Days You Are Stuck In Your Head, Over Analyzing, and Having Obsessive Spiraling Thoughts

Today's topic is all about how to deal with the days that you are stuck in your head, over analyzing, having obsessive thinking or what I've referred to before is like spirally kind of thoughts where you feel like you're on this train, you're on this thought pattern and you can't get off.

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Good morning. I am Ashley Drummonds and welcome to the Phoenix Rising podcast. A place to find connection, inspiration, and tools to help you really create a life, a body you want, and to just get inspired. So I'm super excited that you're here. Whatever is going on in your day or your week. I hope that after this episode, in this conversation that you feel like you got to pick me up, you got some real talk and connection and just some tools to help you in your everyday life.

So really quick, the last eight week bootcamp just finished up and it has been amazing. It is so incredibly fulfilling just to be able to work with people one-on-one and over the course of eight weeks, see them not just, I mean, obviously. You're going to get in great shape. You're going to feel strong.

You're going to lose weight, but seeing people break through these mental and emotional barriers that they had just really feeling more confident, more assertive feeling like they're finding their voice. They're dealing with like grief and pain from years that they've never been able to access, but also really just having breakthroughs of understanding their patterns and why they do what they do so that they can show up more wholly in their life.

Now if you're interested because that one just ended. That means that I have eight spots that are now open right now. I have two people that are already signed up. Normally it's 10, but if you are interested in working with me, one-on-one on your fitness and mindset to help clean up your nutrition to really build strength, not just in your workout.

But also in your life, you can head over to AshleyDrummonds.com. And on that website, there's a tab that says coaching. All you gotta do is fill out that form in as much detail as possible. That form is going to come directly to me and I will respond to you directly. Or your other option is you can go to abs pancakes.com, join the community newsletter, and I will be sending an email.

The whole eight week program as well. Again, AshleyDrummonds.com or ABSPancakes.com. If you're interested in that eight week program, it really is an incredible eight week process. And I love it just like I love talking to you guys every single week on this podcast. And on that note, we are going to get started on today's topic, which is all about how to deal with the days that you are stuck in your head, over analyzing, having obsessive thinking or what I've referred to before is like spirally kind of thoughts where you feel like you're just, you're on this train, you're on this thought pattern and you can't get off. And it is going to like a really frustrating, hard place. So that's exactly what we're going to talk about.

So I hope you're ready to snuggle up, have a little heart to heart and let's get into today's episode.

I hope that your day is starting off great to kind of set the stage for you of how I am recording today's episode. I spent about 10 minutes prior to this, just kind of sitting in silence, getting grounded, doing some breath work, which actually that's going to be something that we talk about in this episode with days that you're stuck in your head.

But I do that a lot. Anytime that I'm feeling like, all right, I need to get grounded and I need to get present. I'll kind of just shut everything off. Get really quiet. And then all I do is breathe. It's not only is it like a spiritual, energetic thing that you can do to get grounded, but it also from a brain and scientific thing, it actually calms down your central nervous system to help slow down thought patterns and really just bring you to the present moment.

So, anyway, so prior to hitting the record button on this and starting that I spent about 5 to 10 minutes, just getting present, getting grounded, doing some breath work. Of course. I also burned some Palos Santo. I've got my WoodWick candle burning. Today I've got the courts that I mentioned in the previous episode from my brother.

And then I actually I also have a huge but beautiful amethyst that is sitting here. So amethyst is that purple stone. It's really beautiful. The reason I have it is because for whatever reason, that color and that stone reminds me of my great grandmother and she passed a few years ago, but this woman is, I mean, she's a bad-ass, she is tough and independent.

She lived to be. I think she was 99. She lived to be 99. She lived by herself. She got divorced at like 55 and then never remarried and just lived alone and took care of herself until her nineties. I mean, she's just a tough woman, but also a very loving woman. Um, and for whatever reason, I woke up this morning and when I was sitting there doing my breath work, I was like, all right, what do I need to say?

What should be brought up in this. This stone got brought up. So apparently she's going to help us through this podcast to talk about how to have mental toughness on the tough days that you're stuck in your head. So I wanted to talk about this just because one, I never know what the next podcast episode is going to be.

