How to Stop Worrying and Start Living

Today's blog post was written by my colleague, Richard Rawlings Smith. Thank you, Richard, for the great content which I know our readers will enjoy.

If there’s one thing that all entrepreneurs have in common, it’s that we all deal with mental chatter. You know what I’m talking about. It’s that constant voice in your head that says, “You’re not good enough,” or “Who would listen to you?” or “You don’t have enough experience to do this,” or any one of a million other negative thoughts that we have pop into our heads multiple times per day. So what do you about it?

How to Stop Worrying and Start Living: A Guide to Freeing Yourself from Mental Chatter

In this blog post I’ll give you several “can’t miss” techniques to get those inner voices under control.

What Does It Mean to Struggle With Mental Chatter?

Have you ever spent time with a person who didn’t seem to know when or how to stop talking? Perhaps they bounced from subject to subject, never giving you an opportunity to contribute to the conversation. This experience can be extremely frustrating and hard to follow.

Unfortunately, many people experience a similar situation with themselves. Mental chatter, or the constant jumping from thought to thought within your mind, feels a lot like trying to have a conversation with someone who can’t seem to stop talking… except the person who can’t stop talking is your own mind!

This frustrating situation is a challenge to overcome. Often, mental chatter happens when you’re feeling worried, stressed, or upset about something. You allow their minds to wander from thought to thought with no clear pathway or plan.

The entire experience can be stressful and disorienting. Rather than being able to focus and concentrate on a single thought, you’re left in a fog of unclear, unfinished thoughts that never lead to any meaningful realization.

Struggling with mental chatter means you’re experiencing a noisy mind and learning how to quiet it is essential to regaining peace.

The Importance of Giving Yourself Plenty of Breaks and Rest

When you’re feeling worried or anxious, the last thing on your mind is probably slowing down or taking a break. However, giving yourself some downtime is one of the best ways to help quiet a noisy mind.

In the heat of the moment, forcing yourself to slow down for a break may seem nearly impossible. While it’s still important to rest when you’re already feeling worried and anxious, scheduling your breaks and rest ahead of time is a good way to avoid feeling that way in the first place.

Scheduling plenty of rest and breaks throughout your day is a good way to protect yourself from a stressed out mind. Give yourself a chance to take a quick walk outside in the sunshine, let yourself have 10 minutes to catch up on your social media scrolling (but make sure you limit it to 10 minutes so you don’t go down the rabbit hole), or take a minute to solve a brain teaser puzzle.

These examples of short breaks are great ways to ensure you aren’t overloading your mind. Similarly, make sure you’re getting plenty of quality sleep each night. When your body and mind are well-rested, you’re far less likely to experience mental chatter.

Addressing Your Difficult Emotions as They Happen

Much like the clutter you shove under the bed when you’re “cleaning,” you may feel extremely tempted to shove your difficult emotions elsewhere when you begin feeling them. While this may seem like the easiest and most ideal way to handle difficult emotions, doing this can cause a lot of harm.

Trying to ignore or hide your emotions, also known as repressing your emotions, doesn’t actually address those hard feelings or get rid of them. Instead, it causes them to fester and become even worse.

This can lead to a lot of excess worry and stress – by the time those emotions rear their ugly heads again, they’ll feel much more intense than they did when you originally experienced them. This means you’ll have to work even harder to overcome them.

To help quiet your mind, get comfortable addressing your difficult emotions as they happen. In the moment, it’ll feel uncomfortable – after all, nobody wants to feel tough emotions like anger, jealousy, or frustration – but dealing with them head-on and processing them as they happen ensures that you’ll be able to enjoy a calmer, quieter mind later.

The Power of Artistic Expression

Hobbies are fantastic ways to quiet a busy, worried mind. However, one genre of hobbies stands before the rest when it comes to calming and soothing the mind: Artistic expression.

Human beings are inherently creative and expressive creatures. Whether they’re playing music, painting, drawing, sewing, acting, dancing, writing, or any other creative venture, human beings have spent thousands of years expressing themselves through tons of creative, artistic outlets.

Artistic expression helps quiet your mind in a variety of ways. For example, artistic expression…

• Gives you a way to express your emotions and thoughts in a way that may be hard to do with words
• Gives your mind a specific task to focus on
• Gives you an opportunity to connect your mind, body, and spirit in the act of creating something

Artistic expression doesn’t require you to be an absolute expert or pro in your choice of artistry. The most important aspect of artistic expression is that you’re engaging in an art that interests you and soothes your mind.

