4 Strategies to Stop Overthinking

The Mindset Mentor is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the name your price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try it@progressive.com, progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law not available in all states for small businesses. Every hire matters, but time and resources are limited. LinkedIn Hiring Pro is built for that

reality, helping you find, connect with and

screen the right candidates faster. From drafting jobs to AI powered screening interviews. In a conversational interface that lets you describe what you need in plain language, you can spend less time searching and more time connecting with qualified talent.

Hire right the first time.

Post your first job and get $100 off towards your job posts@LinkedIn.com dial that's LinkedIn.com dial terms and conditions apply.

Instagram Teen accounts have automatic protections for what teens see and who can contact them, plus time management tools and Instagram will continue adding built in safety features to help create age appropriate experiences. Learn more about teen Accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online@instagram.com teenaccounts.

Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I'm your host Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another podcast episode. And if you're out there and you live in the United States or Canada and you want to receive motivational text messages from me directly to your cell phone, text me right now. 512-580-9305 Once again, 512-580-9305 Today I'm going to be giving you four strategies to stop overthinking. And I think this is very important because let's be real, be honest with me. When was the last time that you got done with a really long overthinking session and you're just like, you know what? I'm so glad I did that. I'm so glad that I spent the last 45 minutes thinking about all of the overthinking that I did, thinking about going into depths of my fears and my worries and the things that I'm afraid of. I'm so glad that was such a great use of my time. Has it ever happened to you? Probably not, right? And I wanna ask you this question. I want you to think about this because usually what happens is people say, well, I just wanna be able to stop thinking so much. Like I just wanna be able to just stop all of the thoughts. And I always ask people, as we think about this, I say, hey, if that's the case, would you ever want your heart to stop beating? Everyone's like, no, absolutely not. I say, okay. Would you ever want your lungs to stop breathing? No, of course not. Why is that? Why do you not want your heart to stop beating? Why do you not want your lungs to stop breathing for you is because that's what they're supposed to do. Your heart is meant to beat. Your lungs are meant to breathe. That is what they're meant to do. Your brain thinks that's what it's here to do. And so if you're trying to conquer your brain, you're not going to beat it, you're not going to get there, because there is no conquering the brain. It is just learning to start working with your brain to get your brain to your side. Because I guarantee this, I guarantee if you were quote, unquote, overthinking all of the best things in your life, you wouldn't want to stop overthinking. If you were just thinking about how beautiful and amazing and how amazing life is, and you were to have just so much gratitude in your heart for how amazing I am life is, do you think that you'd be like, I want to stop overthinking how amazing it is? No, because what are you doing? You're actually overthinking all of the things that could go wrong. You're constantly thinking about your fears, you're constantly thinking about your worries. You're constantly thinking about what could possibly go wrong. And psychologists did a study and found out that 85% of what we worry about never even actually happens in the first place. So think about this for a second. Most people spend a lot of their day overthinking about things that will never happen. And 85% of the time, they won't happen. Which means that we're wasting precious energy that could be used towards building your business, that could be used towards writing your book, that could be used towards being a more present parent, that could be towards getting your next promotion. But we're too worried and thinking and overthinking things that we're worried about versus using that energy for good. Imagine if you could just flip a switch and instead of overthinking all the bad things, you could then just take all of that thought energy and use it towards things that were amazing. I don't know about you, but I think that would be really good energy used, right? That would be the best use of your energy. Because the brain is the most energy consuming organ in your body. The most energy consuming organ in your body. It only weighs about 2% of your body weight. But the interesting thing about it, I use about 20% of your energy throughout the day. It's the most energy consuming organ in your body. And so the more that you have to think and you think and think and you think about thinking and you think about thinking and thinking, and then you worry about worries and you worry about the worries that you're worrying and then you just keep going down the line. You're using energy for absolutely no reason. And so what I'm gonna teach you is four strategies to help you get, you know, to help you work with your brain a little bit better that I have found work really well for me, these are strategies that I use. I mean, I have a business with 20 employees, so there's many cases where I could overthink lots of things in my life, but these are some of the strategies I use and I hope you guys use them as well. So if you have pen and paper, grab them out. Let's dive into it. The first one. This is so simple, it doesn't seem like it would work, but I promise you that this does work. Whenever you find yourself overthinking something that you don't want to be thinking about, you simply talk to your brain and you say, not right now, brain. I not right now. And so one of the things that happens with me is I'll wake up to, you know, I'll wake up to go to the bathroom. It's like two, three o' clock in the morning and I'll have one thought about work, one thing on my to do list that I have to do tomorrow, and that first thought will then send me down a bunch of thoughts and it's hard to fall back asleep.

