Keys To Stop Overthinking | The Mindset Mentor Podcast

Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. Today I'm going to talk about how to stop your mental masturbation. What do I mean by that? How to stop listening to your limiting beliefs, how to stop overthinking everything, and how to actually start taking action and creating a life that you truly want to. Because I think lots of people take part in mental masturbation. Some of you guys listening are mentally masturbating. Way too much. Thinking and thinking and thinking, and then you think about thinking, you think about thinking about thinking, and then you're overthinking, and then you're overthinking about your overthinking and getting so caught up in your thoughts and then in your feelings that you do nothing. And then you're exhausted at the end of the day because your energy is being used towards all of this thinking. Right? There's. I don't know about you, but I've had days before in the past where I've noticed that I am just so deep in my thoughts, I have so many things that are going on, and I almost do nothing physical for the day, but for some reason, by the time like five or six o' clock hits, I'm, like, exhausted. And the reason why is because my brain has been using so much energy by thinking, and we're actually using great energy that we could use to move the needle in our lives by just overthinking everything. Because your brain, even though it's only 2% of your body weight, uses about 20% of your energy every single day. And even more if you're overthinking too much. Now, when we look at the brain, one thing that I've heard people say is, like, I wish I could just turn my brain off. Like, I wish I could just stop thinking. And I'm like, that's ridiculous. One of the most ridiculous things you could say, right? Would you ever want your heart to stop beating? Would you ever want your lungs to stop breathing? Would you ever want your, you know, your foot to stop being able to move? No. Like, all of these things are designed to help. Your foot is designed to help you walk. Your heart is designed to beat. Your lungs are designed to breathe. Your brain is designed to think. The problem is what you're thinking about. You're probably thinking about what you fear. You're thinking about your limiting beliefs. You're thinking about, what if. What if I say this and she does this, or, I went to that party last night and I should have said this. Did they take this the wrong way? And you're thinking about all of the things that you're thinking and worrying about your fears and limiting beliefs and all that stuff. Because I guarantee that if you are quote unquote, overthinking all day long, all of the amazing things, if you are just overthinking your gratitude and how amazing your life is, oh, my gosh, I couldn't stop thinking about how grateful I was yesterday. I've never heard anybody say that. Right? Your problem is not your thinking. Your problem is what you're thinking about. Your problem is that you are not controlling your brain and giving it the actual direction of what you want it to be. Thinking about what you want to be doing. And sometimes thinking through things, thinking through a difficult situation is the best thing that you can do. Sometimes continuing to think about those things over and over and over and over again, and then thinking about your thinking and then shaming yourself and guilting yourself because you won't stop thinking and overthinking these things. Stop. Sometimes thinking too much about something is the worst thing that you can do. And so the idea that we want to stop thinking or we want to be able to turn our brain off is ridiculous. And I'm just going to probably let the cat out of the bag. It'll probably never happen. You'll probably never be able to turn your brain off. You'll probably never go into a state of Zen. We will probably not be monks that end up meditating and just have a blank space in our mind. But it's really about how do we use our brain and make it our sidekick instead of making it our enemy. Sometimes it can be really super beneficial to think through things. But if you're gonna be thinking through things, don't do it all in your head. Like, if you wanna stop overthinking. Your brain is so complex, and there's so many complex things that happen in your life. The best thing you can do is take all of the things that are running through your brain and. And just put them onto a piece of paper. I'm gonna give you a secret. Okay? This is something that I started doing years ago when I first really, really got into meditating. Like, really as a practice. Every single day I would sit down in my to do list, would come into my head, and what I needed to do all day long, and all of this shit that had to be done. And then I would have awesome ideas. And at the end of the meditation, I would forget my ideas. And I was like, man, how do I get all this stuff out of my brain? And so what I did was this. I did something. I just made it up one day, and it ended up working really well. And I've taught it to many people. And many people have been like, this is a great idea. And it's called a to do list. Meditation is what I called it. So what you do is this is you sit down to meditate. You close your eyes as if you're normally meditating. But the difference is you have a blank piece of paper in your notebook in front of you, and you have your pen clicked open already. So it's already clicked open, it's already ready to write. And everything that comes. You never open your eyes. This is an important part. You never open your eyes. But what you do as you keep your eyes