If you feel yourself getting stuck in thought loops, begin to challenge your routine ways of being and thinking; there lies freedom.
It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble.
Mark Twain
It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.
Getting Stuck in thought Loops
At the beginning of my Nuclear Winter Period (when everything in my life imploded in 2008), I kept watch like an Australian Shepherd guarding sheep.
I was on duty 24/7, believing that it was my sole responsibility to ensure all was going to work out just fine and that even though everything around us was crumbling, we would be okay.
I slept with one eye open, dozing rather than sinking into truly restorative sleep. I studied the faces of my children for indications of their well-being. I ran around the household’s ever-leaking financial dam, plugging holes with fingers, toes, and frantic efforts to bring in cash.
If I didn’t hold up the world, if I dared to lower my arms for even one second, I believed—I knew—disaster would follow.
I was a zombie, stoned on adrenaline, cortisol, and anxiety.
In order to cope, I turned to working more and more. I reasoned to myself that I could work my way out of the quicksand. When I had wrapped another 18-hour day, I chose to leave my body by drinking a couple of glasses of red wine and eating a half box of Hot & Spicy Cheez-Its.
I’d wake the next morning feeling foggy, sluggish, and unbearably sad.
I turned to business seminars, thought leaders, and online programs for struggling entrepreneurs. Surely there was a technique I was missing, some sort of elusive knowledge out there that I could learn and apply to my business to get out of the doom loop I was in. I took dozens of workshops and read business books.
Absolutely nothing changed.
Considering Mindset
In early 2011, the morning after I had moved out of the marital home, I woke in the townhouse I had rented and stared at the towers of cardboard boxes in the bedroom. I had slept on top of the comforter, diagonally, white Keds sneakers still on my feet. I propped up against the headboard and tried to blink away reality.
I grabbed my iPad. I read a couple of emails and went to YouTube to scan videos. I landed on a video of a woman walking across a stage and speaking about the importance of mindset.
BOOM!
A dozen realizations landed immediately. I remembered my coaching training from Dr. Martha Beck. I recognized that I had unknowingly been in a Thought Jail, getting stuck in thought loops, for so long that I had been unaware of the biggest issue I faced: the painful stories I had been telling myself on repeat.
Here is a sample of those stories:
“I have to do this all alone.”
“This is all up to me.”
“Adam is not going to be okay.”
“I need to work harder to get out of this hole.”
“There’s no way I can take time off.”
Sounds fun, huh?
While my circumstances were, yes, challenging, it was my thoughts about those circumstances that were keeping me stuck and in pain.
Stop Getting Stuck in Thought Loops: Journaling as a Tool
Are you in a season of funk?
If so, get out your journal and write down the entirety of the issues you are grappling with. Get down every icky detail.
Next, write down what you are telling yourself as a result of those issues. Can you identify the thoughts that are making you feel bad? Write them all down.
Now, study the painful, looping thoughts. Can you spot where the lies are?
For example, one of my thoughts about my circumstances was, “There’s no way I can take time off.” When I wrote that in my journal, I could see the ludicrous nature of that mind construct. The panicked, anxious part of my brain that was in Fight or Flight mode had told me I had to work nonstop.
My soul knew better.
The sane part of me knew I needed rest, fun, play. I needed renewal on a cellular and spiritual level of the highest order if I was going to have access to my best thinking, my most creative ideas, and strategic problem-solving. The very things that would stop me from getting stuck in thought loops, inch me forward, and put me back on the path to success.
If life’s circumstances have you by the tail right now, try to get clarity and distance from the thoughts keeping you stuck.
Ask yourself: what is it I am believing to be true right now that just ain’t so?
Do the counter-intuitive thing. Leave your desk and computer. Take a nap. Go on a long walk. Write in your journal. Play around with art supplies that may have been gathering dust. Listen to or watch something beautiful. Sit in a quiet room for ten minutes and just relish the silence.
Reach out to a trusted advisor, coach, or friend.
Getting to the root cause of what is holding us back sets us free. When we get the best of our brains back on board, we begin to finally see solutions and regain the vitality needed to put them into motion.
