Overthinking: Pause, Sort And Examine Your Thoughts

A worrying thought can keep asking for your attention long after thinking has stopped helping. In this 12-minute talk and guided practice, Jon Brooks works through a Stoic sequence: pause, sort what is up to you, then examine what you could do if a feared outcome happened. Choose an ordinary, manageable example. You can keep your eyes open and take the exercises at your own pace. The aim is to give yourself room to respond without treating every thought as a fact. The talk also considers the limits of reframing and why your circumstances matter. This is philosophical education and practice, not mental health treatment.

Transcript

So the first practice I want you to start with this week is the pause. So bring to mind one thought that you've been having lately. It doesn't have to be the worst one, Just a common one that you loop over or that you tend to overthink with. So think about that thought. Now, Instead of believing that thought and just going, Well, My mind came up with it, So it must be true, Say to yourself, Wait. Let me look at you. You are an impression. You are not yet a fact. You are not yet a fact. Wait, Let me look at you. You are an impression. You are not yet a fact. So you stop with this thought and you say, Let me examine you. Let me look at you. You are an impression, Not yet a fact. And then notice, The thought is still there, But now there's a bit of space around the thought. And that space seems subtle, But it's not subtle. It's a big deal. Having space around the thought is the difference between being completely consumed in it and making a bad decision, Or having an extra 30 seconds to ground yourself. And go a different direction. That space is everything. And sometimes people hold themselves to too much of a high standard. I need to feel great. I need to get rid of this thought. All we're looking for is space. All we're looking for is, I just want to examine your impression. So what we need to do is we need to practice this skill of sorting what is up to us and what is not up to us. And it's not intuitive. This is something we need to train. I see stoicism as a form of martial arts for the mind. And You can read a book on judo, But you enter a judo competition and you will not do very well. You can read a biography from a great boxer, But if you step into the ring, You will not do very well. You have to train. So we need to start by sorting out what is mine versus what is not mine. What is up to us, What is not up to us. So what is up to you? Your judgment, Your effort, Your attention. By the way, Before I get into this, A different way of describing this that made it click a lot more for me. Is thinking of it in terms of two categories, What is completely up to me and what is not completely up to me. So of course, There's loads of things that we can influence, But we could never say that someone else's reactions are completely up to us, Right? They're not completely up to us, At least. We're not saying that we can't influence them, But there are things that are completely up to us and things that are not completely up to us. So the things that are completely up to us are judgments, Effort, Attention, How we prepare, How we respond, Our character. What is not completely up to us, Just general outcomes in life. Other people's opinions, What's already happened in the past, What hasn't happened yet, Other people's reactions and our reputation. So what I want you to do is think of a worry now and tell me which parts of it are completely up to you and which parts of it are not completely up to you. Just do a simple sort, Even if it's one thing from each column. So the first skill when it comes to the dichotomy of control is sorting. We want to sort the worry. So we think about what is ours, Effort, Preparation, Our response, Our attention, And we just name it silently. And then we want to find the part that is not ours, The outcome, What other people think, What they'll do, What's already been done, And we name that silently as well. And then we need to learn the skill of releasing. And what I like to do for this skill of releasing is not just do it intellectually, Not just go, Oh, Okay, I guess I don't control those things, Therefore I should just not worry about them. I imagine putting the worry or the suffering in my hand and actually releasing it into the world as a physical action. Just so I can embody that letting go. The stoic move is to make it specific. Now, We need to be more specific in how we think about this, Right? Because I'm saying that if we make our worries more specific, You could maybe say, Well, Aren't we just overthinking even more, Right? We're taking our worry and thinking more about our worries. No. And the reason why is because when you worry, It's mostly an unconscious thing. It's more similar to like an itch and you have this itch and it's calling to be scratched. That's a worry. That's completely different from going into a medical room and a doctor examines the wound. I