674: How to Stop Overthinking

Who's got this going on in their head? It goes like this. I don't know. Should I? Maybe it's kind of expensive. What if I don't like it? Wait. What if it doesn't work? Maybe it's not the right thing. But then again, I want to. I've wanted to for a long time. Maybe I should. No, there's got to be a better way. Maybe do. Maybe I should just do some more homework on this. I should probably wait. Should probably look around a little more. I don't know. I want to. When? What do I need to have it happen? I don't know. I just. I don't know. Something. Should I. I don't know. I don't know. Right. Okay. That's maybe not perfectly the inside of your head, but it's the inside of the person who has what I call head spin, right? It's just like the washing machine going around and round. You know, the dryer, Zoom, zoom, zoom. Head spin. It's when we get trapped in these thoughts where we cannot make a decision. We can't figure out what to do next. We can't figure out if what we want is going to work, if it's going to be right, if it's worth it. We just. We go round and round, and after a while, we forget about it. And then life goes on. Time goes by, then we come back to it. And this can be like a big thing in your life, right? It can be, should I change jobs? It can be a tiny thing in your life. Like, should I buy that dress I saw on sale last week? Gosh, I wonder if it's still on sale. I keep going back and looking at it every night, but I'm not buying it online yet. Cause we're in head spin. So let's tackle this baddie and figure out what we can do in its place. Because the thing with head spin is it really gets us nowhere. And it doesn't make us feel good. And it certainly doesn't help us to co create this future that we want to have in our lives. So, without further ado, welcome to episode number 678 of Flow Dreaming. It's called how to Stop Overthinking Flow Dreaming. It's a show where we talk about the power of your mind to change your world around you, to literally affect the fabric of your reality. We talk about this feeling of hope and joy and relief. And that is what being aware of your flow does. It gives you a feeling of power again in your lives. Breathe. I'm Summer McStrein. Hi, I'm travik, and welcome to another episode of Flow Dreaming. I've seen this a lot in my students over the years. This desire to use all of their mental acuity to absolutely figure things out. Like, the trust in their ability to figure things out is so high or conversely, so low that they feel like they have to spend hours, days, weeks, months, years to get it figured out, to get the thing right. And until that's done, nothing's gonna happen. Oh, by the way, I'm Summer. Welcome. I'm glad you're here. If you're new to this show, we talk about all kinds of things related to our mental health, related to our energetic health, our emotional health. I refer to Flow Dreaming a lot as a technique that prefer. But we range far and wide. The whole purpose, the whole goal of this show is to help you heal, manifest, create those things that you want in your life. Relationships or wealth or inner peace, all of it. So that's why there are now 678 episodes for you, so you can find the ones that really speak to what you're looking for. Anyway, welcome. I'm so glad you're here. Let's jump in. Right? These people, these students, these friends, these family members. I've known so many. I know you know so many. You may be a person with a tendency toward head spin, and you know it, because in your life, this is what it looks like. You have decisions to make, and you've put them off. You have choices, directions that you could pursue, but you're holding back. You're hanging back. You have money to spend, but you don't spend it. Because what if you have a career to develop, but you hold back because you're not sure? It's very easy to spot the effects of head spin in our life. It's like us feeling like these horses that just want to lunge forward. You know, what do they say? Chomping at the bit. Right, we're chomping at the bit. Ah, I want to do this. Ah, I want to do this. And yet this part of us is like, I don't know, you know, what about this? What about that? What about this? What about that? And it means that we never really get to land on a very confident, trusting answer, because every time we do, something just pops in saying, well, are you sure about that? What if you're wrong? And then we go back into the head spin again? So many of us grew up with this feeling that. Or being taught that if you just think about Things long enough and hard enough. You'll come to the right conclusion, you'll come to the right answer. Just think it through. Just sleep on it. And we've ingested the message so deeply that if we do things that are a leap, if we do things on faith, we do things on trust, we start to feel like, wow, it's a deeply dangerous thing. Maybe I'll let myself do it once or twice a year, but otherwise, you gotta keep the lid on that, because that won't get you anywhere. And we've ended up so far tilted into the side of, I should be able to