If You Give Yourself Time to Overthink, You Will. Here’s How to Stop and Get Unstuck

It’s a busy season for me. I’ve been working on my new project, nuumani.com, with the help of some great product developers and coaches while still having the pleasure of helping clients one-on-one. I've also aced two courses at Harvard Extension School, where I'm working my way to a Master's in Management. But let me tell you, this was a ton of work that I did not anticipate! While all of this was happening, and I was celebrating my birthday in Porto and visiting friends in Italy, I felt I was kicking it, and being in action, unhelpful procrastination started making it harder for me to focus on the right things.

I'm sure this is as familiar to you as it is to me. It's a direct result of the pressure, combined with the creative high of new projects: I just get so many additional ideas that I start to focus on the wrong thing. Worse, my focus gets so scattered that I start to overthink everything, so eventually, I end up doing nothing.

The truth is: if you give yourself time to overthink, you will. And it won't be good for your productivity.

The good news is that there are things you can do to stop yourself from going there, even when ideas pop up like fireflies on a hot summer night in the Midwest.

Here are a few tips to help you stay on track and avoid that mind trap:

1. Recognize when you're overthinking

   The first step in overcoming overthinking is to recognize when it's happening. Pay attention to your thoughts and notice any patterns of excessive rumination or indecisiveness that keep you from getting work done.
   

2. Create a clear roadmap

   One of the main reasons we tend to overthink is that we could be doing so many different things. Especially as creative entrepreneurs, we have a million ideas floating around in our heads. To combat this, create a clear roadmap or plan for your work that you can chop up into clear tasks for your day or week.
   

3. Set deadline

   I’m such a victim of this. I’m so flexible with deadlines that I have become immune to moving them. To be clear, a little flexibility is good but too much is deadly for your work. Setting deadlines for yourself is another way to avoid overthinking. It creates a sense of urgency and helps you focus on completing tasks instead of juggling between them.
   

4. Let go of what isn't a priority

   Because I became so stretched in time, I had to make some difficult decisions about how I spend it and say goodbye to some volunteering work I enjoyed and some projects I just don't have the time to work on right now. It can be challenging to let go of things we enjoy or have invested time in, but sometimes, it's necessary to prioritize and stay focused on what matters.
   

5. Know what success means to you

   It's great to have many opportunities, and we often fear what will happen when we don't say "yes" to what shows up. But what about the risk if you do it? Would that help your business or project, or is it more of a distraction? Don't feel bad if something doesn't align with your goals or definition of success.

Remember, you’re in control of your journey and the decisions you make along the way. I have had to remind myself of this in the past few weeks, and as I'm writing this, I am still digesting a potent conversation I had with one of my business mentors this morning. He pointed out that I was overwhelming myself with overthinking and a lack of oversight or priorities. And you know what? He was right.

Being an entrepreneur is a fantastic journey I wouldn't trade for the world. But what a learning curve it is as well! And a humbling experience. The most important thing is to know what success means to you and prioritize accordingly. Don't let the fear of missing out or the pressure of others push you into overthinking and spreading yourself thin.

Saying "no" to ideas and staying focused is hard, but I know you've got this!

Feeling overwhelmed by endless decisions and mental clutter?

I understand how paralyzing overthinking can be. My private career and business coaching sessions are designed to help you break free from these mental traps and gain clarity.

Imagine a life where you make confident decisions with ease, achieve your career or business goals, and enjoy the process. With expert guidance and personalized strategies, you can turn your biggest vision into reality.

Schedule your free session!

5 ways to cultivate a mindset of good enough (and beat perfectionism)

If I’d beam back in time to have a coaching session with my former self, let’s say from ten years ago, and I’d ask her what she wanted most out of coaching with me (I know this intro sounds super strange, but there’s a point to this madness I promise) I’m positive she’d say something like “finish the stuff I start” or “stop procrastinating all the time”. If I’d then ask her what she thought about herself she’d probably mention how she often didn’t feel confident, that life and work were overwhelming, she didn’t fit in, and simply wasn’t good enough.

(See, I told you :))

A lot has changed since then. The overwhelm and awkwardness I felt growing up and building my first business have thankfully made room for a more fulfilling state of sort-of balance and flow.

For the past ten years I’ve been my own (sometimes uber shitty) coaching client. I’ve used myself as a guinea pig to try and understand what this life and work thing is all about. I’ve tested uncountable ways to be a better, more productive and successful human. To learn, grow, and figure out what actually works.

The short conclusion – drumroll included:

Everything you thought you knew about happiness is wrong.

