How to Stop Overthinking and Finally Do The Thing!

If overthinking paid, most of us would be millionaires. In this episode, Eimear Zone dives into the real reason smart, capable women stay stuck in the loop of overthinking, perfectionism, and “productive” busyness — and how to finally break free.

You’ll learn five powerful, research-backed tools to calm your nervous system, quiet your mind, and move forward with confidence (no extra qualifications required).

Resources Mentioned

• The Morning Reset: https://www.subscribepage.com/my-morning-reset
  The 5-minute guided ritual to shift your focus from problems to power.
• The Confidence Key: https://eimearzone.com/confidence-coaching/
  Eimear’s signature 8-week immersion for women ready to rewrite their self-concept and build real momentum.

CONNECT WITH EIMEAR

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📱 Instagram: @eimearzonecoach

💻 Website: eimearzone.com 📧

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© 2025 Eimear Zone Coaching. All rights reserved.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Welcome. I'm Eimear Zone. Your host a little bit croaky, so I'm gonna take a sip of my tea. Oh my God, that's good. Listen, if overthinking paid, I'd be a millionaire. I would be a millionaire. Would you? Maybe you'd even be a billionaire. Honestly, I would have like that huge house on the beach and so much more.

And I know that I'm not alone. I was in this group recently in the last week or so, and the number of comments of people saying how they overthink everything and how it holds them back, and here is just a flavor of what people were saying. I always feel like I need another qualification before I can start.

What if it doesn't work as a constant recurring [00:01:00] thought, my fear is creating something and it not being good enough. Another person said, I just completely block myself. I talk myself out of things all the time. And it just felt so relatable and so I wanted to talk about this. We tell ourselves, we're just thinking things through, but what's really happening is this quiet, exhausting cycle of, of self editing.

And we will rework. I know I've done this. We just kind of reworking the same idea over and over again in my head, just reiterating, rewriting the plan again and again, so it stays in the notebook and not out there in the real world. And we can tend to [00:02:00] tone things down, tone down the dream so that it won't sound like it's too much.

And eventually we silence ourself before we've even spoken. You know, dreams just end up in the planning and research mode, cycling through that different iterations, you know, spark of idea, but nothing ever actually getting bloody well done 'cause we're stuck in this overthinking loop. And that's really the heartbreak of overthinking.

It looks like thought. It looks like it's productive, but actually it's fear. And it's fear dressed up as logic. Fear wear wearing the mask of responsibility. And because most of us are really competent, I'm sure you are high functioning women. We stay busy. Busy is so addictive, isn't it? It's so attractive in many ways.

It's so familiar, the idea of filling your calendar, [00:03:00] signing up for more stuff, more learning more planning, more, getting ready. And we chase like shiny new strategies and they're very convincing distractions really. And they make us feel productive, but really they are just beautifully, beautifully disguised, avoidance, ugh.

And it feels hard to say, 'cause I've absolutely done this. I, I absolutely have done this. And all of that busyness. My God, it becomes like this perfect excuse, doesn't it? For why? The big thing, the really meaningful thing, the thing that would make us feel fulfilled and proud and really just feel amazing.

It never bloody well gets done. It never gets done. It stays in that idea format, in that notebook, [00:04:00] in that mind map, in that not finished. That not finished state, it just stays there. What's happening is that we're, you know, we're afraid of being seen fear's at play. We're afraid of being seen, afraid of being judged, afraid of getting it wrong. And here's an uncomfortable truth.

The real reason that we stay stuck isn't a lack of skill or discipline. It's that the concept. That we hold of ourselves, our identity, who we believe ourselves to be that identity that we're operating from. It can't yet hold the dream we have for our lives. It can't yet hold it. And so we think, oh, well just.

Plan more, research more, and wait for this elusive day [00:05:00] when we'll finally feel ready. I do resonate with that feeling of overthinking and procrastinating and telling myself, I just need to do a little bit more research, and just need to rework something before it's okay to take the next step. And it's bullshit.

It's bullshit because that day never comes, and we just end up spinning in the overthinking cycle. So today we're going to talk about how to stop that because my God, it's just wearing and it's pointless, and we're all too old for that shit. So we're gonna talk about how to stop the overthinking and finally do the thing.

The thing. Not by pushing harder, but by changing how we relate to our thoughts, our body, and our attention. Because once [00:06:00] you learn how to interrupt this overthinking loop. That cycle of productive avoidance, as I like to call it, confidence, then stops being something you wait for and becomes something that you're actively building.

