Let's Play Without Overthinking

What if overthinking isn't actually the problem?

In this episode, Coach Jojo dives into what overthinking really is and why so many athletes feel trapped inside their own minds during competition. Instead of simply telling athletes to "stop thinking," she explains why our minds naturally crave control, certainty, and predictability—and why that works against us in sports.

This episode also explores the incredible power of the subconscious mind and how years of practice, repetition, and experiences shape the way we perform. Coach Jojo explains why the athlete you're becoming isn't created during games, but through the thoughts, habits, and beliefs you repeatedly reinforce long before competition begins.

Most importantly, you'll learn how to begin creating a new reality for yourself by becoming intentional with your mindset, building trust in your preparation, and understanding that lasting confidence starts from within—not from perfect performances.

If you've ever felt stuck in your own head, struggled to trust yourself, or wondered why your mind seems to work against you during competition, this episode will help you understand what's really happening and how to begin changing it.

Let's play without overthinking!

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

There is so much irony when I am trying to train my athletes to control the overthinking thoughts that they have because I'm always like, okay, let's sit down and let's think about how to not overthink. But what's really happening in your head is that you are thinking all of these thoughts that you don't want to. You don't want to be thinking in fear. You don't want to have all these overwhelming thoughts and so many thoughts, but you actually can't control that right now. And you want to control it, but you just can't. And you try to think positively, but you just can't. So when I say let's think about not overthinking and let's try so hard to not overthink, what I really mean when I say that is that let's create intentional thoughts because all of these overthinking thoughts are super overwhelming. And like I said, there are a lot of thoughts that you're not trying to think on purpose. And so we want to try to create a reality where we are thinking thoughts on purpose, intentionally. So in this episode, I actually dive into talking about the subconscious mind and how to create your new reality. And so I'm able to give you ways of how to stop the overthinking thoughts, to how how to stop the anxious feelings and how to stop just feeling fearful and not feeling confident in your everyday life because you've created habits right now where they are ending in bad results. And once you do something over and over and over again, it gets into your subconscious mind. So we need to find a way to create a new reality. And that's exactly what this podcast is going to do for you. I promise you, after this podcast, I hope that you're motivated to do the things that I told you in this, and that you are going to be looking on the bright side and going to come out a new person because that's the goal of this. We don't want to be this overthinking person anymore. We don't want it to consume us anymore. We want to be better than that. And I really am hoping that this podcast is going to resonate with you and really hit hard. So let's get into it. Okay, so we really need to break down the concept of overthinking because I think that if you understand everything about what overthinking is and maybe why you do it, and I'm gonna like say something that resonates with you, I think it's very beneficial. It's like when I read, so I read a lot of books and they're about the same content, and you know, they're around the same thing. It's always about like how to get motivated, how to achieve my goals and stuff like that, like how to, I don't know, just to make my mind better in every way. But there will be certain sections in the book or just maybe sometimes it's just one sentence that really resonates with me and it changes my perspective on everything, and I'm able to move forward in a different type of thinking, and it could just motivate me, you know? So that's why I like to use or I like to define some of my just a simple word because we know what overthinking is, right? If you were able, like anybody honestly on this earth could define overthinking. Not that everybody's felt it, maybe they have, but we know what the word is. But do we know the depth of the concept? Do we know why we do this or why we're so in our head? And a lot of times, no, we don't understand. We don't understand why we're thinking all these negative thoughts. And maybe we do. Maybe we're like, oh, we're thinking these negative thoughts because of XYZ and because of this and whatever. But how do you solve that? How do you get to the actual root of the issue of why you're overthinking? So if I asked you right now, how would you define overthinking? What would you say? It would probably be something along the lines of just thinking too much, thinking about everything, analyzing everything, evaluating myself all the time, making sure I'm making the right play, making sure I'm being perfect, making sure my outcome is what I've dreamed it to be. And it's it's it's so exhausting. That's what overthinking is. It's exhausting, is what it is. But you can't stop. Like it's it's not something where it's like, okay, just stop thinking. Like you can't. Like it's it's so hard to because then you start thinking about how to stop overthinking, and then you're overthinking even more. And while