It’s not about being the best, having the most money, buying the Chanel bag, being *super* busy all the time. It’s not about having the seven figure business (although I’m all about money love, but that’s another story). If you hadn’t caught on yet, what I mean is, happiness has nothing to do with being PERFECT.

In fact, is has everything to do with NOT being perfect.

Happiness appears when we stop the “shoulds” and “musts”, and see ourselves for what we are – and always have been: good enough just the way we are (if a romantic scene from Bridget Jones is popping into your mind right now you’re definitely my kind of human).

Jumping back to my younger self for a minute. Ten years ago I was an utter and absolute perfectionist. Nothing I did was ever good enough. The result? I didn’t do much at all. I was also a helpless people-pleaser who lacked the confidence to make herself a sandwich before asking for permission. What I knew best was how to follow rules, to adapt to whatever I thought was expected of me. By the time I was 30 there was little room left for freedom, play, curiosity or creativity. Life and work felt like burdens. All I had were “have tos”.

The state of emotional, mental, and physical exhaustion I was in was the result of excessive and prolonged stress. To be clear: that I’D PUT ON MYSELF. Yes, work was hectic. Yes, building a business is hard BUT I was never the helpless little chicken I made myself out to be. I didn’t know it at the time but the truth is, I had the power all along (clicks shoes together three times).

That power is called CONFIDENCE. And it’s the result of (many things including) cultivating a mindset of good enough. That mindset will help you:

• Focus on what’s really important for you

• Find and do work that feeds you instead of drains you

• Actually create the freaking thing instead of just thinking about it

• Get off your time machine and discover where the fun’s really at (spoiler alert: it’s called now)

• Start living your own dreams instead of trying to build everyone else’s

But Murielle, I hear you ask, how does one cultivate such a seemingly magical mindset?

The truth? It’s super easy AND palm sweat complicated at the same time.

You change the way you think.

Simple enough, right? There’s just one little tiny thing though… All the years you’ve been gobbling up and repeating so many other thoughts about yourself and the world. They left a mark on you. They’re the reason you think the way you do. So to get to the good stuff you’ll need to get passed those first.

It’s a process that takes dedication, time, and discipline. This pink-loving guinea pig knows because she’s been there. So here are 5 ways that work(ed) for me and hopefully will get this life-changing process of *finally feeling good enough like the star that you are* going for you too.

#1 Stop comparing your awesome self to others

Comparisitis is the disease of our time. The rise of social media – a process that’s been going on for about 15 years now – marked the beginning of an exponential cycle of out-of-control expectations and judgments about ourselves. Don’t get me wrong. We’ve always glanced at the neighbors to see what they were up to, but it was never in our face the way it’s now. We could still escape it, because we were in control of the information stream. Today things are different. Everywhere we look we see what looks like awesome people doing what looks like amazing stuff. Online nobody has a bad hair day or doubts about their life. And that’s a shitty problem. Having those perfect humans pop into our feeds so many times a day (about every 18 minutes studies find) is making us sick, unhappy about our lives, forced to hide the *real* struggles we all have to deal with.

My recipe to stop comparing your awesome self to others includes:

• Limit your time on social media (15 minutes a day will do – yes I mean one five)

• Unfollow accounts that make you feel blah

• Avoid being sucked into the research hole that inevitably leads to “she’s awesome and I suck”

• Remember that all humans are unique. A valid comparison would need both of you to be equal in EVERYTHING except the one thing you’re comparing. Identical twins wouldn’t even meet those criteria, so how could you? Ever?

#2 Accept that perfection is bullshit

As long as you think there’s an absolute state of perfection to be attained, you’ll never be happy with what you have or who you are. The truth about perfection is that it doesn’t exist. Plato (and a heap of other philosophers) believed life on Earth was a poor imitation of the *real* world. Surely, he thought, if we can imagine something to be perfect it must BE perfect somewhere. Since it clearly wasn’t in the physical world (clears throat to hide discomfort) he concluded it must be in the world of ideas.

Yes, there’s something to say for Plato’s ideas. There are many flowers in the world, but none of them compare to the idea of THE flower we have in our mind. We’ve never seen this perfect flower with our own eyes, we’ve only IMAGINED it. The point is, we’re great at conceptualizing. According to Yuval Noah Harari one of the indispensable qualities we needed in order to rule the world. But there’s a difference between ideas and reality, just like there’s a difference between being perfect and being human.   