And I got asked this recently, somebody was like, where do you come up with the content for this. I have no content calendar. I have no content strategy. And I honestly don't know what day I'm going to record this podcast each week. Just I'll wake up one morning and all of a sudden it's like somebody downloaded an entire file in my brain.

And I'm like, all right. I thought I was talking about this, but I guess this is what I'm talking about. So yesterday I woke up and I took my pen and paper and I had my coffee and I was sitting outside enjoying the morning. And I was like, all right, I know I need to get this podcast episode out, by the way.

I now have a podcast producer. So the technicalities that I was having issues with before the last, like five episodes, Matt, the podcast producer has been producing transcribing. and getting them published for you guys. So hi Matt. Thank you for doing the technical audio work that frustrates me so I can knock these out.

But anyways, I typically try to give him the podcast episode by Thursday or Friday. So he has plenty of time to edit it, upload it and publish it. And yesterday was Thursday for me and I was like, man, what am I going to talk about? Like, I have a running note in my phone of conversations. I want to have.

But I didn't really have anything that was just like flooding in, like it normally does. And then all of a sudden it just kind of hit me and I was like, all right, here we go. And so I'm sitting here with about 10 pages of stuff that I have out on paper to talk to you guys today. So that's where it came from.

But also normally when I have these things and I'm just going to keep calling it downloads. Cause I don't really know what else to call it. But normally when I have these downloads. I'll sit with it for a little bit. And I kind of wait for validation and I don't mean validation of like, is this a good idea?

Somebody help me, but like, I wait for the synchronicities of like, yep. That's what you need to talk about. And so, right after I had this experience yesterday morning, I had gotten on calls with some of the clients that I coach with their mindset and their fitness and both of them brought up. Hey, what do you do on days that you kind of are going down spirally type thought patterns or that you just really feel stuck in your head and you can't, it's like your brains just out of control and you can't bring it back to getting grounded.

And I was like, oh, that's ironic cause that's exactly what I was going to talk about. And then a very good friend of mine yesterday. She was having that exact day of, she was like, I don't really know how to explain the way that I feel, but I feel spirally. And I'm like, all right, boom. That's three in one day of exactly what I was looking for the confirmation for.

So here you guys are, apparently this is what we need to talk about. So the things with our brain and our thoughts. So there's a lot of things that are going on emotionally, energetically, but there's also things that are going on from a physiological perspective and the way that our brains are wired and the chemical reactions that are created.

So I'm going to do my best to kind of tie all of that together to hopefully give you tools that can help you on these kinds of days when you feel stuck in your head. So the first thing is thoughts are always seeking to be expressed. That does not mean that every thought should be expressed, but that's what your thoughts are doing.

Your thoughts are kind of like, so your brain is like this very fertile land and we don't realize it, but our thoughts become seeds. We're constantly throwing out. Think of if you know what rye grass is it's where it's like it's really not great quality grass, but basically like it's people walk around and they just throw these like buckets of seeds out in their yard to get some sort of sprouts of grass.

Okay. So think of your thoughts, kind of like that you throw them out, you throw them out. All it takes is a little bit of water and some good dirt, and you're going to have some grass come up. Your thoughts are seeds. That go into your subconscious mind to help you create the outcome that you're looking for.

The problem is a lot of times we're not super conscious of the thoughts that we're planting and then they come up and then we're totally shocked later when we're like, where the hell is this coming from? Like, I don't even know what started this thought pattern. And sometimes it's not you, sometimes you're picking things up.

If you're in a negative environment or a toxic environment where these are kind of being planted without your permission. So like your neighbor comes over next door decides to throw his own seeds in your yard while you're away at work. And you had no idea. And you're like, why do I have weeds growing in my yard right now?

I didn't throw weeds out. here. Well, because this is the way our subconscious mind works. We pick up messages and thoughts through music, through other people's conversations, through TV, subliminal messaging, we're picking it up all day long. So, this is why it's an important process to become aware of what your thoughts are and what thoughts are just coming from outside sources or old programming and conditioning that actually have nothing to do with you.