was like, Hmm, Let me take a look at this. Right, I can see that. Yeah, Let me break that apart. Calmly. So calm, Voluntary contemplation is very different from worry. So examining the fear, This is how we're going to practice it. I'm going to tell you the instructions. So you bring to mind something that you've been worrying about. Something real. I don't generally recommend choosing something catastrophic for these exercises unless you have some experience. And then you ask the question. If the worst version of this actually happened, What would I do? What would you actually do next? If you had a to-do list, What's on the to-do list? Who would you call? What would the next morning look like? Notice that when you do this, Now you have a plan. So imagine if this thing came true, What would I do? Come up with a plan. That's premeditation. It's not negative thinking. It's not imagining negative future scenarios to manifest them. It's exactly the same thing that engineers do. On things that you go on to keep you safe. So things like lifts, Escalators, Cars, Airplanes. Do you think that they don't imagine the worst case scenario and test these vehicles in case something goes wrong? Of course they do. That's what makes it safe. You'd never see an airplane or a rocket engineer going, Ah, Let's just not think that it could crash. You know, I'm not even going to be putting like safety things on this thing. Let's just, Let's just think the best now. I'm sure it will be fine. No, They're going to say, Well, If this engine fails, We have a backup engine. You know, If this communication protocol goes down, We have this other thing in place. That's what premeditation is. It actually prepares you. So let's consolidate everything that we've learned now. We can go into a meditation here. You can close your eyes if you like. If you can't close your eyes, You can just sit with me. And we're going to consolidate everything that we've learned. Okay, So bring to mind something that's been disturbing you recently, A certain thought. This week could be something about the future, Something that happened long ago, Something that's happening now. Okay, Just pause and notice that it is an impression, Okay? This is not controversial We know that the way that we think about things as human beings. It's part intuitive, Part rational, Part emotional. We need all of these parts. But we were not built to see the world through this pristine source of truth at all times. If that was the case, Nobody would have different opinions from each other. We're filtering reality through our own past, Our traumas, Our expectations. This thought, This thing that I'm thinking about is an impression. It is not a fact. I'm not saying that there's no truth in it. I'm not saying that there's no untruth in it. I'm just saying it's not a fact. It's not that simple. Let's sort through it now. What part of this is yours? What part of this do you not depend on others? To get the outcome. And what part isn't yours. What part do you not completely control? Step three is we're going to examine. We're gonna reflect. If the worst did happen, Let's just say, What would we actually do? What would be our to-do list? What would be the next action item? And this is the Stoic move. You can do it in three breaths. I've just gone through it slowly, But the Stoic move is pause, Sort, Examine. Pause, Sort, Examine. We've broken it down and gone in depth, And even in this guided practice, We've gone through it slowly. But really, You can actually do everything that I've described in a space of 30 seconds. Pause, This is an impression, Not a fact. What is mine, What is not mine? Okay, Well that thing that's bugging me, Not mine. Okay, What's the next thing I can do if this did happen, If this did come true? Right, I'm gonna think about that. Done. So this is it. This is the practice. This is the consolidation. And that's what I want you to take away with you for today and for the rest of the week. Pause, Sort, Examine. Some of us that might be struggling a bit more than maybe we want to admit to others or to ourselves. Stoicism is an amazing philosophy of life. And the ancient Stoics were legends, You know, Like the resilience that these individuals had was incredible, Inspiring. That said, Stoicism is not this like emergency protocol. That will just come in and fix everything for you instantly. If you have severe trauma, Severe depression, Reframing alone might help, But it might not be enough completely. Okay, So we're not trying to stuff emotions down. And also some suffering comes from life situations. It's not just a mental activity. It's not just a way that you're thinking about things. You know, Having very difficult physical conditions, You know, We have certain biological needs. Like if someone is sleep deprived continuously for a long period of time, Reframing can only help so much in those situations, Okay? So just wanna give that as the, You as the sort of caveat to some of this stuff. So pause, Sort, And examine. That is the move.