a to-do list out of everything that pops into your head, and then prioritize number one, number two, number three. And now take action on number one, and only number one. And if overthinking comes back in at some point in time throughout the day while you're working on number one, what do you do? Close your eyes for five minutes. Put everything on pen and paper. If you want to stop overthinking, a simple, simple tip is to put every single thing that's running through your head all the time onto paper.

Starting point is 00:16:26 Because when you feel like you're, you know, you got too much going on, I get it. It is literally like those lottery balls just moving around inside of that glass. It's just, you can't catch them. There's so much going on. But when you take one out, it's out. It's on a piece of paper. You take one out, it's out. The goal is that thing is spinning. All of those lottery balls are falling flying all over the place. How can you just take each one of them out, your thoughts, your overthinking, put them on a piece of paper, and therefore you eventually just get to the point where there's no more balls rolling around inside of the lottery ball. And you're like, this is great. I want to stay here forever. And then you start taking some action. And then you take some action, guess what's going to pop

Starting point is 00:17:01 back up? Your overthinking. Damn it, it's back. Okay, let's do it again. And if you do this over and over again, day after day, day after day, day after day, you actually start to train your brain to calm down more. You train yourself to work through problems, work through crazy circumstance in your life with pen and paper instead of trying to figure out inside of your head. Because I always say this, the brain is complex. Our life is very complex. It's not white and black. It's not like either you do this, you do this. There's many options. When you have a very complex math problem, you work it out on pen and paper. Why would you ever try to work out a very complex problem in your mind for your life? Write everything down, pen and paper. Use it to do this meditation. I guarantee you it'll help you with

Starting point is 00:17:40 your overthinking. And what I'm going to actually ask you to do, if you use this and it works for you, send me a message on Instagram. I would love to hear about it. I'd love to put some reviews up and let other people know this stuff actually works. But I know I'm going to get some messages from you guys who are going to be like, holy shit, it actually works. This is amazing. I'm going to do this forever. And hopefully you guys use it, you do it forever, and you'll see that you can calm your overthinking down by putting everything on pen and paper. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please do me a favor. Please share it on your Instagram stories and tag me at RobDialJr, R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. That's also where you can send me those messages I was talking about.

Starting point is 00:18:17 And I'm going to leave the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make someone else's day better. I appreciate you, and I hope that you have an amazing day.

The Mindset Mentor - One Simple Tip to Stop Overthinking

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