Teachers are deep into new units this time of year. IXL lets kids practice the exact skills they're learning in class, helping lessons stick and boosting confidence. Heading toward the spring, IXL is an award winning online learning platform that helps kids truly understand what they're learning, whether they're building math confidence, strengthening reading and writing skills, or reviewing science concepts. It covers math, language arts, science and social studies from Pre K through 12th grade. With personalized interactive content that adapts to the child's level and PACE. IXL is used in 96 of the top 100 school districts in the United States. It's an easy way to support learning as the school year moves into its most important stretch make an impact on your child's learning and get IXL now and the Mindset Mentor listeners can get an exclusive 20% off IXL membership when they sign up at ixl.com mindsetmentor visit ixl.com mindsetmentOr to get the most effective learning program out there at the best price Stop paying way too much for wireless just because that's how it's always been. Mint Mobile exists purely to fix that Same coverage, same speed, just without the inflated price tag. The premium wireless you expect unlimited talk, text and data, but at a fraction of what others charge. I've been using Mint Mobile for about four years now for my business phone, and it works just as good as all of the carriers that I've ever had. Are you ready to stop paying more? For what? Ready to stop paying more than what you have to? New customers can make the switch today and for a limited time get unlimited premium wireless for just $15 per month. Switch now@mintmobile.com mentor that's mintmobile.com mentor upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months or $180 for 12 month plan $15 per month equivalent taxes and fees Extra initial plan term only over 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy Capable device required availability speed and coverage varies. Additional terms apply. See mintmobile.com Every business is asking the same question. How do we make AI work? For us, the possibilities are endless and the guessing is too risky. But sitting on the sidelines is not an option because one thing is almost certain. Your competitors are already making their move. No more waiting. With NetSuite by Oracle, you can put AI to work today. NetSuite is the number one AI Cloud ERP trusted by over 43,000 businesses. It is a unified suite that brings you financials, inventory, commerce, HR and CRM into one single source of truth. Now with NetSuite AI connector, you can use AI of your choice to connect your actual business data and ask every question you ever had, from key customers to inventory trends. Plus automate those tiresome manual processes. Let's see your competitors try to do that right now. Get their free business guide demystifying AI at netsuite.com dial the guide is free to you at netsuite.com dial that's netsuite.com

