Stop Overthinking and Let that Sh*t Go!

Overthinking is a thief of joy, but what if you could reclaim your peace of mind? In a captivating conversation with Transformational Life and Positive Intelligence coach Bara Mann, we promise to guide you through strategies that can transform your mental landscape. Bara shares her inspiring journey from a mind caught in overthinking to a life of restful sleep and profound connections. Together, we dive deep into the nuances of emotional intelligence and mental fitness, illustrating how overthinking not only exacerbates stress and anxiety but also stands in the way of true joy.

Explore the hidden saboteurs in your mind that keep you trapped in a loop of unproductive rumination. We dissect the fine line between judgment and discernment, emphasizing the importance of acknowledging emotions to enhance decision-making. Using the Positive Intelligence saboteur test, we shed light on identifying and managing harmful thought patterns. Our discussion highlights how early experiences and survival instincts impact our thought processes, encouraging a shift from surviving to thriving. With insights into how these dynamics influence behaviors like people-pleasing, we pave the way for personal growth and positive change.

Discover the power of mindful breathing as a tool to combat overthinking and energize your 'sage' mind. We present mindful breathing as a universal remedy, focusing on deep breaths that center the mind and release unproductive thoughts. As we prepare to meet again at the PQ gym, we underscore the importance of enjoying life and fostering a mindset that embraces growth and learning. This episode is your invitation to shift your mindset and enhance your overall well-being, empowering you to thrive and not just survive.

Show Notes:
Bara Mann (she/they) is a transformational life and Positive Intelligence® (aka PQ®) mental fitness coach, speaker, and catalyst for positive change. With a background in chemical engineering and training in various healing modalities, Bara combines analytical thinking and intuitive wisdom to guide individuals toward lives filled with joy, confidence, and inner peace.

 Bara has a special offer for our listeners! Access it at baraco.org/podcast

Music:
Zoe Wees: "Overthinking" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFPZypI8Pps
Mentioned: "Let That Sh*t Go" by Dessy Stefanou. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-j50BHc-qo 

Chapters

• 0:00 Overcoming Overthinking for Better Life
• 5:30 Exploring Saboteurs and Rational Thinking
• 20:09 Navigating Saboteurs and Survival Instincts
• 25:41 Mindful Breathing for Thriving Life

Transcript

Jami Carlacio: 0:00

Just let it go. You can't fix it, it's over.

Bara Mann: 0:06

Yeah, thinking about it is not going to fix it. It already happened. Thinking about it once when you've activated that sage mind, and then you can analyze the situation and say, okay, what did I do well here that I want to repeat? What could I do better next time? Is there something that I need to fix that makes sense. There's a lot of value in that Thinking about it, that second, third, 10th, 100th time no, let that shit go.

Jami Carlacio: 0:41

Welcome to the podcast Emotional Intelligence, your greatest asset and key to success. I'm your host, Dr. Jami Carlacio, coming to you from the Greater New Haven, Connecticut area, as an emotional intelligence or EQ coach. I'm committed to helping people develop both emotional intelligence and mental fitness. That is, you'll come to regard problems as situations that help you learn and grow. Eq is a way of being and doing in the world that enables you to develop and sustain a positive relationship with yourself and others, at home, at work and everywhere in between. Please subscribe to this podcast and tap the like button so more people can enjoy the benefits of EQ.

Jami Carlacio: 1:25

And now here's the show. Hello everybody and welcome back. And today we are going to talk about thinking and, more specifically, overthinking. And chances are, as my guest has pointed out to me, ms Barrowman, we all overthink and it is crazy making. And so we're going to talk about, like, what happens, why we overthink, and then what are some strategies for not overthinking without completely shutting your brain down and becoming an automaton? So first let me introduce my guest. Welcome, barrow. How are you?

Bara Mann: 2:04

Hello, I'm doing great. Thank you so much for having me here Great.

Jami Carlacio: 2:07

And is it okay to tell them where you are right now?

Bara Mann: 2:11

Yeah, absolutely. I am based out of California usually, but I'm up in Yellowknife, canada, in the Northwest Territories.

Jami Carlacio: 2:26

Yeah, so she is up so far that the Northern Lights or the Ouroboros come up every night. If you can stay up that late, because night comes late, isn't that correct?

Bara Mann: 2:31

Yeah, pretty much. Sometimes they're hidden by the clouds, but on many nights you can see something out there.

