Notes for An Awesome Life with John Spence

Stop The Spiral Of Overthinking

• Notes for An Awesome Life with John Spence • Episode 14

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Ever notice how overthinking feels like responsible prep while quietly draining your energy and time? We go straight at that tension with John Spence, exploring how deep thinking tips into rumination, how to spot the shift in real time, and how to break the loop with simple tools you can use anywhere. 

 If you’re ready to trade anxiety for action and build momentum one present moment at a time, this conversation gives you the framework and the prompts to start now.

Enjoyed this conversation? Follow the show, share it with a friend who overthinks, and leave a quick review to help others find it. Your feedback helps us make every minute you spend with us worth it.

  • Email us: awesomelifenotes@gmail.com
  • Learn more about John: JohnSpence.com
  • Familiar Wilsons Media: FamiliarWilsonsMedia.com

About John Spence: John is a globally recognized business thought leader, former owner/CEO of five companies, and advisor/coach to organizations from startups to the Fortune 10. He’s lectured at more than 90 universities and was named by the American Management Association as one of “America’s Top 50 Leaders to Watch.”

About the show: Notes for an Awesome Life with John Spence focuses on personal growth, happiness, clarity, and the everyday habits that compound into an AWESOME life.

Credits: Hosts John Spence and Josh Wilson • Produced by Josh Wilson for Familiar Wilsons Media • Special thanks: Amanda Wilson (writing and production), and Domingo Jimenez (writing and marketing).

SPEAKER_02:

This is a familiar Wilsons Media Production. John Spence is recognized as one of the foremost business thought leaders in the world, a global top 100 business thinker and advisor to companies from startups to the Fortune 10. But it didn't start that way. In college, John hit rock bottom, kicked out of one university and rejected by another. That's when he made a decision to change his attitude and take a systematic approach to building the life he wanted. Through hard work and relentless learning, he went on to create a life full of meaning, joy, and connection. I'm Josh Wilson, and this is Notes for an Awesome Life with John Spence. We invite you to join us in conversation as John shares with us the lessons, habits, and tools that he used and that you can use to build an awesome life. Welcome to Notes for an Awesome Life with John Spence. I'm Josh Wilson. I'm John Spence. John, how are you doing today?

SPEAKER_01:

I'm doing fantastic today. Having a good week. Did a lot of fun stuff. Uh, working on something that that we're going to use in the show uh is I I took a ton of research I've been doing my whole life uh on different types of philosophies, not religion, but philosophies. And I'm creating sort of a what I I'm calling right now a human operating system, which mirrors a lot of the stuff we're talking about. But it's 20-something years of reading books and uh taking journal notes and everything, sort of all coming together. So our watch uh viewers and listeners can look forward to hearing more about that.

SPEAKER_02:

So I want to hear more about that. And he promised me a line in there. You give me a line where where you take something I've said and you can put it right in there, right? Maybe at the end or whatever. Just give me a line.

SPEAKER_01:

You got it. I don't know what it'll be.

SPEAKER_02:

Which is what you're telling me is I hadn't said anything yet that's been very noticeable, noticeable or not.

SPEAKER_01:

Something like that.

SPEAKER_02:

Jay Wilson. All right. So, what I want to talk about today is this idea of thinking and really overthinking. Now, this has a very special place in my mind, in my heart, and in my head, because I am the king of overthinking. Now, we've talked a lot in our first few episodes about values and goals and really the process and the structure that you use to make yourself an awesome life. And that's great. But there are things that present challenges, especially to me, as I'm going through your material. And the chief amongst these is just my propensity to overthink and to ruminate, which is a word that we've used before and that psychologists use to describe this idea of a feedback loop where you're just thinking and you're thinking and you're thinking, and you particularly if you don't bring any new information in. So let's talk a little bit about overthinking. Now, you are a deep thinker for a living. So, how can you tell when thinking has turned into overthinking with you?

SPEAKER_01:

