I was recently helping a friend who is suffering from anxiety.
Her head is a theme park - it’s filled with adventures and ideas and wonder. The trouble is that it’s open 24 hours! It’s an exhausting, messed up, busy place that she wants to escape. She thinks her head is a problem- something that she could ‘get rid off’.
I talked to her about reframing her thinking. About turning the box around and looking at it from another angle. “Sometimes the only thing we can change is our mind” is a quote from my first book Look Gorgeous Be Happy. Changing your mind is powerful - but changing your mind about your mind is completely mind blowing!!!
My friend is clever. Possibly too clever. Her head is like a 256 gig iPhone. It has HUGE capacity. But she is comparing herself to 68 gig iPhones rocking around town happily living their lives with out too many apps open. They don’t get too complicated.
Having a big and busy head is complicated. It causes overthinking, it causes comparison and it causes procrastination. Constantly thinking is exhausting, comparing yourself to others is deliberating, and procrastination is just plain annoying.
Theme parks need to be open, they need good management and the need down time and maintenance. Just like heads!
What can you do?
Have a meeting with yourself. Ask a friend to sit in for perspective.
List everything on your mind. Work out what's important. What's annoying you.
Identify what you HAVE to do? Get rid of anything that someone else can do.
Remove anything that is not necessary.
Take action. Do the things you ‘have to’ quickly and efficiently.
Do not compare your world to others. Others may ‘appear’ the same as you but you have no idea what their back story is or which chapter they are up to.