figure this out. That's the side the I should be able to figure it outside, that we've completely abandoned the other side of ourselves. The side that says, what's your gut feeling on this? You want to trust your instincts. How would you feel about this? I know you're afraid of it, but if you did it anyway, what's the worst that could happen? Could you survive the worst that could happen? Is it worth the shot of doing it? How is. How is that going to feel? You want to try? See this other side? You know, think of it. The angel and the devil, but they're not. One's not better or worse than the other. Your mind has a beautiful, beautiful function. It is going to look at all the things that you're thinking about, and it's going to compare and compass them to all the things that you've experienced or learned in your past. Which is awesome, because if you learned in your past never to cross the street when there are cars coming, it's going to save your butt. You're not going to cross the street when the cars are coming. But what if you're going to do something that really has no direct comparison in the past? You say to yourself, it's time for me to go and see if I can switch jobs. Right? That seems to be very popular right now. The whole world is pulling up their roots and saying, I quit. So you're switching jobs, but you think, I haven't switched jobs in 20 years? I don't have a frame of reference for this, aside from, you know, the student job that I had in college. I don't know. I better make this perfect. This could be terrible. What if I don't get hired at the same level again? What if I don't get hired at all? What if I get hired and discover that I have a horrible management team and I'm miserable? What if I get hired and then they change all the rules and I Have to start coming into the office instead of working from home. What if I get right and your mind goes on overdrive and you pull back and you say, well, maybe I'll just look around. I'll just look around, look around, look around. But I'll never actually put the resume out there. I'll never actually start looking for something else. Because your mind says, I don't really have a frame of reference for this, so I can only compare it to the worst things that have happened in the past and get you, like, kind of warmed up and prepped based on those you can already kind of smell. What's wrong with this? Your mind, for one, isn't comparing it to the best things that happened in the past. Typically, head spin minds don't do that. Typically, head spin minds don't go, yeah, you should totally change your job because remember that time when you switched your majors in college and it was the best thing you ever did? Do you remember that time when you moved from your apartment to that other place and it was the best thing you ever did? Yeah, those things worked. Go for it. Typically, if that's what your head spin is doing, you've made your decision in two seconds. So by definition, headspin means you're referring to negatives in your past over and over. And that's why you're caught. That's why you're in this loop. Endless loop, loop, loop, infinite loop. But then you say, but, Summer, I would be silly if I didn't thoroughly research this. Let me tell you, there are two different kinds of procrastination. Two different kinds. One kind is where you are thoughtfully looking around, assessing options, gathering information. And I actually call this the data gathering phase. It may look like procrastination because you had an idea, you want to do it, but you're doing your due diligence. You're looking, you're checking, you're comparing. But there comes a point where that function is pretty well tailing off. It's pretty well at its end. Yes, you could look infinitely, but you've looked kind of enough. You kind of know enough. And we often, you know, we register that inside of us. We know emotionally, we're like, yeah, I kind of know enough about this. It's something else that's stopping me now. And that's exactly the other kind of procrastination. That's the one we're looking at. And usually, usually it's based on some form of fear or lack of trust. Both of these become, you know, the soap in the dryer. Or the. Not the dryer. Soap in the washer that's spinning in your head. I'm afraid. What if I make the wrong choice? What if it doesn't work out? What if it does work out and everything changes and it's horrible? What if. What if I do it? What if I leap and no one catches me and the universe lets me just fall on my face? What if I lose everything? What if it's the wrong car? What if it's the wrong house? What if it's the wrong partner? What if it's the wrong city? You see, this is the other kind of procrastination. This is the spinning of the wheels. And your head says, don't worry. I'll get you out of this. You just keep thinking. I'll just keep thinking on this. We'll just keep thinking on it. We can think on it as long as we want. And you know it's right. It's true. You can. You can think on this as long as you want. But in the meantime, you know what it's doing secretly. It's keeping you