The Invisible Mental Work That Leaves You Exhausted

11:41

The Invisible Mental Work That Leaves You Exhausted

by Lindsey Elliott

Rated

5

Type

talks

Activity

Meditation

Suitable for

Everyone

Plays

4

If you feel permanently switched on, and tired in a way sleep does not fix, this talk may explain why. Much of the mental energy we spend every day goes on managing things that do not need managing and could never be controlled anyway. Editing emails for tone. Going back over conversations to check how you came across. Reading the energy of a room and adjusting yourself for everyone around you. Feeling responsible for other people's moods and trying to get your own feelings right before you can act. In this video, I look at why none of this works, why other people's thoughts and feelings come from their own thinking, and why feelings move on by themselves when we stop trying to manage them. I share how seeing this changed the way I say yes and no, and how asking for help stops feeling like a threat to who you are. This is not about caring less or setting boundaries. It is about seeing clearly what needs your attention and what does not, so you have space for your actual life.

Mindful Awareness Acceptance Meditation Mental Health Overthinking Self Doubt Emotional Detachment Clarity Emotional Self Regulation Identity Overthinking Management Self Doubt Reduction Mental Clarity

Meet your Teacher

Lindsey Elliott

Brighton and Hove, UK

Meet your Teacher

Lindsey Elliott

Brighton and Hove, UK

Transcript

Hi, Welcome to this video. So what if I told you that at least half of the things that you spend your mental energy on every single day don't actually need managing? So that the tiredness that you feel isn't because life is too much, It's because your mind has convinced you. That things that need your attention and control when they simply don't. And these things often can't even be controlled. So I'm Lindsay Elliott and I work with women who are stuck in patterns of overthinking and anxiety and self-doubt. And today I want to talk about something that once you see it, I believe genuinely changes everything. So, You are managing things that don't need managing. Not some of the time, Most of the time. And the overwhelm that you're feeling, That low-grade tension, The sense of sort of being permanently on. That isn't coming from your actual life. It's coming from the invisible mental work of trying to control things that were never yours to control and honestly were not even controllable in the first place. So let me give you some examples because I think when you see this laid out hopefully something will click for you. So how much time do you spend? Managing what other people think of you. So editing your emails before you send them, And I don't just mean for typos, I mean like for tone or how you'll come across or whether someone might read it the wrong way. Spending time replaying a conversation from Tuesday, Not because anything went wrong, But because you're not sure how you sounded. Did you say too much? Were you too direct? Did they think you were being difficult? Or maybe you spend time monitoring the room. So reading people's faces, Adjusting yourself, Depending on who you're with. So being maybe one version at work, Another version with your partner, Maybe another version with your mum or your kids. So this is an enormous amount of energy that gets expended every single day. And here's the thing that nobody says clearly enough. None of this works. None of it is working. You cannot control what another person thinks of you. Now, Your mind would absolutely love you to believe that it can. It will absolutely tell you that you just have to get your wording right, Or you just have to manage your tone, Or if you just anticipate their reaction and adjust yourself accordingly, You can make them see you the way that you want them to see you. But you can't. You never could, Because that's not how our experience in life works. So, And it's not because you're not being vigilant enough or not careful enough, But it's because other people's thoughts are their thoughts. They're generated by their own mind, They're their own history, From their own mood that morning, From what's been happening to them. You could say the perfect thing and they could still take it the wrong way. You could say nothing and they'd still have some kind of opinion about you. So when we really see this, Not as some nice idea, But as actually an obvious truth, Something extraordinary happens. You just stop trying, And not through effort, Not through willpower, Not by practicing, I don't care what other people think, You just stop, Because it doesn't make sense anymore. So it's a bit like trying to control the weather. Once you see that that's not possible, Or we just tend to know it's not possible, You don't have to practice letting go of it. You just naturally stop trying. And we just inherently know I can't control the weather. We might moan about it, But we can't control it. And it's the same with other people's feelings. How much time do you spend trying to make sure everyone around you is okay? If your child is upset, You feel responsible. If your partner's in a mood, You feel like you caused it. If a friend is distant, You might scan backwards through every interaction you've had, Trying to work out what you did. So you're managing other people's emotional experience as if it's your job. And that is exhausting. And because here's what's really going on. Other people's feelings are created by their own thinking, In their own mind, In the moment, Just like yours are. You are not generating their experience. You can't. You don't have that kind of power. And even your own feelings, You're trying to innocently manage those too. You're trying not to feel anxious, Trying to feel confident before a meeting, Trying to feel calm before a difficult conversation. As if these feelings are something that you need to get right before you can act or before you can feel okay. But feelings don't need managing. They move. They always move. Anxiety comes and it goes. Confidence comes and it goes. Worry comes and it goes. Again, Just