Jami Carlacio: 2:37

I think that is absolutely amazing. So Bera is a Transformational Life and positive intelligence, or PQ, coach like me. That's how we met, and she is also a speaker and a catalyst for positive change, and with a background get this a background in chemical engineering and training in various healing modalities. Barrett combines analytical thinking and intuitive wisdom to guide individuals toward lives filled with joy, confidence and inner peace. And tell me who doesn't want joy, inner peace and confidence? So, yeah, so.

Jami Carlacio: 3:22

So I was overthinking the topic today not really overthinking, but it did remind me of how, when I ruminate which is what I think of when I think of overthinking I tend to get full of anxiety. I tend to upset myself, and one of the things that you and I can talk about that is really important to me and why positive intelligence has worked is recognizing the 10 saboteurs in my brain that constantly churn out thoughts that are not true. They churn out thoughts that tell me I'm not good enough, or that so-and-so doesn't like me, or that I said something stupid at work, or that I have to try even harder because what I'm doing isn't good enough. I'm not good enough. The list goes on, it's endless, and a lot of times it is just our gears in our head are just in overdrive. So why did you? Why has overthinking been so important to you? Let me start with that.

Bara Mann: 4:27

I think part of the reason it's so important to me is that overthinking is just a huge waste of time. Say more. I think my life will be so much more fun and I'd be able to do so much more good if I didn't waste all of this time just turning around in my own thoughts. Not to mention that. Not to mention I would sleep better, right, and if I slept better then I could be there more for the people that I loved, I could do better work, et cetera. So I think this used to be something that held me back quite a bit. I would lay there awake at night just thinking, thinking, thinking, never getting any resolution. And since overcoming this overthinking problem and I say overcoming might be a little bit of an exaggeration there's definitely still some overthinking there. That happens, but it's so much less than it used to be and I catch it so much faster that my life has just improved more than I can really express. I want to help other people have that same experience.

Jami Carlacio: 5:30

Absolutely. You know I was thinking as you were saying that, and, yes, I'm a thinker too. I have a very analytical mind and you know, I was a professor. I made a living on thinking. I made a living on thinking about things. I taught writing and literature, so I thought about language all the time, but that's different than the kind of rumination and stuff that goes on between our ears. You know between 65, 70,000 thoughts a day, 80% of them the same from day to day.

Jami Carlacio: 6:03

So that is that's where maybe paying attention to our thinking pays off, because, as you said, laying awake at night in your bed and thinking about things you should have said or should have done, or things you're going to do or think you should do tomorrow or whatever, or, heck, maybe six months ago, something pops into your head. So noticing it is one thing and then saying wait a minute, can I do anything about this? Is this something I can change? Is this something I need to move on? Is this something I need to apologize for? Did you do something that you need to really make an amend for, or is this something that you just you need to move on? You need to pick up your toys and start moving along because nothing is going to change.

Bara Mann: 6:49

Exactly. And also have I already thought about this Because something that happens to right, if you're thinking about it for the 10th time what you should have said differently or could have done differently how often have you actually gotten a better answer that 10th time that you've replayed that scenario than the first time?

Jami Carlacio: 7:07

Right, absolutely. I mean, there's one thing about reflection and discernment, and one of the things that we learn in positive intelligence is the distinction between judgment and discernment. So judgment is critical and it is deleterious. It's not. It's not necessarily good for us, but discernment is Discernment. Is making that decision. Is this helpful, is it healthy? Is it serving me? Is it serving other people? Is it adding to my quality of life and my mental well-being? Or, like you said, if it's something I keep going back to, did it change? Did it get better? Probably not.

Bara Mann: 7:51

Yeah, absolutely, and you bring up something really important. What you remind me of is a lot of people think, okay, well, I know that it's bad sometimes that I'm so analytical and that I keep thinking things over and over, but then again, isn't it actually really good that I am this kind of person who, in the PQ world, we probably call it hyper rational, that I have this hyper rational part of me because it's smart and it helps me to make good decisions, and people trust me that I know what I'm talking about. And so what we're saying here is that, yeah, it's great for you to be smart and for you to be knowledgeable and you to be able to think efficiently. That's not your saboteur, that's not the hyper-rational part of you. That's one of your greatest strengths. What your saboteur does is it takes it too far, to the point that it starts causing you problems.