So, I'll give you an example from this week, which is is interesting because uh of who asked me. Very good friend of mine, Tom Morse, who's one of the top philosophers in the world. Uh, a lot of the stuff we've talked about comes from him, his original, some of his original books that I wrote, called me on Saturday in the afternoon to say he was really, really sick, not feeling good. And he had to give a speech in Jacksonville, Florida, which is an hour and a half from us, uh, on Monday evening. And he wanted me to stand by in case he needed me to cover for him. And uh, okay, that's great. Yeah, whatever. And he calls me Sunday morning, goes, I'm not doing good. I I've talked to the client. Uh, I won't be able to make it. Can you cover it for me? I'm like, sure. He goes, it's the top 50 CEOs in their community, and it's all about uh making their community world class and setting audacious goals. I'm like, oh, that's an easy one. Uh not so much. So I'm freaking out. I got, you know, a topic I kind of know pretty well that I can adapt to myself, but I have the most prestigious and important people in a community. Uh, and boy, did I overthink, start to overthink that one. And funny enough, uh, on the exactly two-hour and five-minute drive over, I was listening to a book on stoicism. And I don't know how this happened, but a chapter came up on my audio book on overthinking, giving speeches, and being worried about what people think about you, too. Uh, will the crowd like me? Will they not like me? Do I have the right information? Am I on target? Did I, you know, for me, did I study enough? Is the way I'm adapting this gonna work? Will the audience like this? Will they not like this? You know, and all of a sudden I realized all that none of this is helping me. All of this is doing, I'm giving myself anxiety. I can't tell what's gonna happen in the future. And how people react to it, I'm gonna do my best, but if they don't like it, then they don't like it. There's nothing really I can do. I'm gonna do my best. So I was able to sort of calm down and say, the thing I need to think about right now is all of the times I've done this well. Uh, and every time I start worrying or getting anxious or overthinking and trying is just stop and focus on, I'm gonna be fine. It'll be cool, everything's good. Done this before, probably won't screw it up, probably. Uh and I I've I've learned that a lot. We've talked about control and no control. One of the main things on that I'm learning, I've been studying stoicism quite a bit harder, is really figuring out what you can't control and letting go of it. And two things you cannot control are the past and the future. So every minute you spend worrying about that, thinking is okay, but worrying about it uh or ruminating over it is a minute that of your life that you're throwing away, which is another topic I want to talk about in a minute, but you tell me what you're thinking.

SPEAKER_02:

Um, or overthinking. Yeah, or overthinking. So you kind of pegged it there because in in your story, you also identified the thing that caused you to overthink. And that is being concerned about what uh how other people would receive it, and then how other people would would view you. To me, the dangerous trap of overthinking that I get stuck in is that overthinking feels responsible, right? It feels like I'm planning, I'm researching, I'm rehearsing, it feels like I'm making progress, but the reality is is I'm not, and I'm stuck in this loop. And unfortunately, it takes me way too long to recognize that that's what's going on.

SPEAKER_01:

It's practice to be able to be self-aware enough to realize when you and I think you made a good point. Like for me, giving this talk, it's appropriate for me to think it through and plan it and make sure I understand the key points I want to hit and that I tie it very closely into what's interesting to that group. But at some point you have to say, thinking about this anymore is just gonna make me worry that I'm gonna forget something, that I'm gonna miss a key point, or I'm gonna, you know, I'll trip and fall or whatever it might be. Although I almost did. Uh but I tricked on the way. I kept turning around to point to what was on the screen behind me, and there was only a wall behind me. And eventually I just turned around the middle of it. So I'm just gonna talk to the wall, everybody, because I the screens are out in front of me and I forgot about that. But at some point you have to stop and go, this is not helping me anymore. Um this is I've already thought about this and thinking about it again isn't going to make it any better.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and and what I want to drill down on then, maybe to help some people um recognize it in themselves, is when you recognize that you have wandered into delay instead of forward progress.

SPEAKER_01:

Again, it's to me, it's when you're going over the same thing over and over and over again, and it's something you can't control. Uh what other people will say. I how other people might react, for for example. Um, I'm you know, sitting there thinking, well, what happens if someone says this, or if someone says that, if someone gets angry, or everybody's on their cell phone and they're not listening to me, and or I mispronounce somebody's name in the audience, or I, you know, screw up something. I finally just said, every time I do that, I'm just setting myself up to be more anxious and more worried. This isn't going to work, and it's not going to help me get any better for the talk. Uh, and then, you know, again, you just said it can overthinking could lead to procrastination. Is let let me just go over this one more time. Let me read this paper one more time, let me do this one more time. At some point, it there is no added value.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. And when I find myself under tremendous amounts of stress and anxiety due to overthinking, I recognize probably too late that my main dashboard for assessing where I am is how I feel in my body, what my physicality is saying. Um, I mean, I will be worried about something and kind of gnawing on it in my brain and then realize, hey, for the past five minutes, my stomach is really hurt. I really have tension in my shoulders. You know, I feel that fear in my chest, you know, and it's it's bubbling there. And for me, it's learning to recognize the anxiety and the stress in my physicality that's often a really great indicator. Hey, Josh, you gotta stop. You gotta stop. And oftentimes the way that I break out of overthinking or thinking too much is by stopping in box breathing, for example. I don't know if you've heard of box breathing, or standing, going outside, or doing something physically so that I can snap myself out of this rumination loop. That's really helpful for me.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, same with me. Going for a walk, finding something else to focus on that is positive, uh reading a book, listening to something, just going outside and looking at nature, but something to break that uh circuit so that all of a sudden you're sort of you're gonna have to pay attention to something else.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And that took me a long time to develop that discipline because I felt like, oh, you're just loafing. You're you're giving up on the problem and you're gonna go take a walk. What's wrong with you? But I had to get past that because it's a it's a very viable strategy for me, I found out.