#3 Be a fearless scaredy cat

I know you’re scared. I’m scared too. Every single freakin’ day. But that doesn’t stop me from taking action (anymore). Fearless is what I call feeling the fear and doing it anyway. Because mmm… the fear never goes away. So we might as well learn to live with it, right? My advice is to be a fearless scaredy cat. To do your thing, even if you feel like you’ve got a giant sign on your back saying “I have no clue, please rescue me”.

#4 Don’t believe everything you think

Seven years ago I enrolled in a 10-week mindfulness training program. Before that I’d never meditated, never considered the power of my breath or body, and certainly never thought about the things I told myself every single day. In session one of the training our teacher, in response to a question about that subject, *casually* mentioned that we – humans – are not our thoughts.

Say what?! I’d never considered that the voice in my head could be different from who I was. This was such a revelation that it took me weeks to grasp the full power of what she’d said. Especially with the negative tune that was playing in my head at the time, realising I had CONTROL over what I was thinking gave me back my power. The thing is, you have that power too. You’re not your thoughts either, so don’t believe everything you think just because you well.. think it.

#5 Focus on smarter, not flawless

Know that you can grow, learn and improve. A mistake isn’t a problem until you get stuck in making it over and over again. Instead is trying to be flawless, learn how to learn from your mistakes, to integrate what happened so you can do a better job next time. That’s the only thing anyone could ask of you, and the only thing you should ask of yourself.

Flawless, we’ve seen above, doesn’t exist. So it would be mighty silly to put any effort into trying to achieve it. Focus on what you CAN change, on the stuff you do have control over. Meaning: just be smarter next time. Because you’ve got this!

How to take risks (without losing everything you have)

In today’s dream bigger tip I want to focus on the “bigger” part of the process. In everything we aim to achieve there’s a level of change involved. Learning a new language, starting a business, developing healthier habits, … whatever you decide to undertake change is what will take you from where you are right now to where you want to be.

If you’ve been dreaming small until now – that is if you haven’t acted on your big dreams because you believe those dreams are not for you or you don’t know where to start – dreaming bigger means changing the way you’ve conceived your dreams so far. This change – like any other – requires you to learn to be comfortable with what often feels like excruciating uncertainty. It means learning to take risks, and be OK with doing it.

Imagine your big dream is to start your own shop on Etsy. You create the most beautiful jewelry, that all your friends love. But your own business? Actually making money from your craft? That’s not for you. At least, that’s what you keep convincing yourself of. So you keep dreaming small.

In order to dream bigger you need to be willing to take risks. Try something new. Tell yourself, whatever the voice in your head is saying, that you can do it.

How to learn to take risks?

In what follows I share 3 things that have helped me to learn to take risks, and reprogram myself to dream bigger. Whatever your big dreams are, if you’ve been hesitant to pursue them because it feels “too risky”, these tips might help you get started.

• Dream big, but start small

What I hear most often when I’m working with clients, is that they don’t know where to start. The lack of clarity about what to do first sometimes comes from not knowing what they really want, but in many cases it’s the result of feeling overwhelmed by the daunting task to start working on achieving dreams that look like huge mountains.

I know it can be so overwhelming to look at your big dreams in their entirety, and ask yourself how you’ll ever be able to reach them. Like standing in flip flops, t-shirt and pink shorts at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro, wondering how you’ll ever reach the top. The result of this type of overwhelm is often inaction. The risks to undertake the adventure are simply too great to even try – or so it seems.

That’s why it’s important to dream big, but start small. Instead of focusing on the mountain, focus on the first step you can take right now. Then take that step. It will help reduce the level of risk you think you’re taking, while actually moving you towards your goals.

• Remember that you can always change your mind

Another reason my clients often procrastinate on getting started with their big dreams is the fear that the choices they’ll make will be forever. This is a mistake our mind makes when we’re about to step into uncertainty. Leaving the familiar behind is one of the hardest things we can do. We’re programmed to like the comfort that comes from knowing what to expect, so jumping into the unknown often feels like one of the most important decisions we can make in our life.

Although deciding to change something in your life can feel like a decision you’ll have to live with forever, this simply isn’t true. It’s not because you start an Etsy shop today, that you have to commit to it forever.

Even if you make a decision that you end up regretting later on, there’s almost always a way back. Or at least another direction you can take that will get you closer to what you really want. That’s the beauty of being in charge of your life, and having the power to make decisions. And why risk taking is not so risky after all.

