Get Out of Your Own Head!

As I look back at past posts, I see the above topic resurfacing again and again. It’s certainly good advice for all of us. First, to clarify, getting out of your own head does not mean to cease from thinking nor does it mean to leave your body nor any other weird, hooky pooky stuff. We all need to take time to think. We all need to pay attention to the processor. What we don’t need to do is overthink, which isn’t really continued thinking, but rather recycling of the same thoughts. Overthinking is a fear response. It’s the pervasive urge to keep running something through your mind. You feel anxious about something then become determined to track it down. It’s like smelling something awful then having to smell it again. It’s looking at the coin from too many angles after already identifying it as a coin. It’s not trusting yourself. Getting out of your own head is getting serious about ridding yourself of negative thought patterns. As a great man once quipped, “Negatives are like mosquitos on a blood hunt.” And I’ll add, if they do bite, you have to learn how not to scratch that itch. All of that nervous, fearful thinking is bad for your health. You end up just spreading more and more poison around in your mind, then wondering why you don’t feel safe. If you get confronted by a bear, your best course of action is to get away, not try to work it out. Similarly, getting out of your own head is putting an end to pointless worry and dread cycles. It means stop doing it. You decide what you will and will not think about. You decide to get out of your own head!

Since overthinking means thinking a thought too much, let’s delve into the fear behind it. You are never going to figure out fear! There I said it! Fearful thoughts are basically thought bombs floating around in the ethereal air looking for a place to detonate. But in order to gain combustion and blow up they need someone to light the fuse. That’s where you come in. Once you spot the thought bomb and recognize it is not good, you have to dismiss it. When you decide you are going to take it on by consideration, you light the fuse. 3…..2……1 boom! Now your head is on fire while you try to put out the fire. This is what happens when you try to figure out fear. Fear comes from the spiritual realm. It didn’t originate here and only entered the scene after Adam blew it and it’s been entering the scene ever since. Because it has a spiritual basis, obviously a bad spiritual basis, you are not going to be able to crack that code with your finite human mind. You want to bet, you exclaim! Watch me! If I just rethink this thing 20 times surely I’ll get to the bottom of it, you plea. But my friend, you are not going to get to the bottom of it. No one can get to the bottom of it because it is not real. It is an illusion. It is a grand deception. The thought of the thing is always worse than the thing itself. The reason you don’t feel safe is because you are feeding your mind the wrong thoughts. Those thoughts are producing your anxiety, not the mythological thing burdening you. It is the perfect vicious cycle. You feel anxious, you entertain fear bombs, you feel more anxious and you entertain more fear bombs. Both are feeding the other. Stopping over thinking means to stop entertaining those fearful considerations. Stop lighting the fuses. Stop playing with fire because if you persist at it a real fire is going to start. Fear, though always a lie, is a form of negative expectation and as such is encouraging something bad to come in your direction that wasn’t on your path until you invited it. Get out of your own head.

Another form of overthinking involves a persistent and unhealthy focus on yourself. This is also based on fear; fear you aren’t going to get something or you are going to get something or don’t deserve something or don’t measure up or ain’t right or something is wrong with you. Self-Help would go completely out of business if we ever realized there’s nothing wrong with us. To live in perpetual evaluation and critical judgment of yourself is a death sentence. You know what you are going to find when you examine your imperfect flesh? Imperfection! What else were you hoping to find? Do you believe there is some deeply spiritual person hiding down there inside your flesh? Please allow me to save you some time. He ain’t there. She ain’t there. The part that makes us lovely and acceptable before God is His spirit inside of us. If you want to focus on something, focus on that. Our flesh is corruptible and in fact, already corrupted. Imagine living your whole life in constant self examination, adhering to strict difficult rules, avoiding this and abstaining from that only to find out you were never going to be able to clean up your flesh. If you could have done that, you would have never needed a Savior. But alas, you cannot, so you may as well accept your plight and try to enjoy your life a little. All of that self focus eats away at you like a cancer. Justifying yourself for this and explaining away that, cancer! It’s like my good friend used to say, “When you look at people, don’t look too closely.” Good advice for you looking at yourself as well. Overthinking is when you spend the whole day thinking about yourself. You become stuck in your own head. You are having too many conversations with number one. When you find yourself there, for goodness sakes, get up and do something else. Don’t sit there mired in your own poop. (sorry) Forcibly move your mind along to another topic. You are okay and you are going to be okay. God loves you just as you are. God already saw your whole life through and He still called you. (smile) He even did one better for you. He sent us His Son to be everything you and I could never be on our own, then wrapped up his Son’s accomplishments and gave them to us. So why spend any time on your imperfect flesh when God gave you a perfect spirit that cannot be corrupted, nor can it sin. Imagine how many less overwrought thoughts you would have about yourself when you realized He did for you what you could not do for yourself. Maybe you could finally let self go. Maybe you could stop buying the next book that said you were okay because you finally realized you are already okay. It’s not worth it man. Get out of your own head.

The only moment you and I can live in is the moment called now. Our past has been completely resolved and our future is glory. Yet we cannot live in neither. We can only live today, right now, in this moment. Why not resolve yourself to making a more healthy mental environment for yourself. It does matter what you think. But, it also matters what you don’t think. You can solve a lot of issues simply by refusing them any further thought. Yes you will be tempted to go back down those roads and you will at times, but remember you can control your thoughts in the moment called now. You have never solved a single problem by worrying about it. All you have done is to make yourself sick. The best way to get out of your own head is to refuse fearful considerations and get your mind off yourself. Get off your own back. No amount of bathing will make your flesh pure. Why not bathe instead in the truth. Fear is a lie and the devil is a liar. Try love instead as it can never fail. Your best life exists on the other side of all that frenetic thought. Find your peace by no longer overthinking. Indeed, get out of your own head.

Just some good thoughts.