Get out of your mind

*queue Lil Jon's song*

It's funny, I've had one of the busiest weeks of my life and yet I still found SO MUCH time to think! Funny how that works right??

Well in those hours of ~pondering~ I came to a realization, one that probably most 20-somethings come to:

Being trapped inside your own head is poison.

Literally. It's just like the post I wrote a couple weeks ago - when we're trapped, surrounded by similar thoughts all day long, our mind can do some pretty weird stuff, rendering itself closed to outside modes of thought. In this "closing off" of sorts, we have too many thoughts in our own head for our own good. We begin to overthink every little thing.

Scenario 1

Have you ever had an instance where you look at a word and it just looks so foreign to you in the moment. Then you start saying it in your head, then you start saying it so much in your head and it doesn't sound right so you have to say it out loud... get the picture?

Scenario 2

So obviously there's times like that, and likely those are times when you're tired and should probably just sleep, but whatever the case, you're stuck inside your head. But now think about a time when you accidentally messed something up... think gotten a subpar grade on a test or forgot to get a gift for someone's birthday. If you're alone, chances are you unintentionally begin to dwell on that mistake. Depending on your personality, you dwell on that mistake too much.

Personally, I tend to overweigh any and every mistake I make, so this might just be pertinent to me... I digress.

Whatever the case, whenever we are stuck in our own heads, things usually end up seeming a lot worse than they are in reality.

Scenario 3

You have a huge job interview coming up... two weeks from now. But because you are so stressed out about the job interview and you don't have an outlet or someone to talk to, that is ALL you can think about. POISON! Poison I tell you. Because it's all you can think about, you fail to live in the present, which in turn puts you right into that feedback loop from hell in which because you can't enjoy the present because you're preoccupied with the future, you becoming too focused on the future and can't enjoy the present. What terror!

Getting out of your head

Avoid the feedback loop and avoid distress literally by talking to people. Take a break from work and instead of taking a break to watch Netflix or whatever it is you do, just give someone a call. Interacting with humans is huge - obviously something we've all fallen a little short on in the past year given the circumstances. The more you interact with other humans, the more likely you are to think less (not necessarily think less, but refrain from OVERthinking). The less you think, the more present you will be, and the more present you are, the more you will be able to appreciate the little things and be happy.

I know this whole thing is cliche, but get out of your mind!