closed, and anything that comes into your mind, that's something that needs to be done, an idea that you have, oh, my gosh, I have this great idea for I can grow my business or I need to do laundry. All those things, you just write them down with your eyes closed, right? And then you keep your hand right there. And the next idea that comes through or the next to do list that comes through, you just move your hand down a little bit and you write it down. Your handwriting is going to be a little bit messy. And then what you do is when you get done with your meditation, you take all that stuff that you wrote down, and you end up putting it on a piece of paper and being able to work through it. What's crazy about it, though, and what I have found that really helps for me and the way it came up was I kept having this feeling like I was overthinking all throughout my meditation. And I would write stuff, and I'd write stuff, and I'd write stuff. And then I get to a point where I was like, my brain ran out of things to worry about. It was like, my brain went, hey, man, you know what? You have all this stuff on paper. You don't need to worry about this anymore. And there was like this overwhelming sense of peace and calm. And I was like, oh, my gosh, did I just crack the code of the brain? Right? And you just write all these things down. It's like once your brain knows that it's on a piece of paper, a lot of times you could just release it. And then when it's on paper, when you're done, now that it's on paper, you can actually start to work through it. You can actually start to work through, make plans, figure out what you need to do, put a to do list together, all of that stuff. And so it just ends up really helping to take something out of your brain, putting it on a piece of paper. Now does this solve all of your issues in your life? No. Hell no. It's not gonna even be close. Sometimes though, you gotta look at the stuff that's on the piece of paper. You gotta just know. You know what? I'm an overthinker. I've been overthinking a lot and I'm just gonna take action. Sometimes you just gotta take action. You just gotta get moving. I remember one time there was a guy that went through one of my programs a couple years ago and he said to me, he goes, I have so many limiting beliefs. I think I to think through all of my belief think through all of my limiting beliefs and then I can take some action. And I was like, that sounds like deflection is what it sounds. It sounds like you're deflecting. Taking action is what it sounds like to think through your limiting beliefs. That sounds like trying to dig yourself out of quicksand, right? Like trying to run faster, get out of quicksand. You're only going to get more stuck because when you sit down and think about all of your limiting beliefs, guess what happens? You're gonna find more limiting beliefs. You ever done this before? Like, you think about all of the things that you fear, think about all of your limiting beliefs, think about all the problems in your life, and it just gives you more shit to think about. Just gives you more things that are, oh my God, I forgot this is wrong and oh my God, I forgot this is wrong. And I have this worry and I have this fear and I have this let me believe. It's literally like trying to run faster out of quicksand. You're just going to dig yourself deeper. So, you know, say your limiting belief is like around failure, right? Like you're just really afraid of failure and you want to sit down and think about that, Guess what's going to come up if you sit down and you say, you know what? I'm going to sit and think about my fear of failure. Do you know what's going to come up? All of your fears of failure, everything you're afraid of failing, all of your past failures, all of the, the future failures that you're imagining. Because your brain will search for evidence of whatever it is you're searching for, like whatever you're trying to find. So if you're trying to Find your fear of failure and why you have it. You're going to find a whole lot of ways that you failed in your past. Why? Simply because your brain is focusing on failure. It's like mental Google. Whatever you type into Google is going to pop up. I remember I saw a video one time and I tried this out. If you go into Google and you type, does drinking coffee make you destroy your vision? All kinds of articles about how coffee is bad for your vision will pop up. If you Google, is coffee good for your vision? All of these articles will pop up about how it is good for your vision. Your brain does the exact same thing. If you think about how you are a failure, all of the examples of how you failed in your life is going to pop up. If you think about how you're going to succeed, all of the different ways in which you could succeed will pop up. So if you want to sit around and think about your failures, you're going to think about more and more and more failures. Because that is the task that you have been giving your brain. Sometimes you just got to go, you know what I'm going to be thinking, but I'm going to just allow myself to get my ass up and get moving. And the reason why that's beautiful is because in order to get the life that you want, you have to take action. There's no way around it. Like this whole thing of like, I believe in law of attraction, I believe in manifestation. But what I don't believe in is sitting around closing your eyes, telling yourself you're going to attract it in your life, and then sitting on your ass all day long and doing nothing right, you, that's not gonna happen. You have to be able to. Not even have to be able to. You