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A Simple Solution for Overthinking

Personalized support for learning how to integrate mindfulness into your life. Delivered fresh everyday by our world renowned experts. Choose meditation duration:

Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness. Today I'm going to talk about a really simple way that you can let go of the habit of overthinking. So letting go, for example, of getting stuck in rumination about a problem or getting stuck in anxieties and worries. So I'm going to offer you a little bit of a metaphor here. Professors at universities, they hold office hours once, maybe twice a week.

What they don't do is give that students 24 hour access to them, because if they did that, it'd pretty quickly become totally overwhelming and probably debilitating. They'd never be able to get any other work done. Likewise, if we give our worries and our ruminations and our self-doubts 24 hour access to our attention, it's going to be just as debilitating and actually quite destructive. It's hard to focus properly on anything if we're really overwhelmed by all of that, you know. We become stressed and kind of negative.

So, what if like those professors, we set up office hours for our worrying or our problem solving? What if we were to make like a deal with ourselves to set aside a brief amount of time each day, or maybe each week to do some focused thinking about what could happen in the future and some constructive problem solving? Now after the office hours, we let it go. If we can do that, then whenever we start ruminating or worrying outside office hours, we can simply give ourselves permission to leave it for now, knowing that we either already dealt with it yesterday, or there's a designated time and space to deal with it later today, or maybe tomorrow. So by giving ourselves office hours like this, we can really let go of that habit of always overthinking and then we can find more ease and calm in everyday life. Also, we can deal with life's challenges in a much more clear-headed, calm, and effective way. So I invite you to take up office hours for the rest of this week and just play with it, experiment with it and see how it goes for you.

Of course, the ultimate training for our minds to become clear and focused ongoing is through the practice of meditation. So on that note, if you care to, let's just begin to settle in for today's practice. And of course, as always, thank you for your practice and your presence here with us.

Melli O'Brien

4.7

A Simple Solution for Overthinking

Personalized support for learning how to integrate mindfulness into your life. Delivered fresh everyday by our world renowned experts. Choose meditation duration:

Duration

Your default time is based on your progress and is changed automatically as you practice.

Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness. Today I'm going to talk about a really simple way that you can let go of the habit of overthinking. So letting go, for example, of getting stuck in rumination about a problem or getting stuck in anxieties and worries. So I'm going to offer you a little bit of a metaphor here. Professors at universities, they hold office hours once, maybe twice a week.

What they don't do is give that students 24 hour access to them, because if they did that, it'd pretty quickly become totally overwhelming and probably debilitating. They'd never be able to get any other work done. Likewise, if we give our worries and our ruminations and our self-doubts 24 hour access to our attention, it's going to be just as debilitating and actually quite destructive. It's hard to focus properly on anything if we're really overwhelmed by all of that, you know. We become stressed and kind of negative.

So, what if like those professors, we set up office hours for our worrying or our problem solving? What if we were to make like a deal with ourselves to set aside a brief amount of time each day, or maybe each week to do some focused thinking about what could happen in the future and some constructive problem solving? Now after the office hours, we let it go. If we can do that, then whenever we start ruminating or worrying outside office hours, we can simply give ourselves permission to leave it for now, knowing that we either already dealt with it yesterday, or there's a designated time and space to deal with it later today, or maybe tomorrow. So by giving ourselves office hours like this, we can really let go of that habit of always overthinking and then we can find more ease and calm in everyday life. Also, we can deal with life's challenges in a much more clear-headed, calm, and effective way. So I invite you to take up office hours for the rest of this week and just play with it, experiment with it and see how it goes for you.

Of course, the ultimate training for our minds to become clear and focused ongoing is through the practice of meditation. So on that note, if you care to, let's just begin to settle in for today's practice. And of course, as always, thank you for your practice and your presence here with us.

Melli O'Brien

Melli O'Brien

4.7

Duration

Melli O'Brien

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