safe. If it can get you to do nothing at all, then at least it thinks you're not gonna get hurt. So we'll just keep them in this perpetual trickery of. We'll figure it out full well, knowing that time is just gonna slip and slip and slip and you're just gonna. It's gonna keep looping you back, and meanwhile, you're staying safe and your mind feels satisfied. Simultaneously. Simultaneously. Excuse me. Your mind feels frustrated. Feels frustrated because you feel like, is this ever going to end? How come I can't figure this out? What's wrong with me? Maybe I shouldn't be doing this at all. I've been thinking about it so long. Maybe that means it's a no. No, not necessarily. I'm pointing out all the little mind tricks that our mind does to frankly, try and protect us using its frame of reference, its bias, its negativity bias as a frame of reference. But here we are, and you're saying, how do I get out of it? How. How do I get out of a head spin? Because, yeah, that's me. That is me. Don't know what direction I want to pick in life. Don't know what new career I want to do. Don't know what city I'm going to be happiest in. Just. Just don't know what to do about this job situation, this coworker situation. Don't know what to do about this health thing. Don't know what to do about my cat. The way out is for you to start seeking balance. And the balance comes from your heart. Balance comes from your gut. Balance comes from, how would I feel if I did this? How would I feel if I did it and it didn't work out? Could I survive? You lean in to your emotions and your feelings. And I know it's hard for a lot of us with head spin because leaning into our feelings has historically proven dangerous. It's meant I made the wrong choice. I acted without thought. I blew money. I did a bunch of dumb stuff. Hell, no, I am not leaning into my emotions. And I urge you, and I beg you, then you need to create a new relationship with your emotions. Because probably the relationship you had with them that caused all that toxicity was a crappy relationship. But you can build a new one, and you can build a better one. I know you can. And you can have a relationship with your emotions where they are spot on, where they are on target, where they're your allies, where they actually work with your mind in beautiful counterbalance. This, of course, is where flow dreaming comes in. If you're practicing flow dreaming, if you're practicing emotional reconditioning, what you're doing is you're allowing your emotional self to strengthen. You're placing trust in it. You're exercising it. You're using it so that you no longer don't mistrust it anymore. In fact, you're building trust in it. Once your emotional self and your intellectual mental self start to have equal shares in this party, you can make decisions that are out of this world, that are great in a far shorter amount of time. Cause that's our goal here. The next key piece is that when you do finally say, okay, yeah, I think this is gonna be it. I will do this. And then you still feel okay, I decided, but I still haven't done it. I've got it. I'm gonna do this. But I'm still waiting, you know, I'm waiting for my next paycheck. I'm waiting for the kids to get out of school. I'm waiting for Covid to be over. I'm waiting for. I'm waiting for. I'm waiting for. I'm waiting for. You know what happened? Yeah, the old mind, the old spin just started up again in a new form. It's like, okay, I'll let you make the decision, but then I'm gonna stop you after that. You guys know what I'm talking about, right? We've all. All done this. And the weird Thing is, we do this in some areas of our life more than we do it in other areas. In other areas, we make easy, fast, simple decisions. Yes, yes, do this, do that. Maybe at work, you know, you're like, do this, do that, do that. No big deal. But when it comes to your personal life, agonizing. Do I stay? Do I go? Do I text them? Do I not? Do I call mom and tell her no? Yes. Oh. So here you are. You've made it to the next step. But now what? This is where I pull out one of my old favorites. This is something. And by the way, I variously refer to a program I have. It's called Me School. M E School. Me School. It is amazing all the things you hear me talk about in this podcast. We go in and actually do the development work with you in this program. Almost a thousand students have passed through the doors and remarkable, just life changing results. But anyway, I'm gonna get off my tooting my horn and return to one of the techniques that is in Me school that I'm gonna share with you right now. It is called inspired action. And the deal is this, at a certain point when you've pressed the green go button and you're still not taken off, you say, I'm going to take an action. Any action. Hopefully it feels inspired, but it might not. It might just be, ugh, something I don't even really want to do. But I do it. I do it. This is the ultimate stopper, right? This is the ultimate bludgeon against mind spin. Because the minute you take an action, the mind goes, oh, wait a second. All the work I've