Raise your hand if you over-think things.  Raise your hand if you wish there was a switch in which you could turn your thoughts on and off.  Raise your hand if you over-think your over-thinking.  If you didn’t raise your hand, go directly to the comment section and share your strategies!!  Seriously!  I want to hear them.

If you’re still reading, it means you’re like me, relentlessly trying to find a way to silence the constant chatter in my head.  Sometimes it’s important chatter, things that are serious to me or have me upset or worried.  In those times, I over-think the most, over-analyze, rehash, try to put the pieces together to make things make sense, even obsess.  My over-thinking tends to create problems that weren’t even there to begin with. 

Most of the time it’s a mental list of all the things I need to do, errands I need to run,  projects I thought would be finished by now, commitments I made to other people, carpool plans, kids’ schedules, work deadlines, and things I forgot to do. 

And sometimes it’s just plain ridiculous.  It goes something like this.  I sit down to “meditate” for a minute (because I hear that’s really good for this).  A bee buzzes by…I wonder if bees really die when they sting you…I remember a time Brandon got stung by a bee and how painful it was…Ouch, I’ve got a pain in my foot right now… reach down to rub the pain and notice my shoes… I hate these shoes, why did I wear them… I seriously need to clean out the shoes in my closet…wait, I still have that shirt I borrowed from Allison in my closet that I never returned…Allison, crap, I was supposed to call her back an hour ago…I bet she was calling about picking Catie up from school…Damn, I was supposed to make Catie a dentist appointment…actually, I need to make myself a doctor appointment…well first I need to shave my legs…I wonder if everyone shaves their legs before they go to the doctor of if that’s just weird…I’ll have to ask the next time I go to happy hour…oooh, I could really go for a happy hour…actually I could really go for a whole night out…well definitely not in these shoes! 

“SHUT UP!”  is what I want to say to myself!!!  Quit thinking!!!

So how DO we quiet the mind?  I’m still trying to figure that out, but yoga is one thing helping me.  The first time our instructor told us to quiet our mind, I seriously had no idea what I was supposed to do!  I spent the whole time overanalyzing what exactly I was supposed to be thinking about if I wasn’t supposed to be thinking!  How can you not think about anything?  Again Paige, SHUT UP!!  So that’s what I did.  I started focusing on the quiet music he was playing or the sound of my breath.  I became present in THAT moment, whatever that might be.  I realized the more I tried to “force” thoughts out of my mind, the less luck I had.   So if I thought came in, I’d just tell myself not now, and do my best to focus on the silence.  It gets a little easier each week, but it is still extremely hard for me.  I’m not used to silence.  I have a huge imagination and a curious mind.  I have a passion for details and although it’s been construed as being nosy at times, it’s not.  I’m sincerely interested in the small details of someone’s life.  All of those qualities come in handy for my job, but in my personal life it’s exhausting.

So, I’ve been telling myself to HUSH UP (seems nicer) when I start to think too much and I just STOP.  May not last as long as I would like it to, but it does work.  How do you silence your mind?  What strategies help you stop over thinking and obsessing?  I would love to hear your thoughts!  And if you don’t comment, I’ll just over think why no one responded and you’ll make my problem worse!  Of course I’m kidding!  Well, kind of. (Insert winky face!)

I'm a planner.  Not so much with my friends, but when it comes to me, my family, and my job, I like to plan.  I also like to see my
plans.  I haven't even brought myself to put my calendar in my phone because I like to see the whole month laid out, color coordinated by person.  I love excel spreadsheets, to-do lists and even the occasional sticker chart for myself to see how my plans are going.  But herein lies my problem…the follow through.

A typical day for me looks something like this…

PLAN to wake up 30 minutes early so I can get 20 minutes in on the treadmill and not be rushed getting us all out the door. 
REALITY…Hit snooze three times, wake up 30 minutes late, and rush out of the house in a tizzy, frustrated with everyone.

