The Power of Thinking Less
Have you noticed that when something matters to you, it’s really easy to spiral into overthinking?
Overanalysis, worst-case scenarios, trying to solve a future that hasn’t yet happened.
It can be an old, exhausting habit that’s easy to fall back on because it feels productive, even comforting to prepare, predict, and problem-solve—“I’m just thinking things through.”
The mind is incredibly good at inventing problems that don’t yet exist and at elaborating stories with the intention of keeping us safe.
I notice, both in my own life and in the spaces I hold, that overthinking doesn’t just live in the mind. It lives in the body.
The breath shortens and becomes shallow. The body tightens, and urgency or dread can take over.
Sometimes it shows up as restlessness… a pull towards being overly busy and ‘productive’… or fatigue that’s hard to explain. A kind of depletion that builds up over time.
Without even realizing it, you’re no longer in the moment—you’re someplace else altogether, a place your mind has created—and in doing so, you lose the very time you feel you don’t have enough of.
I saw this clearly when I recently did a boundary audit on myself, identifying what was increasing balance in my life and what was draining it. I realized that by overthinking, I was violating my own time boundaries, letting the mental noise take up residence and consume my time and energy.
That’s not how I want to live or spend my time.
I recognize that overthinking is a form of protection. A way of trying to feel prepared… to feel safe in the unknown. To understand.
But it comes at a high cost, pulling us away from the life that’s actually happening before us. Instead of living our experiences, we get stuck analyzing them.
However, most of what we’re preparing for never actually happens, at least not in the way we imagine. Life keeps moving, offering unexpected turns and opportunities we couldn’t have planned for. More often than not, we meet those moments just fine.
Overthinking in parenting easily slips into over-parenting—trying to anticipate outcomes, prevent disappointments, and manage emotional experiences.
We think there’s a right way and a wrong way, but life doesn’t ask us to have everything figured out. We’re never going to eliminate all doubt, and in fact, I don’t think that’s the goal.
Life does ask us to stay present with what is happening. To allow space for others' emotions, even if they make you uncomfortable. To tolerate when things don’t go according to plan. These moments aren’t failures, they’re just part of being human.
It’s okay if your child cries, is angry or hungry, felt left out at recess today, or doesn’t like what’s for dinner.
When we can tolerate these experiences as they are, and resist fixing or overriding them, we offer our children something far more valuable than a smoothed-out path.
We offer them the experience of resilience.
When we practice tolerating hard things that make us uncomfortable, it gives our kids the courage to do the same. Life is never going to be perfect, and how amazing that they can learn how to soothe and resource themselves with your loving guidance.
Resilience grows in the real and imperfect moments, the missed turns, the hard feelings, and the figuring-it-out-as-we-go.
What if we could relax a little more into the life we have? To loosen our grip just a tiny bit on trying to get it all right, to ease up on rigidity, resist over-managing, and trust that you’ll be okay. And that your kids will be okay, too.
I really wish someone had encouraged me to believe that when my kids were little. It would have helped me to trust myself a little more.
Even if things don’t unfold exactly the way you hoped or planned, chances are really good that it will still be okay.
Life rarely collapses because of a single moment. It’s far more forgiving than that. Most of the time, it meets us right where we are, figuring it out, and doing better than we think, with just enough courage for the moment we’re in.
