The Lenity Blog
How to Stop Overthinking When Logic Doesn't Work
You know the committee we talked about? The one that starts meeting whenever you're about to do something uncomfortable?
It says:
"Nobody cares about this."
"What's the point?"
"You're going to mess it up."
"This is going to take forever."
"Just do it tomorrow."
And what do you do? You argue back.
"No, it does matter."
"I'm not lazy."
"I can do this."
"It won't take that long."
Now there are two voices arguing. And you're still not doing the thing.
Arguing with the thought keeps you inside the thought
There's a useful idea in psychology called cognitive defusion. The basic idea is simple: you don't have to decide whether every thought is true. You can notice that you're having the thought.
That's a surprisingly different position.
Instead of "Nobody cares about this", try: "I'm having the thought that nobody cares about this."
Instead of "I'm going to fail", try: "I'm having the thought that I'm going to fail."
Notice what happened. You didn't prove the thought wrong. You didn't replace it with "I'm amazing!" You simply created a little distance.
You're taking the minutes instead of being shouted at
This is why the four words matter: "I'm having the thought…"
They don't make the thought disappear. They remind you: a thought is something happening in my mind. It isn't automatically an instruction.
Write down the three loudest thoughts. Don't debate them. Don't make them positive. Just write them down. Then ask: "Okay. And what am I doing next?"
That's the chair.
And don't punish yourself for the last time
Maybe you procrastinated yesterday. Or last week. The temptation is to make yourself feel bad about it so you'll finally change. That usually creates another layer of emotion around the original task.
Instead: "I avoided it yesterday. I'm starting again today."
No courtroom. No punishment. No five-page explanation. Just the next action.
You don't need to win the argument. You need to stop participating in every argument your mind starts.
And once you've done that, there's one more thing you need: a goal small enough to end the meeting. Here's how to write one →
Stop forcing yourself. Stop gritting through another week.
The way out of stuck was never more pressure — it's finding out which of your three batteries is running empty, and refilling that one. Autonomy, competence, connection: whichever is low is the one that decides how you start, and pushing harder on the other two is why the last attempt didn't hold.
The free 5-minute quiz tells you which one it is, and what actually works for your particular kind of stuck — so you can stop pushing against yourself and start going with yourself.
It's free, ~5 minutes
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The Goal That Ends the Meeting in Your Head
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Why Almost-Finishing Something Gives You Nothing
If you start things and never finish them, you may be missing the one thing your brain needs most: evidence that you can finish.