have to get yourself. You have to force yourself even sometimes to take action, even when you don't want to. You don't have to believe in yourself in order to take action. You don't have to believe that you'll succeed in order to take action. Would it help? Sure, yeah. Like, that would be nice. But belief is not a prerequisite to taking action. And here's why. Taking action is really important. As long as you're taking the correct action, you're heading in the right direction, you will eventually get to where you're trying to go. Now, it might take you less time than you want, it might take you more time than you want, but if you just start heading the right direction and you're taking the right action, you'll eventually get there. Like for me, if I'm like, you know what? I live in Austin, Texas. I want to go to Dallas. All I have to do is head north, get on 35, and eventually I will end up in Dallas. So if I'm heading the right direction north on 35 and taking the right action, which could be in a car, it could be on a bike, it could be walking, I will eventually get to where I'm trying to go. One of my favorite phrases that I've heard recently is slowly is the fastest way to get to where you want to go. Like, slowly is the fastest way to get to where you want to go. And it goes back to the nice little fable from when we were children, right? The tortoise and the hare. Everybody in life wants to be the hare. You want to be running fast and just get there as soon as possible. But what I have found over years and years and years of working, 17 years of being in this business, building my own business, starting this podcast, you know, over eight years ago now, is slow and steady actually wins a fucking race. It's crazy. Slow and steady wins a race. And as long as you're heading the right direction, you're taking the right action, you will eventually get there. And you don't have to believe in yourself, right? There are people right now in this world that are less qualified than you, that are dumber than you, and they're way ahead of you. Just because they're taking action. Isn't that crazy? There's people who are just, like, not as qualified to do whatever it is that you want to do in this world. There's people that are just dumb as a rock, and they're further ahead because they're not sitting around and thinking about things. They're just taking the right action to get to where they want to go. I always say to people, like, it'd be great if there was a flip, like a switch on the side of your head, like a light switch, right? Like on and off. It was an on and off switch for your prefrontal cortex, the thinking part of your brain, the part that thinks things, all the executive thinking, all that stuff, and just you go, okay, well, I'm gonna build my business to a million dollars this year. And then you start thinking and worrying and fears and boop, boop, be do. And I don't have enough time, and I have this going on, and I don't think I could do it right. And I'm not good enough or smart enough. Who am I to do this? If you could just Turn that part of your brain off. You would be so much more productive. It would be so easy to take action. So the problem is not the action. The problem is that you're thinking too much. So what is the right action for you to take? Right? How can you get out of your mind and take action? It's not that you don't know what to do. Like, 99% of you know what you need to do. Like, if even if you wanted a six pack, you know what you need to do, right? Everybody knows what they need to do to get a six pack. Most people know what they need to get a six pack, right? You gotta eat a little bit healthier. You probably gotta stop, you know, eating late at night. Stop having so much sugar. You probably gotta go for some more walks. You probably should do some ab exercises. What if you work out every single day? Like, we know what we need to do, it's just not doing it. That's what it comes down to. Why? Why are you not doing it? Because you're thinking too much. Oh, what if I get rejected? What if I fail? What if I succeed? What are other people gonna think about me? What if I run out of money? What if I let people down? What if my children don't love me? What if I'm not good enough? What if I'm not smart enough? What if I'm not pretty enough? Sometimes you just have to become aware that you are thinking way too much. You are in this circle of mental masturbation, and you are just masturbating all day, right? And sometimes you just gotta stop thinking and you just gotta start moving. So the real question comes down to where are you trying to go? What direction do you need to start heading? And if you know what direction you start heading, then you ask yourself, what actions do I need to take today? What's my next best step? Not the next best 20 steps. What's the next best step right now? And then what you do is you just go, 10, four. Roger that. What's the next thing I need to do? It's this. I'm gonna do it right now. I don't care if I believe in myself. I don't care if I don't feel like doing it. Doesn't matter. I'm gonna get it done because I know I need. I know I need to get it done. And that's as simple as that. 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 in it. Robdial Jr R O B D A L J R and once again, as I always say, if you are one of the people who loves this podcast, please do me a favor, give us a rating review. However, you listen to us and I would greatly, greatly appreciate it. And with that I will leave you the same way leave you every single episode. Make it your mission. Make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.