Oh, so having explained that where your thoughts are always seeking to be expressed, and it doesn't mean that it needs to be expressed. Your brain's responsibility is to provide you solutions to get you to the outcome that you want. So if you sit in silence or if you're sitting there and you're like, there's something very basic, man, I need to eat lunch.

Where do I want to eat lunch? You have presented this problem to your brain. You've planted that seed of I need lunch. Where should I go? What happens, all these ideas and thoughts start popping up to provide the solution for you of like, you can go to Chipotle you can go to Smoothie King, you could go get this, go get that. And then you have a choice. Which one do you want to take?

It's easy for us to do this in our day-to-day lives with basic things like that. But when it comes to emotional triggers, this is what can send us kind of spirally over-analyzing and obsessing because they're emotionally charged thoughts. So days that you are having emotions and thoughts that are big, instead of trying to acknowledge these in present awareness to them, a lot of times we try to escape them and the way people tend to escape or they try to pull themselves out of these spirally over-analyzing days is through food, through alcohol, through addictions, um, distractions.

Because it feels like our brain is out of control because we feel like we can't control our brain. We then go to something outside of ourselves that we can control. So we eat comfort food. We drink alcohol to calm down and relax. We do things that are really not healthy for us and other forms of addictions, just because at least it's something that we can put a start and a stop to outside of our brain.

The problem is, as the saying goes, what you resist will persist, except for when it persists, it will be even louder. So why these, while not why? While these do provide you temporary relief, once the high, the comfort food, the addiction, the alcohol, whatever it might be once that distraction is over. Guess what you come back to yourself and guess what's there to meet you when it's over these exact same thoughts that still have not been acknowledged and instead have been ignored. And now they're getting a little bit louder.

So this is what creates the vicious patterns and the vicious cycles. So let's say for example, you're feeling really just like bored, stressed. You've known. Really I guessed this is so cheesy, but I don't know the other word. You, you've no sparkle in your life.

Like there's nothing that really you're super excited or motivated about and inspired. Okay. So if this is going on, what you would want to do is really like acknowledge. I feel bored. It means that my soul, my mind is stuck in a rut and I have to try and figure out how I'm going to pull myself out of this.

And you start a self discovery process. What doesn't bore me. What excites me? What lights me up, what gets my passion going? And then you start down that path to figure out a solution to this problem. Normally, though, what happens when people experience boredom is all right. I'm bored. Instead of sitting with this and feeling bored and figuring out what I actually want to feel.

I'm going to go on social media and look at everybody else's life, or I'm just going to drink because there's nothing else to do. So let me just do this now. And then tomorrow I'll wake up and deal with the boredom again, and then I'll start the process again, or I'm bored. So let me eat. I'm just going to eat because at least it's something to do.

And it ends up becoming a one-time thing, but then it creates these patterns because the actual issue that is creating these triggers that have now become habits hasn't actually been resolved. So that's a very simple example of how this happens. Another extreme example though, of how this happens is when we've experienced deep, emotional pain, and I'm talking like huge pains and traumas in life.

Our brain's responsibility is to go into survivor mode. So this is the fight or flight response. Sometimes what happens is if there's an emotional experience that triggers something in the brain, letting the brain know this is too much pain for this human body to experience at once, what it does is it almost like shortens it and it gives you a dosage of what you can experience.

And it holds off the rest of it. Not letting you fully process it because your body's just putting itself in survival mode. So that it's not so much that you go into shock. This is also actually what happens when people have physical experiences where their body does go into shock is protection. It's trying to protect you.

It's just, we understand it more from a physical perspective than we do an emotional perspective. So from an emotional perspective, The way we get stuck in these spirally over obsessive analyzing like just stuck in her head kind of thoughts. It's normally because in a moment where we experience emotional pain, instead of being able to process all of it, And deal with it in that moment.

It's like we process fragments of it, but the remaining pieces. So if it's like shattered glass, it's like, we dealt with the big chunks of it. But the rest of the glass is still shattered, floating around inside of us, inside of our brains, waiting for a convenient time when it's safe to deal with the rest of the emotions.