that is a definition of overthinking, like that is what overthinking is. But what I like to say is that it's try overthinking is trying to consciously control something that's supposed to happen subconsciously. I'm reading this book right now, it's called You Are the Placebo, or I just finished the book, You Are the Placebo by Joe Dispenza, and I highly recommend it to literally anybody on this earth. It is changing my life. And I know I say that about every book I read, but I swear this one currently at least is changing my life. It talks about all about the subconscious mind and how powerful it is. And if you guys don't know, the subconscious mind makes up 95% of our brain. Five percent of it is our conscious mind. When you do something over and over and over again, that becomes your reality, and that's the only thing your subconscious mind knows. So I will explain this with my experience that I had to make sure that you guys understand how powerful our subconscious mind is and how that is the reason why it's overruling us and it's making us think thoughts we don't want to think. And whenever we try to like say to ourselves, okay, just be happy, just be confident, we can't do that because our subconscious mind is so used to what we've trained it to do. So let me explain a little bit of my story in that. When I started basketball at the age of five, all the way up until, well, I guess since COVID happened, but um basically up into my senior year of high school, I loved my sport. I loved basketball so much. It was like an escape for me. It was something I look forward to. I wanted to be at practice more than I wanted to be anywhere else. And so that was my reality. That's all I knew. That's all my subconscious mind knew is that when I went to basketball practice, it was happy because those are the emotions I felt every single time. And obviously, when you grow up in the environment where you're gonna love it right away, I had confidence right away. I never had to gain my confidence right off the bat. And when that happened, my brain didn't know anything else. It didn't know how to not be confident, it didn't know how to be upset, like when I went to basketball. Like it was always, and there was times, obviously, where there was hard times where I had a conditioning practice or I did have a bad game and I would have bad emotions about it, but I was overall a very steady person and I know that it made me happy. Like uh circumstances were gonna come up, and my subconscious mind was like, okay, but we're still strong, we're still going, we're still, we still love it. That's that's just all it knew. But then I got to my first college and that was super humbling experience. It was a super, I mean, the hardest challenge I've ever had to go through in my life, like by far, and it will always be no matter what I do in life, that was the hardest thing, my freshman year of college. And I didn't believe in myself. I lost all my abilities, like I or I thought I did, right? Like I lost all of my confidence. And when I lost my confidence, I lost that love for my sport because I always say, if you're having fun, that means you're good at something. So when I wasn't good at something, when I didn't feel like myself, I wasn't having fun. And over time I start to spiral, right? Like I got there and I was like questioning myself and I wasn't trusting myself. And when you don't have those things, when you don't have trust and you don't believe in yourself, you could go down a very, very dark path. And over time, you know, I'm in this new environment and I already set my mind up to thinking that I don't trust myself when I go into that gym, into that, you know, where I went to school. When I walk into that specific gym, my subconscious mind could smell everything. It see my conscious mind sees something, it sends signals to my subconscious mind, my subconscious mind sending signals back to my conscious mind. And it's like, this is the place that we don't like anymore because you don't trust yourself. And I just remember every time I walked in that gym, I got my stomach just was so painful. Like I remember getting so nauseous and just like lightheaded and getting chills, and like I just, it was the worst feeling ever. And because that was my environment and that's what my subconscious mind knew, that was my reality. That when I walked in that gym, I didn't believe in myself and I didn't trust myself. And I got to a really dark space. And it's because I did it over and over and over again. I kept showing up and I kept thinking to myself, oh, I can't do this. I can't make this play. I'm gonna make a mistake. I'm so scared of making a mistake. What are people gonna think of me? I was in my head so much and overthinking so much that that just became my reality. My sub, no matter, even if I was having a great day, I wake up out of bed and I'm like, okay, today's gonna be a great day. I walk in that gym. My subconscious mind has all these cues where it's like, oh wait, you didn't like practice yesterday. You have now I'm gonna give you butterflies in your stomach. Oh, you had you hate going to this gym, you hate the smell of this gym because it reminds you of overthinking and like literally I have dry heave and practice. So it's like, oh, it reminds you of dry heaving and right, you know, it's reminding me of all these bad emotions. And no matter how hard consciously I tried to stop that, no matter how hard I could be like, okay, no, I'm having a great day, I've trained my subconscious mind to not be on my side and not to be with me. Your subconscious mind