And I, I think that's just so important. So a little confessional story about my overthinking habit and when I was. Planning to write my second book, which is called Choose Yourself. I found notes on that book from two and a half years before I really started taking it seriously, and I overthought that book for so long.

And I told myself I was just looking for just the right angle and I just needed to do a little bit more research. I hadn't quite found the [00:07:00] right title, but really it was fear. It was fear and avoidance, and I was really concerned that. Because I wrote the first book before I was a qualified coach and that felt obviously a little bit imposter-ish here.

I was just writing this book, the Little Book of Good Enough. If you don't know what that first book was, and it did quite well and still does. Now that I was like a certified coach and that first book had done quite well and, and gotten some attention, I, I really got in my way. I really got in my own way, overthinking and looping around and.

Pretending I was being productive and busy working on this book when I was really in this big avoidance cycle because I was afraid that this book [00:08:00] had to be so much better than the first one because I was more qualified now. It was just ridiculous and eventually. I obviously got out of that cycle because I published it and was very, I am very proud of it, but I didn't, I thought I was over that.

I thought I was over that. So I wanna share with you some of the, some of the things that really helped me, and I think they're gonna help you too. And I come back to these all the time. So first of all, let's look at what's really going on when we're overthinking. Overthinking sort of feels a little bit comforting in some ways sometimes because it feels like we're being responsible, that we're taking time and we're being sort of diligent and thoughtful.

But really it's [00:09:00] a protection strategy. Our nervous system is trying to protect us, to shield us from the discomfort, from failure, from rejection, from embarrassment, preventing us taking that risk. And it, it keeps, it keeps you spinning in plans and what ifs, and maybe I'll look at this tangent and this possibility and this avenue, so you never have to risk being wrong.

You can just spend your time in this kind of loop of, well, I'm just checking. I'm just being careful. And it's like, if you think about it, it's like revving the engine while the car is sitting in neutral. Plenty of noise. And no motion. And no motion, no tangible useful outcome. And the more you spin in thought, the smaller your world becomes because.

I think your, your [00:10:00] self concept, how you see yourself isn't yet calibrated to the life that you want, and without that. Without doing that work, it's really, really easy to fall into overthinking over and over again. That's why you can kind of find yourself collecting the certifications and the qualifications and consuming content.

Rather than creating it, doing all the right things in inverted, commas, the right things, but still feeling stuck. Like you're in all the groups, you're, you know, you're listening to all the voices, but you don't need more information. You don't need more information. All of that res you need a new operating system, I would put it to you.

So let's walk through. Five [00:11:00] research back tools that help to quiet the noise that we go through with the overthinking and calm the body and get you back into motion. So the first of these is called the 90 second reset, and it's. From neuroscientists, Dr. Jill Bolt Taylor, who found that when we experience a surge of emotion, say fear, anger, anxiety, the chemical reaction in the body lasts about 90 seconds.

Unless, and this is a very important, unless we keep fueling it with our thoughts, so I think. When we're feeling that kind of anxious about maybe putting ourselves out there, perhaps, um, and we feel a bit fearful, we can sort of feed that with a kind of a, almost like a daisy chain of associated [00:12:00] thoughts so that that emotion lasts longer and we can find ourselves spinning in the overthinking.

So this is the little 90 Second reset from Dr. Jill. So the first thing. She says is to step one. Pause. Pause and say to yourself, okay, my body is having a moment just noticing and checking in with yourself, you know, and, and recognizing that this is chemistry, not catastrophe. It's just my body doing what it does.

So that's step one. And the second step follows very naturally on from that, which is to breathe, just taking two slow, steady breaths, which is sort of a, an interruption and a grounding. Step three, a double inhale, hail through the nose. [00:13:00] It's like she describes it as like a short sip and then a fuller sip.

On the inhalation through your nostrils, and then you follow that with a long, slow exhale through the mouth and you repeat that three to five times. And the fourth step, she says, really, just drop your shoulders, unc unclench your jaw. And feel the ground under your feet. So it's really a, her 92nd reset is really a coming back into presence.

So we can kind of interrupt this overthinking loop and come back to what's true in real and present. So that's the 92nd reset from Dr. Jill. 90 seconds you've told your nervous system, I'm safe. And once your body calms, your mind can follow. The next thing that I want [00:14:00] to introduce you to is a. A tool that I learned from my teacher, Dr.

Tara Brach, who's a mindfulness teacher, and it is called RAIN, and it's a four step process for meeting overthinking with kindness instead of criticism. And so it really kind of takes that fuel out of it and helps to be a really powerful. Reset. So very briefly, here's how you do rain. It's first of all, the first step.