So this happens and it creates this, this initial thought trigger. So you have something that comes up. You now have an emotional charge to it. You probably don't really want to feel pain. I mean, nobody wants to feel pain. We try our best to make decisions in the attempt to avoid pain. So we tend to ignore it.

Problem is ignoring an emotionally charged thought is like ignoring a child that's about to throw a temper tantrum. It's not going to go away. It's going to scream louder and louder. It's going to make everybody in the grocery store, give it attention until you decide to look at it and basically like just stare at it for what it is and be like, Hey, you're throwing a temper tantrum. Stop.

I don't want to be a part of that but the second you acknowledge it is usually when it stops. So this is how emotionally charged thoughts happen in our brain. Is it triggers it off. It's like, Hey, is now a convenient time for me to bring up six years ago when you felt this emotional pain. And a second you have that thought, you're like, oh God.

Now what, why is that coming up? And so you shove it. You're like, Nope, I'm going to shove you away. I don't want to deal with that. It's like, okay, well, we only put this in a box for you because we thought we were eventually going to open that box back up, except for now, you're not letting us. And you have all these other emotions going on and we're running out of room.

We kind of need you to acknowledge this. So it triggers it and triggers it. We resist it, resist it, and it gets louder and louder and louder. And because this thought has never been expressed or acknowledge, it just gets more and more charged running around in our brains, making us feel like we're going to lose our mind because we can't control the thoughts.

So you have different forms of how you can express these things. And in the beginning, when I said thoughts are seeking to be expressed, it does not mean that all of them have to be expressed. I typically tell people what I do and what I suggest is if you have a thought that has an emotional charge, you probably need to express it.

If there's no emotional charge, then you have a choice to just let it go. And what I mean by an emotional charge is let's say you have a thought of. Oh, the sky is blue today. That's nice. There's no emotional charge there. You don't need to go like dig into that and look much more into it because there's nothing there.

It's just an observation. It's a thought that comes in to your mind, like a screen door, the wind blows through and it blows right back out, like, all right. No big deal. With an emotionally charged thought though. You know, the difference. And I mean, this can, God, this can be so many things. This can be, uh, it's like that twinge, that twinge in your gut of envy, jealousy, loss, pain, love, heartbreak, anything.

And you know, when you have it, it's kind of like, so let's say you just recently got out of a relationship or you broke up with somebody. And you're dealing with the loss of romantic love in your life. So you have this heartbreak, but then the next day you find out information that your best friend or a family member is getting engaged.

They just got engaged. It's the total opposite of the experience that you're going through. You're going to feel twinge of pain. Because you are dealing with your own problem. And that thought of like, oh, I don't have that anymore has created in the pain. So the healthy thing to do would be to acknowledge it, respect to the process that you are in and just go through it.

You feel it. That heals it. This thought does not become obsessive. And now you can move on. When we don't allow this to happen. And instead we pretend like we're totally fine. And aren't feeling anything is when obsessive thoughts happen. So with expressing these emotionally charged thoughts, every single person in every single scenario is different.

So if you think about when you're angry, I'm talking like anger and adrenaline is just exploding through your body. What is the first thing you want to do? You want to punch a wall? You want to punch somebody. You want to hit something because that's thought that emotion is seeking a physical expression.

What do you want to do when you love somebody? You want to tell them. You want to kiss them. You want to touch them. It's an, it's an expression of the thought. What happens when you feel sadness? You cry. There's all these expressions that you can do, but sometimes it's hard to access those things if time has passed.

So. What you have to do is ask yourself, is this thought emotionally charged? And if it is, how do I feel like right now, I need to express it. For me, this is why I believe journaling is such a huge practice because sometimes you don't need to express a thought in the exact same physical way that maybe you would have years earlier, but the thought does need to be expressed somewhere.