dialogue what I found is a strategy that works really well for me when I need to fall back asleep in this case so I don't overthink things in the middle of the night. But then also when I Find myself overthinking, you know, something that I'm putting out of fire in my business, or whatever it might be, is just to take a step back and say, not right now, brain. Not right now. This is not the time to deal with it. I'll come to this later. We'll work on this later. It doesn't seem like it would work, but for some reason, it actually does. And what you might notice is if you've never really trained yourself and trained your mind, it might come back a few minutes later, and then you'll get a few minutes of time, and then it might come back a few minutes later again. If it comes back, just repeat it. Not right now, brain. Not right now. And you have to realize that you can control your thoughts. It might not feel like you can, but you can. It takes time and it takes practice. It is a mental muscle to be able to do this. But as you start to work on this, the stronger the mental muscle becomes. So if you've never worked on trying to overcome your and start working with your overthinking, well, then it might be kind of hard. In the beginning. You might feel like it's really heavy weight. But as you keep going, not right now, not right now. Hey, not right now. It becomes easier and easier and easier, and your mental muscle becomes stronger. And the way I like to think about it is this is you being able to work with your brain and control it is this. If you're watching me on video right now, if you're listening to the podcast, you can't see me. But if my hand were flying all over the place like this, like, it's just moving. If you guys can't see me, it's just moving all over the place. If you're watching on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, you can see my hand's moving all over the place, right? If somebody was doing that and their hand's going all crazy and you're like, hey, what's happening with your hand? They're like, oh, I don't know. I just can't control it. My hand just does this. You'd be like, that's kind of weird that they can't control their hand because their hand is on their body. They should be able to control it, right? Well, why do you think. Why don't you think that it's weird that you can't control your mind, that your mind is just in control of you? Your mind, just like your hand is in your body, your brain is in your body, and you can control it. It just Takes a little bit more work. And if you've never actually put practice into it, it might take you a little bit of time to get this mental muscle under control. So the first thing, hey, brain, not right now. Brain, not right now. Okay, that's number one. Number two, I say this all of the time. And if you don't do this, I promise you this is one of the biggest things that will help you with your overthinking. When you find yourself to a point of overthinking, your brain's going over and over and over and over again. Take out a pen and paper and write every single thing down that's in your brain. Cause here's the interesting thing about it. What I'm trying to do in doing this is allowing my brain to release whatever it's spending too much time thinking of. Because one of the reasons why we overthink so much is because we're trying to come up with a solution for something. You're trying to come up with a solution for something. And the reason why you're overthinking, overthinking, overthinking, overthinking, overthinking. You can't stop is because the solution has not been found. Once the solution is found, you can kind of let it go. And so if I were to give you a complex math problem and say, hey, do it in your head, you most likely wouldn't be able to do it in your head. But if I gave you pen and paper, you have a much better chance of being able to do that. Well, what is the difference between a complex math problem and a complex problem in your life? Because math is very straightforward. If you know how to work through math, you can do all of the math problems. But life, life is 100 times more complex than math problems are. And so why would you ever think that you can figure things out in your head if you can't even figure a math problem out unless you have pen and paper? So you take everything that's going on in your head, you put it down on pen and paper, and you start to see if you can work through it and release it. Allow your brain to release it. Here's another thing. Even if you can't work through it, just the act of taking it from your head and putting it on paper will allow it to be so much easier to release. You can release it and you can work on it now, you can work on it later. But most of the time, we're overthinking something because we can't seem to come up with a solution. The answer to that problem is to literally put it down on pen and paper. Putting everything down that's bothering you and working through it. Because if it's a complex math problem or if it's a complex problem in your life, it's easier to work through with pen and paper. So get really used to and good at putting down pen and paper what's going on in your life. So that's number two is to write down everything that's going on in your head so that your brain can release it and then you can work on it. Hey. 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. Because 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 things. I say it all the time, but I literally take AG1 every single morning because it makes getting all of my vitamins and minerals so darn easy. And one tasty scoop of AG1 contains 75 vitamins, minerals and whole food source ingredients including a multivitamin, multi mineral, probiotic, green superfood blend and more in just one easy, convenient daily serving. So make nutrition easy. Go to athleticgreens.com dial and athletic greens is going to give you an immune supporting free one year supply of vitamin D and five free travel facts with your first purchase when you visit athleticgreens.com dial today again, simply visit athleticgreens.com dial to take control of your health and give AG1 a try. Hey, what do you spend on subscriptions each month? Most of us think we spend around $80 a month on subscriptions, but we actually spend closer to $200 a month. Truebill is the new app that helps you identify and stop paying for subscriptions that you don't need, want, or simply just forgot about. On average, people are saving thousands of dollars with truebill. See all of your subscriptions in one place. Keep all the ones that you want, cancel all the ones that you don't right from the app. And your truebill concierge is there when you need them to cancel unwanted subscriptions so that you don't have to. No talking to humans, no difficult conversations. And that's one of the things that I love the ease of canceling subscriptions just through Truebill. Truebill has over 2 million users and helps save them over $100 million. Like Matthew B. Who says, in a matter of seconds, I saved $660 for the year on my DirecTV bill, saved $120 for the year on my Sirius XM bill, and $840 a year on my car insurance. So start canceling your unused subscriptions@truebill.com dial go right now truebill.com dial it could save you thousands a year. Once again, truebill.com dial number three is breathing. When your state changes, the very first thing to change is your breath. If you're, you know, get, if you get very excited, your breath is the first thing to change. If you get very sad, your breath is the very first thing to change. Your breath is always in control of a state change. And so the one thing that's, that's super simple is just to become very conscious of when you're starting to overthink and remind yourself to do six deep, intentional breaths. It's very simple. You breathe in through your nose, and then you breathe out through your mouth. And when you breathe out through your mouth, you breathe out like you're breathing out through a straw. So it's a long exhale. So it's going to sound something like this. You breathe in and breathe out. If you do six of those, there was a study that was done over in Japan that actually found that six deep breaths is the biggest way, fastest way to actually change your state from a heightened state to a calm state. And the reason why that's important is because if you're overthinking something, you're trying to work through something. Whenever your, your emotions are high towards something, remember this. When your emotions are high, your logic is low. When your emotions are really high, your brain will actually start to shut off what's called the prefrontal cortex of your brain, which is the, the thinking and analyzing part of your brain. And so you don't even make the best decisions. When you're very emotionally involved in something. This is why you can get into a fight with somebody and you could say something and then two hours later like, oh, shit, I shouldn't have said that, right? Because your emotion was high, your logic was low, you weren't even actually thinking very well. And so when you are noticing yourself in a heightened state, the very first thing that you should do is get in control of your breath. If you notice you're overthinking and you're anxious and you're overthinking, you're anxious, you're overthinking, you're anxious. Take control of your breath. When you take control of your breath, your body and your mind will follow. And so the first thing I want you to do when you notice yourself in these states is to make sure that you go into six deep conscious breaths. It takes about a minute and a half, but you will notice a massive difference. Anytime that I start a zoom call with, you know, any of my mastermind or with people that I'm teaching how to grow coaching businesses, the very first thing that we do every single time is six deep intentional breaths. Because I want people to be able to come in calm, not overthinking, and be able to actually soak in everything that we're teaching. So that's number three is make sure that you take control of your breathing. And number four is kind of an everyday, all day act that you can get better at. And it's to become mindful of everything, right? Training your mind is like training a dog. If you go on a walk with a dog, you're not supposed to let the dog just be at the end of a leash and walk you, you're

supposed to walk the dog.