invested in getting you to not do these things and to procrastinate and hold back, you just, you just, you just went right around me, you know, like, you know, you just took that ball and cruised right around me. Hey, wait, wait. Taking an action is what tells your life and the universe. I trust you. I trust you. And maybe this isn't the right action. Maybe this will get me nowhere. But I trust you. And I know that if I start taking movements forward, things will shift and I will have better options as I go along. I trust you. Okay. This is when your mind, by the way, is spazzing out. I mean, it's having a full on meltdown because it's telling you no. And you're saying, uh, I'm gonna do something. Not only that, I don't even know if it's the right thing. Now. This is, this is ideal. If you've already done what I call the good form of procrastination. You have done your due diligence, you've done your research. Like you pretty much have a good feeling on this. You know, you don't know everything in the world, but you know, if you were to research this thing for years, the time would slip by when it could have been useful to you. So you do enough. And then you run around that mind spin and you say, I'm taking an action. Maybe it's right, maybe it's wrong. I'm joining this class, I'm taking up this skill hobby. I'm gonna go out on this date, I'm going to whatever. And your mind is freaking out. Why would you do that? It's not gonna work out. What if it doesn't work out? What if you just missed a better option? What if you didn't wait long enough? Oh my God. On and on it goes, right? We've all felt this, right? These are the thoughts that circle after. We're like, okay, I made my choice, I did it. And now. Oh my God. What, what, What? This mind of ours, it's a relentless little bugger, isn't it? Remember though, it's got a good heart. It just wants to keep you safe. It wants to keep you safe because it loves you, wants to protect you and it wants you to rely on it. But your heart and your action, that's your drive, that's your oomph, that's your inner kundalini. That's your ki. That's your power that blasts you through life. All this talk about the power of desire and the law of attraction and manifesting, where do you think that all comes, comes from? Comes from your heart, comes from action, comes from that inner being in you that you fundamentally trust. Trust. It drives you to say, you like this. You want more? Go get it. You could do this. You want to see how big you can make it? Go get it. Prove yourself to yourself. Feel good, Push past, finish that 5K. That's your heart, that's desire. That's at the core of all of this and that's struggling to co lead us often because the mind has such a clamp on it. And when we end up in that very dull middle of the road life, no options in front of us that we like. There's one thing going on, it's the mind. The mind is clamped down in control, the heart is shut down, mistrusted, and the action is just off the board. But you're going to change that. You're going to fix that. Now, right? Starting now. I mean, if you really commit now, now is the time. Take the action. And already this is a challenge. Your mind is scrambling. Well, I can't do it now, Summer. I haven't thought about this enough. I don't even know if I want to do it. And I'm saying, do it now. Does it sound like a good thing to do? Like, yeah, like, why not do it now? Well, what does that mean? It means something that you're sitting on right now that's been spinning and spinning. Indecisive, unsure, unclear. I don't know if I like it. I don't even know what I want. One thing like that you have to make an action on, like within the next 48 hours. Take action, do something on it. Do something toward it or with it. Do something. And you'll say, well, wait, I need to think about the right thing to do. I don't want to mess this up. I can't. I'm like, no, do it, do it, do it. I once had a coach, a business coach, years ago, and I was in the process of really shifting my business model. And she said to me, you know, you should just get on the phone with all of your fans and flow dreamers and you know, talk to them about your new program and see if any want to join you. And I said, oh, no, no, I can't do that. That's not how I do things. For one, I really never get on the phone with people unless I'm doing a straight up session. You know, I feel awkward doing that. It would feel salesy, it would feel weird. And furthermore, I can't do that because I don't even have the program website out. Like, what if people want to go there first and you know, they want to check it out and they want to read about it and stuff. I really should get that whole website, bu. And she was like, summer, you're procrastinating on this, aren't you? Why? And I said, because just getting on the phone and talking with people. She said, you just send an email and you say, if you're interested, hit me up. Like that's the easiest thing in the world. Why won't you do it? And I realized I was afraid. I was afraid it was a scary thing to do to open myself up and try and