Jami Carlacio: 8:45

Yeah, and I want to also make a point here to say about the hyper-rational. The hyper-rational dismisses emotions. It says no, no, no, emotions have no place here. But guess what? We are emotional beings and so emotion is in there and we can pretend it doesn't exist or we can pretend it's not important. But ultimately, even thinking or discerning involves emotion. So, whatever, whatever, whether it's what to buy at the grocery store or how to plan, you know new traffic lights in a city or you know something, there's going to be emotion, there's going to be values in there, and so it's recognizing where those values are, where those emotions are, how they underpin all of our decisions.

Bara Mann: 9:35

Yeah, absolutely, and I imagine that most of the people watching or listening to this have at some point had a boss or someone in their life who just came to them with the facts and without the emotions, and it never feels good to be on the other side of that. So when we let ourselves go into that hyper rational zone, that's what we're doing to the other people interacting with us. So we really want to pull it back, not just for us, but also for the people around us.

Jami Carlacio: 10:02

Yeah, when you said pull it back, I immediately thought of pulling back the curtain.

Jami Carlacio: 10:07

Because, there are things that are hidden, that if once you expose something to the light, you can't unexpose it, and so that's where we have that opportunity to look at it and say, oh okay, yeah, I overthought this, or I hadn't even considered people's emotional investment in this, or I hadn't considered what values are driving the way that we're thinking about this. And yesterday I was recording a podcast that'll drop in a week or two Well, actually, it'll drop before this one but we were talking about how we need to actually examine our values. We oftentimes are led by emotions and led by values, and we hadn't really thought about what those values mean. What does it look like in practice? And so when we get into this overthinking mode and our saboteurs take over, chances are we haven't actually taken the time to explore one of the sage powers, what's going on underneath all of that? So pulling back the curtain and exposing stuff to light is also helpful.

Bara Mann: 11:21

Yeah, I think that's really helpful and a great resource to help people pull back the curtain is that saboteur test that anyone can take online on the Positive Intelligence website.

Jami Carlacio: 11:34

Right. I'll put that in the show notes. Yeah, Awesome.

Bara Mann: 11:36

Is that something that you guide people through that process ever?

Jami Carlacio: 11:40

Absolutely. The first thing we do is we take the test and then we look at the results and one of the things that's really important is this isn't an exercise to judge you on your saboteurs or shame you or blame you. It's more just information. Oh, I have been a people pleaser. Information, oh, I have been a people pleaser and this is how I have been acting in the workplace or acting at home or acting around my relatives at family gatherings, and now I understand why I say what I say, or do what I do, or don't do what I don't do. You know, even the avoider comes out. Or, you know, don't want any conflict. Let's just pretend everything's okay, just say yes to everybody.

Jami Carlacio: 12:32

So I tell people this is just information, it's inventory on a shelf. Let's just take inventory and look at it and then find out how it is affecting our daily lives and, again, our thinking. Because even when you're a people pleaser at least I've found this to be true for me Even when you're a people pleaser at least I've found this to be true for me that doesn't mean that I'm happy. Or if I'm avoiding conflict, it doesn't mean I'm happy. I'm usually burying a resentment somewhere in there, and then that resentment is what gets me thinking at night. Right, the anger comes out and the frustration and the I wish I'd said this, and what if I'd done that? And then that again it adds up to all that crazy making. But when we can pull the curtain back on the saboteurs and understand exactly what's driving us, chances are we can move into this more sage mode of thinking, but not overthinking.

Bara Mann: 13:24

Yeah, absolutely. I have a client who, when we looked at their saboteur assessment, we're seeing that the pleaser is one of their top saboteurs and they they know that. They've been working on it and what we realized during that session was that their pleaser then triggers their victim because they're saying yes to all this stuff that they don't really want to be doing. Part of the reason for saying yes is this underlying feeling that oh, maybe now I can save the day, I can make things better for other people. But they never even get to have that experience because then they're just so resentful that they're doing everything and the victim story comes up oh, everything always falls on me. I always have to be the one to do this. Yes, that does not feel good, right?

Jami Carlacio: 14:13

It doesn't feel good. And, again, we can't make a change if we don't take responsibility for our part in whatever is going on in our lives. Something may be 80% not my fault, but 20% of it might be, and so I even have to at least take responsibility for what's mine. And that, again, is where discernment comes in. It's not that everything's my fault or everything's your fault. It's usually a combination of things, not to mention all of the environmental factors that are part of that context, for whatever situation is going on that dictated a behavior or a thought or an action.