You're supposed to be the alpha. You're supposed to be the one that's in control. And so instead of letting the dog run off, what you need to do is you need to keep a short leash. You need to have the dog next to you, right? You want to train the dog to be by your side so that it's right there, you're the one that's in control. Well, the exact same thing as training your dog. Instead of letting your dog wander off and just go wherever it wants to go, you want to have it right next to you. You want to be in control of where your dog goes so that you can make sure it doesn't get hit by a car, it doesn't run off or anything like that. You wanna do the exact same thing for your mind. Train your mind to bring your full presence to every single boring thing that you do, especially the boring things. So anytime you're doing something that your mind can mindlessly wander and it can go wherever it wants to try to bring the full presence of your mind, all of your senses to your whatever you're doing. I'll give you an example. Let's say that you're washing your hands instead of when you're washing your hands. Cause that's just a mindless thing. You just wash your hands. No big deal. All right? You're done. Instead of washing your hands and just allowing your brain to think about what you have to do later on, what you want to do is try to focus on as much as you possibly can. Try to be as present as you possibly can. So notice how the warm water feels on your hands. Notice how that feels. Notice the sound of the water hitting your hands, going down the drain. Everything. Notice the sound of the water. Notice the smell of the soap. Try to bring your full brain and presence to that moment and to your senses. Because if you could train your brain to be present when you're doing the boring things, it's much easier to have your brain be present and to not wander off and overthink whenever there's something that's even more of a heightened state. And so you wanna train your brain on the boring things to be present as possible. When you get done washing your hands, go. Feel the way that the towel feels when you walk to the living room. Notice that when you open the door, the way the door feels in your hand when you're walking from the bathroom to the living room. Notice the way that the carpet feels on the floor. The carpet feels on the floor under your feet. Notice the smell of the room when you go from the hallway to the living room. You're passing the kitchen. What does the kitchen smell like? You know, what do you see? Do you have windows outside? What does the outside look like? What does the temperature of the room feel like on your skin? And what you're trying to do is you're trying to bring as much full presence to yourself in what you're going through. So that therefore you're training this mental muscle at all times to do what you want it to do. Instead of running off like a dog that's free from a leash, you bring the dog that's right next to you. You can do the exact same thing because you can't stop your brain from thinking. There's no way to control your brain from thinking, but you can get a better control of what you're thinking about, when you are thinking about it, what you're focusing on. And this is the important thing. If you're going to build a life that you love, you're going to need to get your brain under control at some point in time. Your brain should not be flying all over the place and doing whatever it is that it wants to do. Your brain is on your body the same way that when you want to walk, you move one foot, you move the other foot, you move the other foot, you move the other foot. You're in control of that. You should be in control of your brain the same way that you're in control of when you walk. And so those are the four tips that I have for you for helping you when you're overthinking. Number one is just tell your brain, hey, not right now, man.

We'll talk about that later.

We'll think about that later. Number two is put everything from your brain onto pen and paper. Number three, use your breathing to calm yourself down and to be more present. And then number four, be mindful of everything that you do and train yourself the same way that you would train an animal. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on your Instagram stories and Tag me it robdial jr r o b D I A L J R the only way this podcast grows is from you guys sharing it. We don't have any massive corporation or anyone that's backing us, so we don't have any advertising dollars that go into growing this podcast. The only way it grows is from you guys sharing it. And the way that we got to top 75 in the entire world is from you guys sharing it. So I greatly appreciate it every single time that you do share it. And with that, I'm gonna leave you the same way 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. This is a vacation with Chase Sapphire Reserve. The Butler the Spa. This is the Edit a collection of handpicked luxury hotels and a $500 edit credit.

Chase Sapphire Reserve now even more rewarding.

Learn more@chase.com Sapphire Reserve cards issued by JP Morgan, Chase bank and a member FDIC subject to credit approval.

Instagram teen accounts have automatic protections for what teens see and who can contact them. Plus time management tools and Instagram will continue adding built in safety features to help create age appropriate experience. Learn more about teen accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online@instagram.com teenaccounts.