PLAN to eat a nutritional breakfast at home before I leave. 
REALITY…(see #1) go through Chick-Fil-A

PLAN to have a positive attitude and lots of patience for the kiddos. 
REALITY…my breakfast duty does me in.

PLAN to pack healthy snacks for the day. 
REALITY…(see #1) parent brings cupcakes for Johnny’s birthday and cafeteria makes too many cinnamon rolls so I eat them as to avoid hurting anyone’s feeling for refusing(ok, so that’s not really why I ate them!)

PLAN to check 5 things off on my work To-Do list. 
REALITY…a parent calls, two kids get in an argument, we have a fire drill, Jane is sad because Susie has a new best friend, so I add something to my To-Do list I’ve already done so I can enjoy that wonderful feeling of marking through it with my red sharpie!

PLAN to bring a healthy lunch. 
REALITY…(see #1) eat steak and gravy and a roll from the cafeteria.

PLAN to drink four bottles of water at work. 
REALITY…get a caffeine headache and grab a Diet Dr. Pepper from the drink machine.

PLAN to go to the gym after work. 
REALITY…friend calls for happy hour.  Tell her I have to work out.  Haha, just kidding.  Go to happy hour.

PLAN to walk the dog when I get home. 
REALITY…too cold.

PLAN to use one of the 100 crockpot recipes I’ve pinned on Pinterest for dinner.  REALITY…(see #1) forgot.

PLAN to do 1-2 loads of laundry every night to keep up. 
REALITY…too tired.

PLAN to wash my face with the 43 different products I have bought to ease the aging process. 
REALITY…who cares.

PLAN to get 7-8 hours of sleep so I can get up 30 minutes earlier! 
REALITY…lay in bed feeling like a big, fat loser because all my planning resulted in a bunch of nothing.  So, I’m still awake at midnight planning how I can eat less, exercise more, be more productive at work, keep up with the house better, drink more water, spend more time with the dog, look younger, and get my beauty sleep.  

Shew.   The truth is, if I put half the time into DOING as I do PLANNING, I’d accomplish
more in a day than I do in a week!  Planning is necessary, but achieving is what makes each of us feel proud and why we even plan in the first place. Sometimes you just have to stop thinking and start acting!  That's hard for me.  I'm a thinker.  Actually, an overthinker.  I believe my need to plan probably goes hand in hand with my worrying (see Don't Worry...Be Happy post).  Planning make me feel like I have some control and, in all honesty, it's much less scary to plan than it is to actually do.  But I'm ready to change that. So that’s my plan on this April 1…less talk and more action!  What do you need to stop planning for and just start doing? What’s holding you back?

I’ve been seeing a lot of students lately who can’t seem to stop worrying.  Just in the last week, I’ve seen a student, who between throwing up and crying, was worried about her Writing SOL.  A student from a military family was worried if they were relocated to a station oversees, they wouldn’t be able to bring their pets.  A brother and sister came to see me, worried their fighting parents might get divorced.  Another was worried about a sick grandparent, and yet another worried that mom wouldn’t be there to meet him when he got off the school bus.  Together, we write down the worry and put it in “The Worry Box” in my office, where I keep the worry safe with me until the time comes we need to pull it out again.  Most of the time, that time never comes.

Ok, so here’s the thing…I’m a life-long worrier currently trying to recover.  I can remember worrying as a child.  I especially worried about something happening to my parents, but I worried about other stuff too.  I have wasted countless hours worrying.  Hours I will never get back.  I defended my worrying by feeling like I had a good reason to be worried.  That somehow, all of this worrying would protect me.  It would make me better prepared to handle the situation I was worried about, or even avoid it all together.  I believed if I worried long enough or hard enough, I could change the outcome.  In some weird way, worrying was working for me.

What was not working, was the constant stress, anxiety, and sleepless nights my worrying was creating.  The toll it was taking on me and even on my loved ones.  A couple things happened that began to change my outlook on worrying.  One day a friend mentioned hearing a sermon about worrying being one of our greatest sins.  Worrying was a sin?  I’m not an overly religious person, so to be honest, I had never thought of it like that.  I believe God has a plan for each of us, so to worry is to say you don’t have faith in God’s plan.  I was interested enough that I looked up verses in the Bible that talked about worrying.  A few of my favorites…

Matthew 6:34  Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself.  Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

Luke 12:25  And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?