And pen to paper is the safest, easiest way to get it out of your head and outside yourself so that you can deal with it. See it for what it is on paper, and then you can move through it. Instead of this emotion, just triggering all kinds of analytical and obsessive. Sometimes pen and paper, doesn't do it. Sometimes and this is why I'm a huge believer in fitness. Um, and working out is because the act of exercise and people always, I mean, you hear about doctors talking about how exercise boosts serotonin levels. Yes, it does. That is a by-product of exercise. But another thing too, that is fitness is an exchange of energy.

It is taking emotional and mental energy and exchanging it in a physical form, which is why days you work out. You always feel better than the days that you don't because you have done an energy exchange. So you can do this. You can also use it in the form. I mean, some of the greatest artists, both like painting photographer or as musicians and some of the greatest entrepreneurs and inventors learned how to express thoughts and ideas in a positive way.

And that's one of the things that I wanted to bring up is your mind is such a huge, powerful, creative thing. A lot of times when we get stuck in our head and we go down these spiraling thoughts and we get obsessive and over analytical, it's simply a misuse of our imagination. When you learn to see this as an opportunity of what is the emotion here, what is going on?

Is it pain that needs to be expressed. If it's pain that needs to be expressed, you have options. You can turn this pain into almost like a fuel of now I want to use those to go have a really awesome workout, or you can use this pain as passion. You can put it into some form of art. You can put it into some creative project and just let that passion fuel it.

And that's the point is. Pain and love comes from the same emotional energy of passion. It's different forms of the expression, creative energy it can create, or it can destroy. It's still a creation. You can use creative energy to get creative on how you want to build something. Or you can get creative on how you want to destroy something.

You can use passion to infuse it into love. And people you love and what you do and loving your life, or you can use passion as rage and anger and fury. All of it though is your choice. And so on one of the calls I had just the other day with one of the clients that I'm working on with her fitness and mindset, I was explaining this to her.

The best description and visualization I can give to kind of help give the sense of control back to your brain is, I don't know if you remember these things, but when I was like in middle school and high school, Spencer's used to be the really cool store that like, you kind of weren't allowed to go in because there was some not, not parental approved things in there, but also it was cool because they have.

Lava lamps and like glow in the dark stuff and all these just different things. And they have those things that they look like little crystal balls, but like all the it's like the, uh, electricity lights were all in there. And when you put your hand on it, it ended up going to the heat of your fingertips.

So then you became in control of like where the electro or electric waves were going. If you think of your brain like that, like this ball of energy, and it's just got like all this electric stuff going on and it's super cool. If you can actually visually see that ball of energy. So the days that you're stuck in your head and it's just like going all over the place and you realize like, all right, I need an energy exchange.

I need to somehow express all this mental and emotional energy that's going on. How do I want to do it? Do I want to infuse this into my workout? Do I want to infuse it into a journal? Do I want to get outside and do something active outdoors? Do I want to put this into a creative project? Do I want to use this energy to motivate myself to work on my next goals?

Like, all I got to do is stick my fingertips on this electric ball and then immediately, like, I have choice of where I want to put that. And when I explained it to her, she was like, Oh like dragon ball Z. I'll like, yes, if you think of this. So imagine that you're like a superhero, imagine you're a superhero, um, dragon ball Z, or maybe you're Spider-Man and he shoots out all these webs, but imagine that being your emotional, mental energy, and now you have a choice of how you want to throw it out there in the world to get it out of your head, but to use it in a positive way.

And here's the thing is Joe Dispenza. He's so he used to be a chiropractor that he started to learn about spirituality practices, the mind, uh, gosh, metaphysics, quantum physics, all that. So now he talks more about stuff like this and just like the power of your mind. And he gives a great analogy about how your mind works.

He said your mind is like a dog. If you do not learn to train the dog, the dog will learn to train you. Not because the dog is in charge, but because it, you forgot that you are the master and not the servant. And it's so true if you've ever had a dog or any kind of thing. The dog will train you until you decide. No, no, no, you're not the boss. You are not in charge.

However, we forget this, we forget this with our minds and we forget that this is a very powerful, incredible thing that we have as human beings to use in our favor. But when we forget that we are the master, not the servant, it becomes very overwhelming on the days that we're stuck in our head.