SPEAKER_01:

I want to jump on something else. I I heard something on the book I was listening to that really stuck with me. And it was this idea that we will hoard our money or carefully protect it. You know, I don't want to just give it all away or give it away, uh, but we don't do that with our time. We value our time very little. And I I have had a hard time. I tried to explain this to someone the other day. I did not do a good job of it because I haven't fully grasped the idea myself. But the idea that if someone goes, hey, um, could you come to this meeting? It's gonna be a complete waste of time. We have no agenda, nobody's prepared for it, and we're not gonna do any follow-up. Oh, and it's gonna cost you$300. Could you give me the$300 now? I would not be really excited about handing over$300 to sit through a meeting that's useless. But that's basically what you do. And my thought was if you actually had to take the money out of your wallet and count it out and hand it to someone, or just put it in the garbage can say, Oh, let me just waste an hour of my time. That's a hundred bucks. Let me just throw it down. You would not be actively going in there to your wallet to throw money. Yeah, we're happy to give an hour away for something that isn't very valuable. Uh and of course, when you say value, you have to measure that out, but we will waste our time, like overthinking uh or spending time where the other person doesn't value your time. And you realize that that's the one resource you can't make more of. I can make more money, but I can't make more time. And it's interesting to me how little some of us realize the connection there and undervalue our our time and overvalue our money.

SPEAKER_02:

I feel like the the more we age, the more we recognize the value of the time and how we have more behind us than in front of us.

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. I I know that I'm that's definitely in my mind. But again, we're gonna, I'm not, I'm not overthinking it. I'm just saying, you know, what do I need to do in the present moment to make sure that every moment going forward is the best it can be? Have we talked about what I learned uh about process? Yeah, well, I I just learned this this week when I was preparing for this uh speech. I was doing some research and I ran across some stuff about the football coach Nick Saban. And now I'm not a big football fan. Um, he was the head coach at Alabama, and as a gator, I should not even be talking about him. Uh, but he won seven national collegiate football championships uh with two different teams, which proves it wasn't just he got handed a he was in a great program or got handed, you know, lots of talented people. And when they asked him what his philosophy was, he said the process. The process. And then, what do you mean? He said, you know, if you're in a game and you look up and you're three touchdowns behind, don't worry about the scoreboard. Worried about being world class on the next play. Do that one great, come back, start again. He goes, that's why in practice we follow the process. We're gonna do he said, if you keep looking at the scoreboard, you're never gonna get there. I I think a good example is when I when I kind of mentor college students, I tell them, don't worry about your GPA at all. Worry about being great in class today, worry about doing your homework tonight. Um, think about the first quiz. And if you just you know, trying to think about your GPA four years from now can be overwhelming. It's a giant mountain you gotta walk up. Thinking about how to be in great in class today, take good notes, listen, be focused, that's just one step. And that's not nearly as challenging. So I I looked at the process I I took to get to where I am in my career. And that process was find the person in the world that was the best at it, uh, being a professional speaker, you know, leadership expert, Tom Peters. Some people remember that name, some won't. And I simply made a list of all the stuff that he'd done to become number one in the world and sat down and every day said, What can I check off this list? I didn't worry about getting there. I just I just thought if I if I do this every day, if I trust the process, the outcome will more than likely follow.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, but see, I think that that fits in perfectly with what we're talking about, the overthinking, because if you have a process set, if you have determined how it is you're going to approach certain aspects of life, then you don't have to think about it. Then it does become automatic and you do save time. And I think that far too many people in this world don't look at life as something that you should try to become a bit more methodical about, that you should try to have more processes uh in place for you to be able to go through life so that every single crisis doesn't have to potential to have you be stuck in the mud. Like, how am I gonna approach this? Well, this is kind of how I approach things here. This is my blueprint. All right, let's go do something else now because that bit I've got figured out.

SPEAKER_01:

We've talked a couple of times about me going through Hurricane Andrew, losing everything I own in the world and having to live out of my car. And I remember back then, I thought I this is gonna be a long time before this is fixed. I mean, it's gonna be a year or years before I'm back in my house. Uh I'm not gonna worry about that. I'm gonna worry about what I can do today to make this as comfortable as I possibly can and get the stuff done I can do, you know, and based in the situation I'm on. And if I just take this day by day, uh eventually there will, I will reach the end where I'm not living in my car anymore. Uh and well, lo and behold, it worked. What do you know?