It's an acronym. R, is to recognize. Recognize, you know, I'm overthinking and feel anxious and tight. So recognizing what's happening, what's present for you, not criticism, just recognizing it. And the second step. The A in rain is to allow, just to allow [00:15:00] it to be as it is. We so quickly, I know I do kind of jump into judging myself when I feel I'm overthinking and I'm getting anxious, I start berating myself for that.

So the second step is allow, this is hard. It's okay that I feel this. Let it be there. And the third step, the iron rain, is to investigate with kindness. So we inquire within, we say, what am I really afraid of here? What hurts or what am I afraid to feel?

And often it's not. You know, failure. It's fear of what failure means about us, what we've told ourselves that we will be if we don't [00:16:00] manage to do something. It's just really interesting to have this pause, this recognition, this allowing and gently inquiring, what am I afraid to feel? What's here? What hurts.

And then the end of rain is nurture. And often I find it helpful when I'm guiding people through a, an extended version of rain as part of a guided meditation is, you know, put your hand on your heart in a nurturing way and maybe offer yourself some words of self-compassion and nurturing. Like, may I be kind to myself?

May I feel safe to try simply. I don't have to be perfect to begin. I'm doing my best. Just some words that are meaningful for you that will will soothe and nurture and [00:17:00] nourish you in that moment. So. It. Tara Brach uses this all the time. I found it incredibly powerful. You may have heard also of Dr.

Kristin Neff, who is a really a leading voice in the area of compassion and self-compassion, and her research shows that self-compassion lowers anxiety, strengthens resilience, and it is far more effective. Than self-criticism, which so many of us burden ourselves with. So that's just another tool that I'm offering you in case that resonates for you and that you feel like, ooh, that might be really helpful for me when I find myself in a pattern of overthinking.

So the third tool that I want to offer you is from a, a toolkit from Dr. Steven Hayes, who is the, [00:18:00] creator of a form of therapy called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and this is about separating you from your thoughts, creating some space around the thoughts. He talks about a process that he calls cognitive diffusion, um, which is maybe a little bit, um.

A little bit of an unhelpful term. We're just gonna call it distancing, creating space distancing. So instead of saying, I never get this right, I can't do it. I need to do more. It's not right yet. I need to work harder. I need to do much more research before I can test this idea. Distancing or cognitive diffusion is.

Saying, creating a little space by saying, I'm having the thought that I'll never get this right. I'm having the thought [00:19:00] that I need to work harder and make it more perfect. I'm having the thought that before what you're actually thinking when you're in this overthinking loop allows you to see that thought.

As a product of your mind, and it kind of takes it out of the driving seat, if you will, and puts a little bit of space around it. So it's kind of like you're stepping out of the storm of the overthinking thoughts and you're, and you're standing on the shore and you're kind of seeing the thoughts, but you're not in them, so you're looking at them rather than from them.

And you can even thank your mind like, thanks mind. I know you're trying to help me. I know you're trying to protect me. And that's also brings that nurturing to ourselves. Like Dr. Kristin Neff is saying that [00:20:00] self-compassion that is so much more powerful and helpful to us than, you know, the constant.

Criticism and self-judgment that so many of us are really familiar with. So suddenly you're not at war with yourself, right? So you can act even with the thought still being there, you get that little bit of distance and you can begin to notice the processes of your mind. You can look at those thoughts rather than from them, and that's kind of very freeing.

To have that space. It's like a pattern interrupter. It's like you're standing on the shore, you're no longer in the storm of overthinking. So the fourth tool that I want to introduce you to, and let's see if this is one for you. It is from psychologist Dr. Gabriela Oettingen, and she developed this tool called Whoop.

It's a [00:21:00] simple evidence-based method. For turning dreams into action, it's gotta be worth a look, right? So again, it's an acronym, WOOP, and the first one, W is wish. What do you genuinely want to move forward on? What is the thing, what is the thing that often takes a little bit of time and space and quiet?

For you to ask yourself, really, what is the thing? Instead of being distracted by all the things, the oh outcome picture, how it would feel once that thing is done. Once it's done, really inhabit the emotional state of that thing done. It really powerful to [00:22:00] connect to that state. And it does take using your imagination.

And for many of us, we may have messages from our youth of, oh, get your head out of the clouds. You're such a daydreamer. Life isn't like that. Be practical. You have to leave all that behind. It's like. It, it, it's like a cloak that's covering you that doesn't belong to you. It's like you need to take it off like it's an old rag.