Whether or not you’re particularly talented at it doesn’t matter – in the end, you’ll have created something, practiced your craft, enjoyed a fun activity, and quieted your mind.

Let me give you an example. Not long after I got married, I told my wife I didn’t remember having a train set as a kid. (As it turned out, I was remembering that incorrectly. I eventually found a video showing me watching a Lionel train set going around our Christmas tree. But that’s another story for another day.)

Imagine my surprise when my wife gave me an HO train set for Christmas that year. (Yes. I still have that train set.) That developed into a hobby I still enjoy to this day. Whenever my mental chatter gets to be too much, I go down to my modeling area in my basement and work for an hour or two on one of my models.

And I now have a new model to work on. This past Christmas my wife gave me a model of the Union Pacific Big Boy. This steam locomotive is one of the most famous steam locomotives in the world.

This model is sitting in my basement on my modeling desk. I can’t wait to start building this model! Why? Because I know when I work on this model it will be a very relaxing hour or so for me.

Learn How to Focus on Your Breathing

Breathing exercises and meditation are some of the oldest techniques for calming a noisy mind. When your mental chatter is beginning to feel too overwhelming, practice focusing on regaining control of your breathing using some simple meditation techniques.

Focusing on your breathing is a simple meditation practice you can use anywhere, anytime. The next time you’re feeling overwhelmed, try the following simple routine to regain your control and focus over your breathing.

• Find an isolated, private spot.
• If you can, turn out the lights or dim the space.
• Find a comfortable spot to sit down.
• Practice taking deep breaths through your nose. Count to five slowly as you breathe in.
• When you reach five, breathe out through your mouth for another five count.
• Repeat steps 4-5 until you feel calmer.
• As you begin to regain control over your breathing, you may choose to repeat a personal mantra, such as “I can calm my mind” or “I am feeling calm and at ease.” Using a mantra can help reinforce the meaning and intent behind your breathing exercises.

This simple technique can be used anytime you feel like you need to regain control of your breathing and calm your mind.

Crushing the Imposter Syndrome Monster

Imposter syndrome gets all of us. I deal with it on a regular basis. There have been volumes written about it, videos recorded about it, and courses created to deal with it. So what is imposter syndrome?

Put very simply, it’s one of the worst inner voices that I talked about in the beginning. This particular voice says things like, “You’re too old to do this,” or “You’re too young to do this,” or “You don’t have enough experience to do this,” and on and on and on.

Problem is, if you listen to it long enough you’ll begin to believe it and eventually it will destroy your dreams. But don’t be too upset with this inner voice. It’s really only trying to protect you. Just like well meaning family and friends, it has your best interests at heart.

But if you listen to it long enough you’ll eventually want to give up. Don’t do that! Instead, use one simple technique that I leaned in one of my mentor’s books. In fact, I used this technique just the other day.

Here it is. When this particular voice starts up simply tell it the following out loud; “Thank you. I appreciate you. I know you’re only trying to protect me. I’ve got this. I can handle it from here.”

But let me warn you. One and done may not be good enough. You may have to say it multiple times. And this voice will probably keep coming back. When it does, simply say out loud the wording I gave you above.

Clean Up Your Physical Environment to Clean Up Your Mind

While the two may not seem connected, there are some major parallels between your mind and your physical environment. When your personal spaces are cluttered, it can cause your mind to also feel similarly cluttered with thoughts, worries, and concerns as well.

Take a look around the spaces you frequent most: Does your car need a serious clean-out? Is your closet becoming overwhelmed with clothing you rarely wear? Has your office space been taken over by papers that need to be filed?

All these sources of clutter in your personal spaces can play a huge role in your mental peace. While you may not realize it, all the extra stuff in your spaces can contribute to extra noise in your mind.

To help quiet your mind and relieve some stress, take time to clean up the spaces you spend time in most often – this is especially important if these are spaces you either work or relax in frequently.

Getting the clutter out of these spaces will create an overall more peaceful and relaxing environment, helping to relieve some of the noisiness inside your mind.

Summary 

As entrepreneurs we face many challenges every day. Dealing with mental chatter is one of them. But you don’t have to let mental chatter stop you in your tracks. If you’ll use some (or all) of the techniques I gave you in this blog post you’ll be well on your way to calming your mental chatter.

Thanks for reading.
- Rick

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