SPEAKER_02:

It's funny because Hurricane Andrew, I went through it as well in in Miami, and it was the first time that I saw the real power of connection, the real power of people. Folks had lost, like you're you're saying, lost everything that they had, but neighbors came together. You know, I'll never forget a time where uh I went to go eat in one of the few places that was open to eat, and that was Shorty's Barbecue on US C. Oh, look at that, Shorty's. Yes. I love that place. Well, it was one of the first restaurants I went to after Hurricane Andrew, and everyone was seated. Uh, for those of you who've never been, it's just a bunch of picnic tables, like family-style seating. And everyone was talking to strangers and you know, talking about the situation they were going through. And it was so shocking to me to see this in in Miami, of all places. But the situation um caused people to seek community. And another thing that we should do when we're in danger of being stuck inside ourselves overthinking things is to seek connection, seek community, get advice, get it out of us.

SPEAKER_01:

Totally agree. I I'm right now I'm just flabbergasted. You said shorty's and I'm hungry to barbecue.

SPEAKER_02:

That's my main. Listen, I'm here to tell you that since Shorty's, since moving out of Miami, my life has just actually been aimed at finding ribs and in that smoke sauce that Shorty's had that's been as good as that. That's actually, in fact, it's really the point of this podcast. Can someone please direct me towards some good ribs in North Central Florida? Notes on an awesome life with barbecued ribs or by the way, Shorty's not a sponsor, but we're certainly open to it. Okay, so overthinking, reading the signs of your body, having a process to deal with it, um, seeking community, all of these kind of disparate notes that we have given to you all hopefully have been helpful. John, do you have any homework for us as we're thinking about this idea of overthinking?

SPEAKER_01:

So I'm gonna tie this together with one of the most powerful skills I've or techniques, tools, ideas I've ever learned, which is when you're in the middle of a conversation and you feel like you need to say something or add something or prove, you know, is what I'm about to say right now going to add any value to this conversation? I think the self self-awareness is is what I'm thinking right now going to help this at all? Or am I just ruminating, creating my own anxiety, telling negative stories that are gonna get me anxious about this? Uh and that's when I was driving from Gainesville to Jacksville the other day, my mind started wondering. I just kept coming back as is this is this sort of thinking helping me? Is this gonna make this easier on me and help me help me be more successful and prepared for this talk? And an awful lot of it, the answer was no. And I I kept, it felt like meditation. I kept coming back, coming back to try to get away from, like you, the overthinking I was doing. But I had I was focused constantly on asking myself, is what I'm thinking about right now going to help me at all? And it kept bringing me back. So that's that self-awareness for people to test themselves this week is ask that question internally. And then I would suggest also ask it before you open your mouth when you say something. And you'll find out about 70% of the time that what you were gonna say was gonna not gonna help, wasn't gonna do anything valuable or good for the conversation.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, one of the things that that I have learned is this idea that I am not my thoughts. They are just a house that I live in. Absolutely. Separating myself. And my identity from what I'm thinking. That has really, really helped me assess. Okay, well, I can let go of this thought. You know, I can I can let go of this idea of overthinking or thinking that I can just solve all the world's problems if I think about it hard enough.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, if you just think hard enough about overthinking, I think everything should be fine.

SPEAKER_02:

You think?

SPEAKER_01:

I think this is a good thing to end on. What do you think?

SPEAKER_02:

I think that our audience thinks that too. Um all right, folks. Uh, thank you for joining us today. Uh, as usual, thank you, John, for um giving us your time. Um, every time we talk, I I take away three or four really valuable things. So thank you for that. Also, thank you to uh your folks that you work with, those wonderful people, and also my wife, Amanda. Who do you want to thank this week?

SPEAKER_01:

I'd like to thank my friend Tom Morris, the philosopher, for trusting me to uh to step in his behalf. And and the the sponsor, the client, I said something to him that really threw the client back. When Tom called me and said, I need something, I go, Yes. He said, What do you mean? I go, whatever it is, it's yes, I trust you. So the answer is yes. Now, what do you need?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And uh it's nice to have someone like that in your life because I know he'd do the same thing for me. So I want to thank Tom for having trust and uh confidence that I would I would perform well on his behalf. Everything turned out fine.

SPEAKER_02:

You do a good job. You do a good job.

SPEAKER_01:

The client used our favorite word, perfect. Everybody says perfect, I feel like we did okay.

SPEAKER_02:

If you want to find out a little bit more about John Spence as he sits there in his perfection, go to johnspence.com. If you want to find out more about Familiar Wilsons Media, which is me sitting in my throne of recording and editing, then go to familiarwilsonsmedia.com. Until next week, folks, uh, we just want you to go out there and live an awesome life.