Bara Mann: 14:53

Yeah, absolutely, and I think that taking that assessment can help you take more responsibility, because you start to see the way these things are showing up in your life. For instance, one of my top saboteurs is the controller, and I didn't realize the way that my controller was coming out and subtly manipulating people. It's not like I was intentionally manipulating people for my own gain or anything like that, or even I think manipulating people for my own gain. What it really was was there's like this voice, really strong voice in my head. That's like, well, you know best and if you do things this way, other people will follow and then it'll get better. And if you can show them how to do these things, their lives will be better too.

Bara Mann: 15:36

But once I became aware that that wasn't me, that was this other part of me, this controller, that was coming out, and I was able to see the way that was affecting other people by even just reading. No one likes to feel like they're manipulated, and that's how people feel when this comes out. It puts that wedge in our relationships. It gave me so much more awareness and then I was able to start taking responsibility for it and say, okay, wait a second, this is my controller. I'm sorry. You can do things the way you want to do things. I'm just going to sit back now and breathe.

Jami Carlacio: 16:10

Yeah, I had an accounting professor back in college. He said he was from Missouri and he said something that may offend cat lovers. But he said there's 40 ways to skin a cat and, and I'm sorry, we don't skin cats, don't worry anybody. Nope, no animals are harmed on the making of this podcast. But the idea is that I may have a great way of doing something, but it isn't the only way to do it, and it may not be the only effective way, or it may not even be the most effective way, even though in my mind it might be.

Bara Mann: 16:44

Right and sometimes it is the best way, I think, and it still does not feel good at all to the other people and the whole situation ultimately might be better if your controller wasn't in play.

Bara Mann: 16:57

One that I saw one situation I've seen mine come out in is in the corporate world. Sometimes we do these work events or these networking group events where we'd go to the food bank together and I would be volunteering at the food bank and I would be just seeing how inefficiently we were doing things and how much better we could do them, and it was like I'd feel like this pressure on my shoulders. I'd be like going crazy, just wanting to tell them how we could do things better. And then sometimes I'd get the opportunity to make that suggestion and I would think I was making that suggestion in a really nice way. This is going to benefit the people working there and all of us. But those people were going to keep doing it the way they were doing it anyways, but now they just felt judged and now they just felt like they were undervalued. And it didn't improve things for my coworkers either and it didn't improve our interactions, because I was living with this tension the whole time.

Jami Carlacio: 17:53

Right.

Bara Mann: 17:54

Exactly.

Jami Carlacio: 17:55

So that's why, sometimes for me it's it's if I, if I, can get my saboteurs under control in a way that I'm recognizing that they're operating. Do some PQ reps you know whether it's just getting the moment touch my fingertips together, stare at my hands or the wall or the window, or breathe Ah, that's my judge going off in there or that's my controller. And then I ask is this serving my highest good? Is it serving your highest good right? Is it important enough that I need to say something at all? And another friend of mine says does it need to be said? Does it need to be said by me and does it need to be said now? And those are great questions to ask. And when I ask those questions, then then chances are, if the answer's no, no, it doesn't need to be said, it certainly doesn't need to be said by me and it doesn't need to be said now, then maybe it's something for me to let go of and then again to examine what it is about me. That's, that's kind of being triggered.

Bara Mann: 19:05

Right.

Jami Carlacio: 19:05

Usually right. They're triggers, they're trigger responses.

Bara Mann: 19:10

Yeah, and those are great questions to ask. And I think something you said leading up to that is really important to highlight, which is doing the PQ reps. Chances are you might get a very different answer to those questions if you've done the PQ reps than if you haven't. And that makes sense, right? Because when you're in that saboteur mode, your survival regions of your brain are active. I mean, science has shown this when you're surviving, you're not making the best decisions, you're just surviving. You can take even two minutes or even sometimes 10 seconds to just pause and shift your activation over to that sage mind where your empathy circuitry and your right brain lives and all that good stuff. Then chances are you're going to see, okay, okay, actually, here's what's real for me.