So as cheesy of an analogy as it is. To think of your brain, like this ball of energy, it gives you a visual imagery of how you can really utilize all this. Over-analyzing all this emotional and creative energy. Stick your fingers on that little electric ball. And then how are you going to throw it out there in the world?

Where do you want to express it? Because once you express it, that emotional charge that is driving you nuts and making you feel out of control, it's been released. You've acknowledged it, you have used it instead of just letting it run around in your body. And a while back, I did a whole podcast episode on your energetic body and your physical body.

And it's kind of a little about this. It's just about how we store energy in our body, but that really everything works together. I mean, you have a thought that creates an emotion that wants to be expressed. But there are certain things that we choose not to express or not to feel. And who knows maybe.

I mean, it was just an experience that couldn't be expressed at that time, but over time, the more you do this, you either become a shell of a human because you've just repressed so many things or you start to feel like you're spiraling mentally out of control because these things have not had any kind of outlet and.

Like I said every single day, every single thing, every kind of experience that you have every day is going to be different of how it needs to be expressed. And so you have to get in touch with yourself and check in with yourself and ask yourself, what do I need today? For me, there are some days that the only form of expression, if it's super emotionally charged and it's not anger or anything, it's just like, I am feeling a lot emotionally I have to do in the form of music.

Music is just something that gives me a creative and emotional outlet. And it really just helps me express it in that way. Other days, if I am really stuck in my head, I need to go take a very long walk because that movement gives me the physical expression and it gets it out of my body. And normally it creates all these ideas.

Other days I need to go lift really heavy weights. Other times I got to paint, I don't know, but it's really up to you. And how you can check in with this. And this is kind of like at the beginning, when I was talking about the breath work that I have, like I wanted to bring this up as a tool is I want to make the point, if anything, this is probably the most important thing that I hope that you hear.

Your thoughts can not hurt you. They can scare the hell out of you, but they cannot hurt you. So when you recognize that and you recognize it for what it is, it is a thought and you can have very scary spirally, frustrating obsessive thoughts, but those thoughts can't actually hurt you. You have a choice of what you want to do with those thoughts.

So when you realize that you don't have to run away from them or escape them or ignore them when you realize these are thoughts, and I have a choice of what to do with these thoughts, you can sit with them. Acknowledge them. And now they're not so scary. I know that I've talked about this before of just like the monster in the closet or the monster in the bedroom.

It's only a scary monster under your bed or in your closet until you walk in and turn the lights on and you see that it was a stuffed Teddy bear, or it was your sweatshirt from 10 years ago. And then you kind of laugh at it because you're like, I have avoided going in this room or I've avoided looking under the bed because I thought it was this scary thing that would consume me and then hurt me.

And now I see that it's just a sweatshirt and it's just a Teddy bear. So one of the practices, days that I'm having this is I will typically try my best to get outside. If I can't get outside, then I just try to create a safe space in my room or in my house or somewhere. And I will set as much as it feels counterintuitive because when you're in these places, all you want to do is run.

You want to escape it, like, all right, what can I do? How can I like ignore this? How can I go somewhere else? And you're going to do that. And the more you do it, the worse it's going to get. So what I do is I remind myself, they're just thoughts. They are just thoughts. They can't hurt me. They can scare me.

Like they're scaring me right now, but the Kean actually do anything to me. I am going to sit with them and not be scared of them, allowing whatever emotion needs to come up, whatever emotional energy is seeking my attention to be there. And I'm just going to breathe through it. It's kind of like when you get a shot as a kid, like it's just a shot.

Like it might be a little pinch, but if you can just sit there. Breathe. It's going to be over before you know it, and that's exactly what happens. So with meditation practice, especially when people are first getting into meditation, I tell them like, don't worry about being perfect or seeking enlightenment or anything like that.

The first time you get into meditation, practice just sitting with yourself in complete silence, sitting with whatever shows up mentally and giving it the safe space with no judgement. No need to change it. No need to control it, but literally putting down all your walls, all your thinking, patterns, everything, and just opening up to like, all right, whatever's here is here and I'm just going to sit with it and befriend it, and I'm going to breathe through it.

