Wellness practitioners tend to be intelligent, aware people.  They are naturally contemplative, introspective, and thoughtful in their relationship to business and life.  These are all wonderful qualities, aside from one key issue that I repeatedly observe with my clients and online audience.  I’m singling myself out as someone who is also guilty of this pattern.  

You see, thinking is only helpful up to a point, then it becomes an obstacle to your success.  If you tend to see multiple points of view and ways of looking at things, this shows you have a highly developed creative faculty that is designed to be a major influence in your ability to succeed.   The question is, are you allowing this faculty to move freely through you, without clutter or stagnation? 

This is a BIG question.  

I know in my experience that when I overthink, life starts to feel kind of suffocating and unworkable.  Because I tend to see things from a multi-layered perspective, this can quite easily lead to analyis paralysis and inertia, where little action is taken because many different ideas and viewpoints appear to be equally valid.  

I’ve had to train myself to use thought as a servant, not my master.  Whenever I feel pent up, stressed, or frustrated, it’s nearly always a sign that I’m stuck in thought.  

Can you relate?

I’ve said it many times– business rewards SPEED.  This starts with an efficient, clear thought process that naturally leads to inspired action.  How do you know if you’re overthinking?

1. . Things feel complex.  You tend to identify with the complicated nature of your situation and the belief that solutions to your problems are also quite complicated.
2.  You feel consistent emotional conflict about your business.  It’s like there are 2 different ‘yous’ in your head doing battle, trying to figure things out, but you never really get the clarity you seek.
3. You struggle with decision making.  You over analyze decisions and expend too much energy trying to navigate your way through potential options.
4.  You usually have to think over buying decisions a great deal, like investing in a new website, coaching program, seminar, or mentor.  You struggle with these decisions. 
5. You feel like you have to ‘try really hard’ to get great results for your clients.  You give everything to them, which tends to be overkill.  Too much info, too much advice, too many modalities, and so on. 
6. It takes forever to get stuff done.  Your website took a year, each blog post takes weeks, a 2 minute video is an eternal struggle.  The time from idea to implementation is a long, chaotic road full of diversions and procrastination.

As you can see, these are all what I’d call ‘practice killers.’  They destroy your ability to generate positive momentum, genuine confidence, and a state of flow that leads to prosperity.  

So, how do you get out of your head?  Well, it’s a big question, one that I’ve personally spent years focusing on.  Here’s what works for me and for many of my coaching clients:

1.  Start your day by detaching from thought.  This is where meditation or any kind of awareness practice is essential.  If you’re already a deep thinker, awareness is the tool that channels thought into a productive endpoint.  Practice somatic forms of meditation that anchor you in your body and help you see the space around your thoughts.  
2.  Exercise every day.  Have at least one activity that moves the energy and blood in your body and gets you breathing deeply.  Personally, I play tennis 3-4 days a week and do some yoga and weights on the side.  I find that if I go too long without this, my mental energy begins to constrict and overthinking ensues.  
3.  Consciously develop courage.  Overthinking is really an attempt to control reality.  Something in us believes that our thoughts can manage our outer situation in a way that makes us safe.  Deep down, of course, we know this is a total illusion, but this tendency can still very much dominate our daily experience.  Start your day by focusing on courage.  What does it mean to you to trust life?  To open yourself up and let life handle things for you?  To deeply accept whatever is in your current reality? 
4.  Do a daily brain dump.  For me, writing is a way to productively channel mental energy.  Get all your ideas out on paper every day.  Turn your thoughts into blog posts and creative content.  NEVER let your thoughts get pent up without expression for more than a couple days.  
5. Practice the art of first thought, best thought.  This one is HUGE.  Underlying your thinking faculty is this wonderfully simple, ever present resource called intuition.  It ALWAYS knows what’s best for you and how to make clear decisions.  Usually, the first thought you get is the one that you should trust, especially if it feels good.  This is true for creative projects and decision making.  People often ask me how I’m able to write books in such a short period of time or crank out new programs and content so quickly.  The answer is that I don’t allow myself to stall.  I trust my first thought.  
6. See the value in being imperfect.  Perfectionism is an epidemic that can cause massive problems for business owners.  Be willing to get things done imperfectly.  Taking imperfect, efficient action is FAR better than waiting for every detail to meet your standards.  I’ve worked with many clients over the years whose #1 block was perfectionism.  Nothing ever got done because they just couldn’t accept even the smallest flaw.  To change this, you have to ‘buy in’ to the belief that there is tremendous value in letting go of this habit.  Refer to #3 above as the deeper practice needed to do this every day.  It IS possible!

Even this blog post is a reflection of this practice.  I had a thought that I’d like to write something.  Without allowing any hesitation, I simply started typing to see what wanted to express itself.  I got my clunky, conflicted self out of the way and trusted whatever wanted to show up here.  As such, I can write a post like this in about 15 minutes.  

With practice, you can do this too.  

Keep the multi-dimensional, aware, sensitive parts of yourself intact.  They are extremely important attributes for your success and fulfillment.  Make it a daily practice to clear the habit of overthinking.  Re-invent yourself into an efficient, uncluttered, clear, purposeful action taker.  I assure you, this is a surefire way to get out of scarcity/survival mode and into a state of true abundance and leadership.  

Let me know how it goes!