Jami Carlacio: 20:00

Yeah, yeah, exactly yeah. And I want to also step back a moment because I haven't said a lot about this. In the context of all the podcast episodes, I talk a lot about the saboteurs and we've talked about survival mechanisms and we talk about the amygdala kind of stepping in. You know, the sympathetic nervous system says whoa, danger. And our minds are wired to look for danger. Our minds are wired to look for problems, scan the environment at all times. So we have to step back and say wait a second, is this even a dangerous situation? Or is my nervous system just reacting to some stimuli that's reminding my system, oh, that was a dangerous thing, or that's just like that other thing that was dangerous.

Jami Carlacio: 20:49

And you know, with the saboteurs again, this isn't to cast dispersions on anybody. We all have a shadow side, we all have character flaws, but there are survival instincts as well and for many people they've experienced early childhood trauma or even trauma later in life and we had to take control, or we had to be hyper rational, or we had to be hyper vigilant, or we had to be people pleasing to stay alive or to stay safe. But what happens is they've just gone so far on one side or the other of the continuum, and so positive intelligence and emotional intelligence kind of brings it back into the middle and says, okay, let's, let's attenuate these, let's, let's mitigate some of these negative effects and put them into perspective it's a paper tiger, sometimes not a real one.

Bara Mann: 21:49

Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's also important to note that even people who might be listening to this that are like, well, I don't really have childhood trauma, no matter what your experience has been, this I was going to say it's likely true for you, but I think it's shown that it is true for everyone. I had a great childhood, very loving family, yeah, and my I lived in a small town. It was really there weren't a lot of kids, so if you didn't fit in, that could mean you had no friends. So my way I was trying to survive by fitting in, because we need friendship to survive, you know, and so that's something that's carried with me later on is like this sense of urgency to fit in that I haven't always even known it was there until I got that awareness later on and I was able to see how it played out in my life.

Jami Carlacio: 22:43

Yeah, absolutely You're right. They're not always trauma responses, but they are responses to some environmental stimuli, whether that environment is right in the home, at school, at work, wherever. But you're right, and I think as human beings we're wired to survive and so we will figure out what it takes. But sometimes what it took as a kid in middle school isn't the same as what it takes as an adult. Right, there's a difference between Vera at 25 or 30 years old and Vera at 13 years old.

Bara Mann: 23:28

Yeah, absolutely. And I say like survival is great, but I don't want to just survive.

Jami Carlacio: 23:30

I want to thrive, yeah, yeah, and that's the whole point, right? That's. So going back to overthinking. The idea is we can thrive and once we pull the curtain away from all of the things that are sabotaging us, we can say oh wait, a minute, I got to let that stuff go. There's a great song I like. It's called Let that Shit Go, and sometimes when I'm in a mode where I need a little perk, I play that song. Let that Shit Go, no need to apologize, just let that shit go. Let that shit go, no need to apologize, just let that shit go. And I'm going to put a link in the in the show notes to that song too, because I share it with a lot of people. It's like just time, right, just let it go. You can't fix it, it's over.

Bara Mann: 24:16

Yeah, thinking about it is not going to fix it. It already happened. Thinking about it once when you've activated that sage mind, and then you can analyze the situation and say, okay, what did I do well here that I want to repeat? What could I do better next time? Is there something that I need to fix that makes sense. There's a lot of value in that Thinking about it that second, third, 10th, hundredth time. No, let that shit go.

Jami Carlacio: 24:43

Right, right, absolutely. That's probably what I should have played, but, on that note, I do have a great song that I want to share with people to close out this session and bear a stay on for a minute after the song so we can say goodbye and I'm going to treat everybody to Zoe. There we have it.

Jami Carlacio: 25:30

It's crazy making, but it doesn't have to be. So Bara's information and all of the things we talked about, like the songs or anything else, will be in the show notes. And, bara, do you have any parting thoughts for us?

Bara Mann: 25:46

I think funny that I use the word thinking right now Just a reminder that if you are overthinking or might be feeling bad about this right now, everybody does it when you notice it happening. It's actually a really cool opportunity for you to take a moment and re-energize your sage. Just feel your breath and allow that to carry you forward.

Jami Carlacio: 26:11

Yes, and take a deep breath all the way into the belly, not just into the chest right. Yes, and Barrett and I will see you all at the pq gym and until next time, stop overthinking it and just enjoy your life. We want you to thrive, not just survive. Take care everybody. Bye.