And every time this happens, the process of surrender, but all you got to do during the five to 10 minutes, or sit as long as you want, just inhale and exhale. And that's it. You stop tensing, you stop trying to control and resisting. And this is what we do even in stretching. So like when I've worked with people and doing personal training, one-on-one with them and I put them through the end of their stretches and actually in this a eight week program, the workouts are follow along.

So I put you through a warm up the entire workout in a cool-down and I bring this up in the coolest. Of our natural default reaction is when we feel tension or pain, instead of relaxing into it to release it, we tense up. So think about when you're stretching. And so you have tight hamstrings and you're like trying to touch your toes and they're tight.

What happens? You grit your teeth or you build like you just transfer the tension somewhere else. You might be gripping your hands. And it's amazing that this is our default. So I always try and bring it to the attention of like, when you do this, you may be releasing the tension and the energy from your hamstrings, but all you did was transfer it to gritting your teeth or scrunching your eyes or tensing up something else.

So instead of doing that, take a deep breath, exhale, let it go. Actually let the tension go. And this is what meditation does is when you learn to focus on your breath and learn to breathe. All that mental energy. You're not putting it somewhere else in your body. Now it's in your shoulders. Now it's like in your heart, in your chest or in your stomach and your gut or anything like that, you are literally letting it be and exhaling.

So this is why meditation is so important. And the more you do it, the first time you do. It's super uncomfortable. It's super uncomfortable because your brain hasn't been given this space before. So your parasympathetic nervous system, which is basically just your subconscious mind, is the part of our minds that kick in.

Whenever we go to sleep, it's the deep, deep brainwaves that need rest and relaxation. So the first few times you do this, because that parasympathetic nervous system has never gotten. You are going to have 5 million things going on. You're going to be thinking about your grocery list, what you got to do at work, what you need to do for your car, your friends, your spouse, everything.

You're going to be like, oh my God, I cannot do this. Yes, you can keep showing up. It is a practice. The more you do it, the easier it gets. But if you really just think of it like a screen door and the wind is just coming in and out, you do not have to give every single thought your attention just when it pops up.

Inhale and exhale and just let it go. You can even do this in your workouts. And I also brought this up on the call with this particular client of talking about like, all right, so your homework this week, like, I want you to practice sitting with yourself and I want you to just really get connected to what's going on with you, because the only way we can get you to where you want to be is to teach you how to understand where you even want to be.

And what's going on and using the same analogy with this big ball of energy. I said your meditation can start with just five to 10 minutes of sitting in silence and just breathing, getting in the practice of breathing. But you can also use your workout as a form of meditation with your breath. And this is like some days I got to work out some music, other days I need to just work out without music, because I am trying to connect my breath to the movement that I'm doing.

It's a very good mindset practice, not just for your workouts, but just to carry throughout your life that anything that you do. Um, and I brought this up, I know I'm referring to a lot of clients. It's just been a lot this week and a lot going on. So there's a lot of examples to give, but I brought this up to somebody that I was working with in person, because.

You start doing a workout. Your initial reaction is to like go extreme and people do this with mindset practices too, of like, all right, I'm going to do all of it. I'm going to be super perfect. I'm going to hit it every single day. 8:00 AM to eight, 15:00 AM. And I try to express like, look, don't come out the gate too hot.

You come out of the gate, too hot. You're going to burn out just as fast, slow and steady wins the race. I know that's not what you want because you're so excited and inspired to just hit your goals and do everything, but this is a daily practice. So take your time. And so with this client that I was working with in person, I had like explained what they were doing for their metabolic circuits and their conditioning.

And I made it very clear. I said, look, I know what you're going to do. As soon as I tell you to start, you're going to come out full on sprinting. And that's not what you need to do. All I want you to do is focus on one breath. One rep. One movement at a time. If you can do that and put your entire present moment awareness in the workout that you are doing in each rep that you're doing, you're not going to lose your breath.

You won't have to take a break and you're actually going to end up getting a lot more done than had you just try to hurry up and get it over with quickly. And it's the same thing with anything you do in life with business, with your career, with relationships with yourself. It's one day one, inhale and exhale at a time, one rep at a time.