You need to picture how it would feel once it's done, inhabit the feeling of that wish achieved, that wish fulfilled. Imagine it touching to that state. Get to know it. The second O is obstacle. Once you're inhabiting that state, you'll notice you'll have notice the internal, internal, she says, obstacle.

What gets in the way? What gets in the way? Is it perfectionism? Is it distraction? [00:23:00] Is it doubt? Name that obstacle. And then the P is to plan. Create an if then plan for when that obstacle arises. So for example, if I start in my perfectionistic tendencies, then I will set a 10 minute timer and I'll write a messy draft.

It is what is my plan when I notice the obstacle? And to have that pre-decided so you're not - when you're at your weakest, probably when you're confronted by the obstacle - sort of flailing around looking for a strategy, then so you want it preloaded with your “If Then” plan. You know, if I, if you're somebody who gets distracted a lot, if I start scrolling, then I'm just gonna close

the app, and I'm going to do some breathing exercises to ground myself and to come back into the present and really connect into what I'm trying, what I'm avoiding. So woop helps the brain [00:24:00] expect resistance and navigate it calmly. So that's Dr. Gabriela Oettingen’s, WOOP strategy. She was from NYU. So maybe that one feels good for you.

That feels like the kind of pattern interrupter for your overthinking. I'm gonna offer you one more. I really like this. This is the 5% move, and it's inspired by Dr. BJ Fogg from Stanford. So it's based on his tiny habits research, if you've heard of that. And this central idea that big change starts with tiny, consistent actions.

We all kind of, I think we know that. We know that, but I think repetition is really important for us to get it. Ask. Ask yourself, what is the smallest step that represents 5% of [00:25:00] this goal? Maybe it's right. One sentence, send one message, open the blank document and add the title. Whatever it is, it is the small.

5% of the goal step, and that's all. And I love that because instead of being in your head over overthinking, it's like being clear on the thing and taking the 5% action towards the tangible goal rather than spinning. So every micro action really trains the brain to associate movement and action with safety.

And over time you build evidence. You build evidence that you are a woman who takes action, A woman who gets things done, you can track these 5% moves and they add up. So that's how identity shifts quietly, steadily, intentionally. [00:26:00] So all five tools have one thing in common. They really return you to your body to this present moment because overthinking doesn't live in the present.

It's living in the future, in the what ifs. And the, it's it, it's just not in the now and what matters most to you right now. So here's how to combine them in minutes. Think about one, the 90 Second Reset. Calm the body. Then RAIN, meet yourself with kindness. The third one, diffusion, distancing. Observe the thought - product of the mind  - standing on the shore away from the storm.

WOOP. Plan the next step. Be aware of the obstacle and be ready to meet it. And the 5% move, you know, just take that step and that's it. And you've broken the spell. These are really practical [00:27:00] tools. So overthinking is really a habit of attention, or inattention. We don't, if we don't deliberately train our attention, the mind defaults to problems.

It's just a protective mechanism and it's going to spin, and so I want to help you with that. And I have found one of the best ways to do this is to ritualize how you manage your attention. And one of the ways that I do that is with something that I created, which is called the Morning Reset. Just less than five minutes to shift your focus from problems to power to really calibrate for connecting.

Into the positive and possibility and doing that first thing in the morning before your mind starts [00:28:00] serving up any of these overthinking habits. And it's really about remembering who you truly are, your power, your possibility before the external messages of the world try and tell you who you are. And what you should be worried about and fearful of and all the rest of it.

And you start doom scrolling. So very powerful. And you'll find the link in the show notes. And that's also the essence of the work that we do, in The Confidence Key, learning to curate your attention so intentionally that old patterns simply can't survive. And as those rituals take root, your nervous system settles clarity, returns, and momentum

builds naturally. You stop pushing and you start allowing, and that's when the big breakthroughs happen. So here's your invitation this week. Pick one thing, one subject that you've been overthinking on and spinning on, just one. And then [00:29:00] choose one of the five tools that I've shared with you and don't wait to feel ready.

Just begin gently, beautifully imperfectly, but begin. Begin, you know, it's, it's not about knowing that it's all gonna work out. It's about trusting that you can handle it and you can. You're not here to overthink your life. You're here to do amazing things, to inhabit the most brilliant, fabulous version of you.

You can do incredible things, and it really means doing that inner work of. Building that identity that can hold that big dream. And this is part of that work. I hope this has been helpful. I can't wait to talk to you again next week. Be well. Be gentle with yourself. Bye.