If you keep circling it, it’s probably not resolved
There’s a certain kind of thinking that feels productive until it really doesn’t.
It always starts innocently enough, you’re trying to work something out, be it a decision, a conversation you need to have, a move you want to make. In the midst of this, something just feels a bit unsettled so you think it through, you weigh up the options, you replay the context, you ask a few trusted people, you revisit your own logic, and you tell yourself you’re just being thorough.
All completely reasonable, until, at some point, you realise you’re not actually getting any clearer, you’re just circling, going back over the same thoughts. Testing the same possibilities, looking at the same problem from slightly different angles and somehow ending up in exactly the same place.
Because you’re still actively thinking about it, you get the false sense of progress, until it dawns on you that you’ve just circled the thought again and again.
That’s often the point where we assume we need more:
more time
more information
more opinions
more thinking
Usually, we don’t need more anything. It just needs to be worked through properly.
Because most of the time, the thing keeping us stuck isn’t the decision itself.
it’s everything underneath it.
the pressure of getting it right.
the fear of making the wrong call.
the frustration of not feeling certain yet.
the general mental noise that makes everything feel bigger than it is.
Once that part gets untangled, the next step is often much clearer than we expected.
That’s a big part of why I started Overthink This With Me.
After years of being the person people came to with their “can I run something by you?” moments, I started noticing the same pattern over and over.
Capable people don’t usually get stuck because they don’t know enough. They get stuck because they’re trying to think clearly while sitting in the middle of the thing.
Sometimes what you need isn’t more input. You just a little space, a level head and someone to help separate what’s important from what’s just noise.
If something’s been circling for a while, you don’t have to keep working through it on your own. Sometimes a little thinking space is all it takes to finally land it.
You can keep thinking about it. Or you can hand it over for a while.