I want to help you trust yourself again when your head won’t stay quiet.
I’ve learned not to believe everything my brain tells me. Sometimes that’s a dangerous neighborhood! Your ego is not your amigo and all that.
Like when I went to a conference hoping I’d find co-collaborators and didn’t. My head replayed many conversations (for no reason at all). Pure sabotage in action, right between my ears. I went to the conference hoping to find my peeps and didn't, so I spun.
THE PROBLEM
Your head starts spinning, and you lose your place in the paragraph (or keep rereading it). You put off drafting that opposition. The spiral takes over your body and hijacks your day, and the worst part is that nothing’s actually happening except in your mind.
Now your jaw’s clenched and your shoulders are up near your ears. Your breath is shallow, nowhere near the deep breathing you know helps you. The stress and anxiety settle into your stomach. Then you’re at dinner, and someone you love tells you about their day, and you’re only half listening because you never gave those thoughts a pause or an escape route.
You can’t think your way into peace, you have to feel your way there.
THE USUAL ADVICE SUCKS
“Just stop overthinking it.” Thanks. If you could switch it off, you’d have done it years ago.
“Make a pro and con list.” Now you’re doing more thinking, only on paper.
“Ask around.” You collect five opinions and the spinning gets louder.
Most of this advice asks you to talk yourself out of a stress response that lives in your body. But your body needs a different message.
WHAT ACTUALLY WORKS!
There’s nothing wrong with you.
Your mind is doing exactly what legal training conditioned it to do: stay on high alert long after a crisis resolves (real or imagined). A load you built over years won’t release in one sitting, but it does release, in small doses, repeated. Each practice below gives that spinning somewhere to go.
THREE THINGS TO TRY THIS WEEK
Think of it as a standing appointment with your own nervous system.
1. Close the file. Pick one physical act that ends your workday: zipping your bag, shutting your laptop, turning off your office light. As you do it, say quietly (or in your head), “Done for today.” Your body learns from repetition, so do the same act, the same way, every day. (More info on repetition in the P.S.)
2. The elevator exhale. Use the in-between spaces. In the elevator, the parking garage, the walk to your car, or right before you open your front door, take one breath in and let it out slowly, longer than the inhale. Drop your shoulders on the way out. One breath is the whole practice.
3. Shake it off, literally. Watch a dog after a scare. It shakes, head to tail, and goes right back to sniffing the yard. Before you walk into your house, shake out your hands, then your arms, then bounce lightly on your heels for 30 seconds. It feels silly, and it really works. It helps your body finish the stress cycle instead of carrying it through the door.
THE TAKEAWAY
Whatever I expected from that conference, here’s what I keep relearning: when I meditate, get quiet, and take a pause, my intuitive self knows the right thing to do and what action to take. No one else has to validate what I already know. Getting quiet comes first.
Noticing and repetition are key. Notice the spiral (or whatever’s interfering with your day), then come back to a few minutes of breathing, again and again. That’s what brings the big change. You’re back in the present moment, in touch with your intuition, and steadier on your feet.
Lightness can be practiced. A few breaths and a few seconds, repeated at the same moments every day, and your head gets a lot quieter.
THIS WEEK’S RECESS
Pick one threshold you cross every workday: the elevator, your car door, your front door. Every day this week, pause there for one long exhale before you go through. Hit reply and let me know how it goes.