tell people what I was offering them and then saying, do you want to join? And I had to learn that that's not what was gonna happen. I was gonna get on the phone with people who were wanting to talk to Me, who thought it was like the biggest beautiful, you know, oh, my God, I can get on the phone and talk to you. I've had so many questions about your stuff, so many questions about your program. Please, can you answer them? And then I would talk with them, and I would feel like, God, this is a natural fit. Like, if this person doesn't do this, I'm gonna just hang up the phone and cry because I made this. I this for them. And frankly, that's how the first version of me school got filled. Meanwhile, later I made a website. Later I did all that other stuff that I had been trying to shove in front as a way for me to kind of back off and take it slow and ease my way in and frankly, just put it off because I was scared. I share my own example with you because you've got something like that, too. And I want you to take an action. I want you to do an end run. I can't speak today. I don't know what's going on. Dry lips, maybe put on some chapstick here. I want you to do an end run around these objections that your mind is putting up. And the end run means just do it. See what happens. See what happens. And don't be afraid of what might happen. Maybe nothing will happen. Maybe you'll get crickets. And that's the thing you're afraid of the most. So what now? It tells you that that's not the way to do it. Do something else. Try, try again. Either way, you're going to get incredibly valuable feedback. And feedback is something you don't have right now. You don't have feedback because you're in mindspin. Nothing really new is coming to the table. You need that feedback. So in the next 48 hours, I want you to take action that puts an end to mind spin. Or rather, it might just transfer it to the new outcome of whatever that action is. You might find yourself going right back into mindspin. But that's okay. It's something that you work out, right? You're working out the knots. If you do this, though, here's the big picture. Here's the lifelong advantage that you get in your heart, in your soul, in your relationships, in your wealth, in everything. If you work this out, you will start to recognize, okay, I've got these ideas, I've got these desires. I felt my heart speak. I've got this pulse to do this. I'm gonna do some looking around, some research. I'm gonna get to that point where it clicks, and I go Yeah, I kind of know enough about this to jump. There's still a little, you know, a little catch in my throat, my heart when I jump. Because that's natural. You're going into something that your mind can't reference. Doesn't have anything in the past, really. Just, I don't know. Or maybe it does have something in the past. It's negative, it's referencing, it's against. And you say, yeah, but I want to heal that. So I'm going to do it again. It's all cool. You do it, you jump, you take the action. You do this over and over and you know what happens? Oh my gosh. This whole process becomes easier and easier until it's practically invisible. You're doing it. You don't even realize you're doing it. And the mind spin has shrunk from years, months, weeks to days or weeks. You feel clarity, you feel inner trust. You trust the future. You know the universe is on your side. It wants to see you win. The universe does not want to see you fail. It's not going to set you up to fail. If the thought and the desire came into your heart, your being, your life, your sphere, a part of you is saying, you're ready. And that's why this arrived. Go. So that is it in a nutshell. How to get out of mind spin. Indecisiveness, the stuckness, all of it. Now you guys, of course there's tons more, but this little angle, this little, this little tidbit is enough to last. If you practice this, you could practice this for a full on year. I mean, this could become a hardcore part of your personal growth program. And I urge it to become that. Because you as a person, you're gonna feel so much more aligned, peaceful, at ease, trusting of yourself, trusting of others, trusting of your decisions, you will feel positivity and you'll be able to say to your mind, hey, I love you, I love you, take care of me. And I love that you allow me to research and do all the things, put together, correct strategies and be creative in my thinking. But then I can take it from there, right? That's a gorgeous, gorgeous relationship to have with yourself. I want that for you. I know you can have that relationship with yourself. So that is what I'm gonna leave you with today. With a few references, resources, because clearly you guys, this is one of my top talk, top topics. Oh my God, where is that Chapstick topics, things that I love to talk about. And as a result I've created so many flow Dreams around this. Now, Flow dreams are a kind of active meditation, a manifesting activation. They're an experience. They're audios. And you can purchase them singly or in playlists. And each one gets you into this emotional