Philippians 4:6-7  Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be known to God.  And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

It was like God was saying to me, “Take a break Paige, I got this.”  And as Max Lucado said, “No one can pray and worry at the same time.”

Secondly, I realized worrying was solving absolutely nothing for me.  The worrying was not stopping the bad stuff from happening, nor did it make me any more prepared for it.  I found that if I had solvable worries, I generally took action.  But as a chronic worrier, most of my worries were unsolvable.  I started asking myself…

Is this a real problem or an imaginary “what if”?  If it’s a “what-if”, how likely is it to happen?  Is there anything I can do about my worry or is it completely out of my control?  It started to put my worries into perspective.  I also set aside a “worry time”.  I allowed myself to worry all I wanted while I was in the shower in the mornings (I do my best thinking/worrying in the shower!)  I made a mental list of all the things I was worried about.  On my way home from work, I reviewed the list and decided if it was still something I needed to be worried about.  I was always surprised how small the list was on my way home.  I tried to force myself not to worry any other time of the day, only during my scheduled “worry time”.  This way, I was only wasting about 15-20 minutes a day, not hours.

I’m not going to say I’m a recovered worrier, I’m not.  I still worry about my son driving on his own in a few weeks and about how much my own daughter worries.  I worry about the health and safety of the people I love and the kids I work with.  I worry about the future of our country and if I’ll be around to see my kids reach all the milestones in their life.  I worry about my mom as she gets older and other family members who are going through tough times.  I even still worry about the small stuff…my dog outside on cold days, having to put on a bathing suit in a couple of months, what people think of this blog.  But I’ve decided to put it all in my worry box and pull it out only when I need to.  Chances are, I’ll never need to…

A student was having a hard time adjusting to the higher expectations of first grade.  He was greatly displeased by the removal of nap time.  He thought we should all get naps!  I silently agreed, but said “Honey, things change”.  He replied, “Well, I don’t like it.”  You know what, me either. 

So much has been written about the good that comes from embracing change.  How important it is to close doors so others will open.  In fact, I have quotes taped all over my office to remind me.  I email them to friends, share them on Facebook and pin them on Pinterest hoping the notion that change is a beautiful thing will somehow seep into my pores.  It looks so good on paper!  The truth is, I don’t like change.  It’s hard.  It’s uncomfortable.  It’s unfamiliar, and many times, it’s just plain sad.  It IS hard to see the open doors when you are focused on the closed ones, but when the closed one is all you’ve ever known and you can’t see the open door, how do you make yourself pull away and walk towards uncertainty?

I admit…I am good at sabotaging door closings.  I put stops in the door so they won’t close.  I flip the latch so they won’t shut all the way.  I stick my foot in the door and hold it open with one hand, all the while trying to live my life and wondering why new opportunities are not coming my way.  But even for the hard core resistors like myself, it’s obvious change is inevitable.  NOTHING in my life has been able to escape change.  Not my jobs, not my relationships with people, not my children or husband, and especially not me.  Although I still struggle with embracing change in the moment, I can skim through the chapters of my life and everywhere I look, I see those open doors created by closing others.  Although it’s frightening, it can also be liberating.  And although I didn’t see it or appreciate it at the time, I know that in most instances, things worked out the way they should have.

I am resisting a lot of change in my life right now.  I am putting so much effort into juggling to keep doors from closing; I’m missing out on the exciting and wonderful opportunities offered by the open doors.  We don’t have to like change but we must accept it.  The definition of embrace says “to clasp or hold close with the arms, usually as an expression of affection”. Maybe if I treat change with more warmth and less fear, I will be able to embrace it in the moment.  Writing this article is my first step.  What’s your first step? Are there doors you need to close?   Change you need to embrace?  Comment here and share your experience with me!