• Always fail forward

Change involves risk, but it also involves learning. Perhaps there’s even no real learning without at least a little risk taking. Inside our comfort zone we’re usually well aware of what we know, and what we don’t know. Learning requires us to step outside of it, and stretch ourselves a little more. It’s outside of our comfort zone, where risks are taken, that we open ourselves up for failure.

The fear of failure is one of the top reasons why so many women don’t follow their dreams. Unfortunately, as I’ve explained above, there’s no risk taking without risk of failing. And that’s actually OK. What needs to happen to dream bigger is not to avoid failure at all costs, but to reframe what failure really is, and to get rid of the notion that it’s bad to fail.

Failure is essential to growth, and part of the process. Learn to get comfortable with your mistakes, to see them as key learning moments, to fail forward.

If you want more tips to get unstuck, I’ve got great news for you! This tip is part of a series, you can find all entries here.

How to beat overwhelm, and cultivate resilience

A lot of my clients talk to me about feeling overwhelmed: at work, in their business, with the kids, when trying to marry all their passions, and move forward with what they want for themselves… I know, believe me, I’ve been there. More times than I can remember. In order to achieve the things that really mattered to me, I had to learn how to deal with overwhelm, and find inner resilience instead.

So here’s a short how-to guide for anyone who feels overwhelmed, and wants to find inner peace, wellbeing, and resilience instead.

What you’ll find below are my five main lessons from years of learning how to overcome, and banish overwhelm. Hopefully they’ll help you as much as they’ve helped me.

#1 Slow down

One of my business mentoring clients told me how overwhelmed she felt last week, after having set some powerful business goals for herself.  By digging through the overwhelm together, she realized that it wasn’t the goal that was the issue, but the time she had given herself to achieve it. This is true for a lot of us, and many of our goals.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed about something you want to achieve, take a good look at when you’re expecting to reach that goal. Chances are that that’s the problem, and not the goal.

As an experiment mentally push that goal to the end of the year, and give yourself permission to feel great about not achieving it before that time.

The same goes for other things too. Let’s say you promised someone to help out with something this week, but you’re schedule is absolutely full, and you’re overwhelmed. Now imagine pushing that commitment two weeks into the future, when you have a few days off from work, and time to actually do it.

How does it feel? Still overwhelming? If not, it’s time to slow down. Not only will it get rid of overwhelm, it’s a great way to stay motivated, and build resilience by setting healthy boundaries for yourself.

#2 Think like a microscope

Another recurring culprit that keeps us overwhelmed is focusing on the big picture too much. You set a goal for yourself, let’s say to reach the finish line of a marathon this year, but from day one you focus on the enormity of the distance you’ll have to run to achieve it. While – of course – being totally out of shape. It’s pretty safe to assume that this would overwhelm even the strongest among us, don’t you think so?

The alternative, and a powerful way to not let yourself get overwhelmed, is to think like a microscope. Focus on the absolute smallest task or thing that you can do right now to move forward, without looking at the bigger picture. This has worked successfully for me in many situations, and with all sorts of goals (big or small), and I guarantee it will work for you as well. When we take the hugeness out of something, we often take the overwhelm out of it too.

#3 Don’t take anything seriously

This might sound obvious to you, but I had to do a lot of work to get it. As a recovering perfectionist, and people-pleaser I spent the bigger part of my years trying to live up to unattainable expectations. A sure-fire for overwhelm. But even if you’re not a perfectionist, taking things too seriously might keep you stuck.

The truth is, almost nothing is serious to the extent that you should feel overwhelmed because of it. Instead, be playful. Enjoy what you’re doing (that’s the whole point anyway!). Progress today is better than perfection tomorrow. So what if it’s not entirely like you envisioned it? It never is anyway…

Cultivating this mindset will alleviate more than overwhelm. It will help you get rid of guilt, and stress too along the way!

#4 Let go, and ask for help

So far we know that overwhelm is triggered when something is too much too soon, when it’s too big for us to handle in one go, and when we think our lives depend on it.

But there’s more.

Overwhelm often shows up when we want to control everything. Why? Because it’s impossible to do so! And very often those that want to stay in control also have a hard time asking for help. They believe that it is their duty to do it all. To build resilience while avoiding overwhelm you do the exact opposite. You let go, and ask for help.

#5 Keep moving

Finally, however overwhelmed you feel, whatever your circumstances are my advice is to stay in action, and move forward. Nobody ever got anything done by thinking about it. The same goes for overwhelm. It’s not going to go away on it’s own, it requires of you to do something about it.

Like implementing the tips above, or doing anything else that works for you.

Now do tell me, what helps you to move past overwhelm? How do you build resilience? Let me know below.