space. It gets you into this spiritually connected space. Your heart, your mind, your soul, your spirit, all connected. And then you make changes there. And the changes you make are these emotional changes, these energetic changes manifesting, opening up new pathways. So the ones I want to recommend, if you want to check them out, they're@flowdreaming.com or I have an app. Look for the Flow Dreaming app. There's two apps. One is the podcast. One has all of the flow dreams. It's kind of like a shop. One's called Action Action. You guys with Mindspin will love that one. Crystal Clarity, all about making fast, easy, trustworthy decisions. There is the Stop procrastinating and get it Done playlist. Oh, yeah, you know who that's for. There's the Get Unstuck playlist. Similar but different. And finally the Confident playlist. Get as many as you can afford to get because you want to alternate these. You want to hit this from all different angles. You want to build a support system under you if this is going to become a goal for you. I want to be a speedy decision maker who trusts themselves. And I want to fly into action and use the results of that to create the next success in my life. I mean, that's like a year of personal growth right there in this one idea. And you can take it, you can run with it right now, right after this. Especially if you've already just seen that something in your life is completely stuck in head spin. Then I would say start with that. Start here. And there you go. I put my. I got my teacherly voice on there. Anyway, I want to thank all of you guys for joining me again today on this Flow Dreaming podcast. You know, each week I love to teach. Sometimes I just explore ideas, Sometimes I do Flow Dreams. We do a whole lot of different stuff here. So again, thank you for joining me. Please do hit the subscribe or follow for this podcast. And please, please leave it a star or two or, oh, even a review. If you leave a review, I'm gonna send you a virtual kiss moi right now. That is for you for doing that. So thank you so much. I'll see you all again next week for another episode of Flow Dreaming. I want to take a moment to tell you about MI school. Now, of course, you can look all of this up on the website@flowdreaming.com look up me school and the whole thing will be written out for you in great and glorious detail. But as long as you're here and you've just been listening to this episode, maybe the thoughts crossing your mind, what would happen if I really learned all of this flow dreaming stuff? What would happen if I gave myself some personal growth on a really stepped up level? What would I be capable of? Where could I go? Most of my MI schoolers enter MI school not exactly knowing where they want to go. And that's mistake number one I want you to avoid. You don't have to know what you're trying to create for yourself. If you've been through a transition recently or you're even just looking at the next decade of your life and thinking what's going to happen in it. Well, I'm here. We're here because that's what we specialize in, showing you, helping you, pointing you where you can say, ah, I know how I'm going to feel in that decade and I know some of the things now that I want to add in. We take you from a place of being stuck and not knowing into a place of total powerful clarity of excitement. You are raring to go and maybe that's a feeling you haven't had in a while. Well, it's still there. It's hiding. And I know how to get it back. So come join me. Come visit. We are a beautiful, vibrant, look loving, intimate community of very powerful, accepting, creators, seekers and dreamers. We make things happen. You will be intensely surprised by the quality of people who are around you. And why? Because I spend my time with you for a whole year and I'm picky. I am. Which means that everyone in MI school is a choice cut man. They're the top, they're the best people. Doesn't mean they're the biggest in their careers or this or that. But they're good people and they're people who do the work and they're generous people and they're loving people. They're the people I want to hang out with. And I'm inviting you to come in with us because over the course of the year, we're going to talk together every month, multiple times a month. You're going to be learning things, you're going to be testing things, trying things. I have hundreds of techniques that I teach you and we go over them together and they will reveal you and unfold you to yourself in a way you have never seen before. So please come join me, at least get on my schedule to talk to. I open up times throughout my work month where I talk to potential new students, and it's gentle. We just discuss. Hey, are you ready? Are you almost ready? Maybe you're not ready. We'll find out. But it's good to call, and it's good for us to talk because it puts it on your radar and it's the first step in your commitment to yourself. So I invite you to go to flowdreaming.com, swipe to it on your phone, or go on your desktop and go ahead and set up a time, and let's talk. I can't wait.