And doing that consistently over time is how you end up getting to where you want to be. So bringing all of this full circle with the days that you just feel stuck in your head, you're having these spiraling thoughts. Over analyzing, really just having a hard time feeling out of control, seeking for a way to escape it.

First use the visual image of this being like that little ball of energy that is just firing off all these electrical charges. But the second that you put your hand on it, it's going to be drawn to your own heat of your hand. And now you're just like a little superhero because your mind really is a super powerful thing.

Just don't forget that you are the thing that decides where all that power goes. So you've got this energy, it's all getting fired off electrically. You got your hand over this crystal ball. You can become whatever superhero you want to be. How are you going to throw it out there in the world? How do you want to express it?

What do you want to do with that emotional energy? And the other thing too, is learn to sit with these thoughts, learn to recognize. The thoughts can scare you, but you have a choice of what to do with these thoughts and to sit with them in silence and breathe through them, helps put you back in control instead of feeling out of control.

And I even told a very close friend of mine this recently when she was talking about like, she just feels super frustrated and like, she's got these spirally thoughts and she doesn't know what to do, and she's trying to get directions. And having all this in my mind about like, we gotta just express our thoughts.

I was like, you know what, maybe what you need to do is just go take a baseball bat, go find an empty field somewhere, and then just beat the crap out of the ground, releasing all that frustration and anger and all that mental energy. Because once you get it out of your body, You're going to be able to come back and think more clearly and more grounded.

But as long as you've got all that emotional energy spinning in your head, you're not going to be able to think clearly you can't because that thought or those thoughts, or like, can you please express this somewhere? It's up to you, how you want to express it though. So. I hope this gives you a lot of comfort, a lot of connection and some actual tools that you can use, because this is a practice.

And I have days like this, that I have to practice this two days where I'm just stuck in my head and I'm overthinking everything and I'm obsessing and getting frustrated. And those are almost always the days that I'm like, all right, I gotta, like, I gotta do something. I don't know what yet, but like, let's just try a couple of things and I might take a walk.

And then it doesn't work. When I take a walk, I'm like, all right, apparently a walk is not what I needed. What do I need? And then I'll play music. Sometimes that's not it. Then I'll go work out. Maybe that's not it. And you just keep trying it until you're like, that is exactly what I needed. I needed just pen to paper or I needed to just talk it out.

And that's the other huge thing too. You can talk these things out with people that you trust and feel safe with so that when you say something that you think is super scary, And you're telling this other person to get it out of your head and to physically express it through verbal communication. I mean, this is somebody that you trust, obviously not somebody who's going to tell you you're psycho or crazy and you express it and they're like, oh yeah, that happens to me too.

Like, it's not a big deal immediately. You're relieved. The thought has been expressed. It's totally fine. And now you can go on about your day, but just keep that in mind, getting a daily meditation practice. I almost said have fun with this, but I realize on days you feel this way, it's not fun, but if the image of a crystal ball and you being like dragon ball Z, like this other client said gives you some sort of like tool of like, oh, all right.

So what I want to do with my brain today, how am I going to use this superpower that helps you then use that, but really practice getting connected to it, practice sitting with your thoughts and not being scared of them. And remember, you're the master of your mind. Your mind is not the master of you. You just have to remember that and choose where to put your energy.

All right. Thank you so much for listening. I love this. This truly is like one of my favorite things to do in business and with my week is just have these conversations because connecting with you on a deep level with stuff that actually matters is what lights up my soul. So I appreciate you. I appreciate all the feedback that I've gotten.

If you could do me a huge favor, please leave me a review and make sure to subscribe. So that way you continue to get these things. But when you guys leave me a review or you send me messages on Instagram, it lets me know that this stuff is helpful for you and to keep it coming. And for those of you have already done it.

Thank you. I really appreciate that. But in the meantime, have a fantastic day. Go out there and conquer the world, go after your dreams. And I will see you in the next episode. .

Here's to Creating a Body & Life You Love,

Ashley Drummonds