The Exhausting Business of Thinking About Everything

I read a story this week about Karen Darke, an adventurer who was paralysed from the chest down after a climbing accident. Years later, she attempted to climb El Capitan, a huge rock face in Yosemite National Park.

Her boyfriend had built a special harness so she could haul herself up using her arms. On the first day, after several frustrating and unsuccessful attempts, she gave up. They decided to abandon the climb and go to the beach instead.

She woke up the following morning and said, "Let's try again."

Nothing had changed except for one thing: she was no longer caught up in the mental noise about whether she could do it. She just got on with the climb.

And guess what? Four days later, she'd done it.

I reflect on these kinds of scenarios A LOT, as I see this as one of the biggest barriers in my own life, and in the lives of my friends and clients, to getting shizzz done!

So I have a question for you…

How much time do you spend thinking about doing something compared with actually doing it?

The gym

Three strength-training sessions each week. Three hours.

But how many more hours do we spend thinking about going? Debating whether we're too tired, deciding on the best time, promising we'll go later, feeling guilty about missing Tuesday and promising we'll make up for it on Thursday?

The snoring spouse

Your partner is snoring. You're awake and annoyed. You start thinking about how selfish they are, how exhausted you'll be tomorrow, and counting the hours left before your alarm goes off. Eventually, you retreat to the spare room. The snoring stops. But your thinking doesn't.

Starting a business

You need to come up with the perfect name. The logo isn't quite right. You need another qualification on the wall. Or perhaps a social media or podcast course? Months pass and you've become extremely busy preparing to have a business, but you haven't actually spoken to a potential customer.

The difficult conversation

You spend days mentally rehearsing what you're going to say. Imagining their responses, preparing your counterarguments, revisiting old grievances. Preparing your defence. The actual conversation takes seven minutes and bears almost no resemblance to the fifty-seven versions you've already had in your head.

I'm sure at least one of these is familiar to you.

They're the kinds of scenarios I unpack with clients every week, and if there's ADHD in the mix (which, invariably, with my wonderful clients there is), then the busy mind is VERY familiar territory.

And there are plenty more examples…

The holiday that's supposed to be relaxing. You've spent weeks planning, checking, anticipating and worrying about everything that might go wrong. You finally arrive and find yourself wondering whether you're enjoying it enough.

The person who can't make a decision. Not because they don't know what they want, but because they're trying to guarantee they'll never regret choosing it.

The 4pm appointment that has you unable to focus on anything else all day. Or the 9am flight that has you waking every hour from 1am, terrified you'll sleep through your alarm.

We're often not struggling with the thing we think we're struggling with. We're struggling with all the thinking we're doing about the thing.

Not only is having a busy head about the most exhausting way to misuse your mind, it can massively impact your energy and the time you have for doing what you really want.

It's not that I don't still have that narrative running around going to the gym, even after all these years.

I just ignore it.

And this is something I love helping people see through my coaching. Turning down the noise, or even having days or weeks where it's turned off altogether.

It's about understanding how our experience is created through thought, and what happens when we stop taking every passing thought quite so seriously.

As our understanding deepens, so much of that mental clutter starts losing its grip. The little sideshows and distractions that used to demand so much of our attention become less compelling.

The volume gets turned down. There's more space for common sense, fresh ideas, creativity and simply enjoying ourselves. And quite often, the things we'd made so complicated turn out to be surprisingly straightforward.

I had a client joke after a few months of working together that she's gone from too busy and overwhelmed to having space for another part time job! She hadn't realised how much of the busyness she was feeling was coming from her thoughts.

Of course, life still throws things at us. There are real challenges, practical decisions and things that need our attention.

But we don't have to spend every waking hour mentally wrestling with them.

We don't have to get rid of our thoughts. Sometimes the biggest change isn't in what we're doing. It's in how much thinking we're no longer doing about it.

Imagine what you could do with all that freed-up headspace.

Or perhaps you'd simply enjoy a bit of peace and quiet.