like the weather. They always are passing through. It's their inherent nature. And it's only really management of them that makes them feel stuck. So the attention and the analysis, Why am I feeling this? Why can't I fix this? That's what keeps it feeling alive and makes it feel permanent when it isn't. So, What actually happens when these beliefs around what we need to manage drop? Well, You can stop trying to control what people think of you, When you stop monitoring everyone else's emotional state, When you stop treating your own feelings as problems to solve. The result of that is we get space. We get an enormous amount of mental space that wasn't there before. And from that space, You can start to see your actual life more clearly, Not through the fog of what does everybody else think and how should I feel about this and am I getting it right, Just clearly. So I want to talk through an example from my own experience around saying yes and no to things about in terms of when I get invitations to do things. Before I understood this, About the fact that it is impossible for me to control how other people think and feel about me, I used to make decisions around what I want to do when I say yes or no to an invitation around how I thought the other person would feel if I said no to it predominantly. Because obviously if you're being invited to something and you just say yes, Then mostly you believe that people want you to be there. So if I was thinking, I don't actually want to do that, Or I haven't got space or energy to do that, I would always end up in some kind of mental tussle around, How are they going to feel if I say no? What will they think about me as a friend or a daughter or a sister or a partner? And I would spend a lot of time overthinking this. And when I really started to see what I'm pointing to in this video, That we cannot manage how other people think, We cannot control that, And their feelings are not my responsibility. Saying yes or no to things is now much, Much easier for me. In fact, I just feel into myself, Do I want to do this or not? Have I got bandwidth for it? Does it fit into what I want to do? Do I want to do this? And if the answer is no, Then I just say no. Now I say it with kindness. I say it gently. I might give a little explanation if I felt it was going to smooth things along but it's not necessary to do that and I just don't have that level of thinking about how are they going to receive it or what what if they think badly of me because I know I can't control that and it isn't my responsibility. And now making decisions is just so much easier and clearer for me and much, Much less energy draining. So when I stopped trying to manage how other people saw me, It wasn't that I suddenly didn't care. It was just that I could see clearly that I had been doing something that was never going to work. It was finally like putting down a bag that I didn't really know I was carrying and it was a heavy bag. And it wasn't through discipline that I had to do this. It was just through seeing that carrying that bag was never achieving anything in the first place. It wasn't actually working. And that's where this gets really practical because when the mind is clearer and you're not drowning in the management of things that were never yours to manage, You can actually see what's real, What's really going on in your life. So maybe you genuinely do have too much on your plate. And that's not because you're failing in some way or you're not good enough, But because no one person should be doing the amount that you're doing. Maybe you do actually need help, Actual practical help, At work or at home or with your kids. And from this clearer space you can ask for it. Simply, Without it meaning anything about your worth, Without it proving that you're not good enough. Without there being some kind of identity crisis around it that maybe previously might have come with admitting that you can't do everything. Because that identity crisis is just your mind making some meaning about asking for help. What it means about you. If I need help, I'm failing. If I can't cope, Something's wrong with me. If I delegate this, People will think I'm not up to it. That's just all of the tricks of the mind. They're just stories, Just thoughts passing through that you have habitually believed to be real. So they feel very convincing, But they're no more true than any other thought that your mind might generate at three o'clock in the morning. They're not facts about you. They're just habits of thinking that made sense and can start to not make sense going forward. So when you see that asking for help stops being a threat to your identity, It just becomes a sensible thing to do. A bit like putting on a coat when it's cold. It doesn't mean anything, It's just practical. So I want to be clear about something. This isn't about doing less. It's not about learning to let go or setting boundaries or any of those things that sound great in theory but feel impossible in practice in your day-to-day life. It's about seeing clearly what needs your attention and what doesn't. And discovering that the list of things that genuinely need your mental energy is much, Much shorter than your mind has been telling you. So when you're not spending half of your day monitoring other people's moods, Reading the room, Editing yourself and trying to control the uncontrollable, It turns out that you have more than enough capacity for your actual life. So that tiredness, That exhaustion can lift. And not because your life actually got easier, But because you stopped doing a job in your head that was never yours in the first place. And it was a job that wasn't effective anyway, It wasn't working. So the link for that, For both of those is below. And if you're sitting here and thinking, Well, This all makes sense, But I should probably think about it a bit more, Then you know that that's just your mind trying to manage. The unmanageable are not wanting to let go of that habit, Trying to manage what you already know, That you want to be free of this. So, Thanks so much for watching, Thanks for being here and I'll see you soon. Bye!