doesn't have eyes, so all it goes off of is emotion. Whatever you're feeling is going to your subconscious mind, not what you're looking at. You could look at a bunch of things and but the thing is, is that a circumstance happens, right? So let's say that you see something happen. Maybe you see yourself make a mistake in practice or make a mistake in a game, either or right then and there. That's a circumstance, right? That's a fact. Whatever just happened happened, and it's your interpretation, right? But that your subconscious mind could literally not see that happening. It does not know what's happening in reality. But after a circumstance happens, being a human being, you are going to think a thought and you're gonna have a thought. What we wanna do over time is train your thoughts to think positively, if not positively, because that's actually pretty hard to do. We are just going to let things go. We're not going to think about it so much, and that's what's happening to you. You're overthinking so much right now. So after you think a thought, it creates an emotion. So you're creating these negative emotions because you have negative thoughts. And again, I don't mean to have positive thoughts. That's real, that's honestly hard to do in a sport when you make a mistake. But as long as it's neutral, if you could just let it go and be neutral and not negative. If if the goal is to be not negative, that's what we want to do. Then if you feel neutral as an emotion, it will, that's what your subconscious mind is going to feel and that's what it's going to know. So then I got to my second school, and that's when I gained all my confidence back. And it was easier when I changed my environment, right? Like I went from one environment to another one, and it was easier to change my subconscious mind, my my smells, my emotions with the smell. You know, like I always think of smells because I'm a very like um, I am a very big smeller. That sounds really weird. But what I mean is that like I'll have a perfume from like last year and I'll still be using it, and it reminds me of that time still. And I know that happens with all humans, but I'm just like so big on that. And so when there was a new smell for me in the gym, I'd be like, okay, what is what do I want to think right now? What do I want to think on purpose? What do my what do I want my thoughts to be intentionally thinking? Or I guess my mind to be intentionally thinking. But here's the thing: I know I'm saying that I changed my environment and everything was different. I was able to have a fresh start, and that's why everybody loves a fresh start, right? You like go to college, you're like, oh, I can't wait to go to college because then I get a fresh start. I get to be who I want to be, I get to set my goals there, and I get to just, and that's true. That's why people say that. Because you go into a new environment and your subconscious mind creates all these new feelings. And if you create good feelings right off the bat, that's what it's gonna know. That's its reality. But for those who don't have that new environment opportunity, you don't need it. You don't need a new environment. I have been lately struggling a little bit with mental health, as we all do, and you know, there's been some little hiccups in my life right now. And so after reading You Are the Placebo and just learning about my mind and stuff, it's literally says you don't have to change your environment, but you could do little things where it's going to make your mind think that things are different. So, what I did is that I moved my bed differently. So when I wake up in the morning, I have a whole different perspective and I'm already in the morning setting the tone. I'm already setting new emotions for the day so that I could get into a routine and teach my subconscious mind, hey, this is our new reality. We're not gonna wake up with anxiety anymore. I turned my bed. This bed means that it's going to be abundant, it's going to be feeling good, it's going to be feeling happy. We're going to wake up energized every day. And so, back to the whole concept of talking about your issues with overthinking. When you're in this mindset right now where you're waking up every day not wanting to go to practice because you're like, or or a game, right? Practice or game. I keep thinking of practice because I remember I know games are very, there's a lot more pressure to them, but I was anxious to go to practice every day. I hated practice. I almost hated practice more than I hated games, which might be unpopular, but either way, if you are somebody waking up in season or during preseason, whenever, and you're just like, I don't want to go because I don't want to make mistakes. I don't want to prove to not only everybody else that I'm messing up, but to myself. I don't want to go and prove I'm messing up again. I don't feel like myself. I am not confident anymore. I just don't want to do it. Do little things like move your bed, move a poster around, do something where it's going to look like your environment is changed and you're gonna have to try really hard. Honestly, to break habits, that's hard. To do something different, that's hard. Because if it was easy, everybody'd be doing it, right? Everybody'd be the happiest person, persons on this planet. It's so comfortable to stay where you're at. It's so comfortable to know when it's when it's familiar, even if it's negative, if it's familiar, our bodies love that because it knows how to react to it. It's like, so when you make a mistake in a game, match or you know, meet whatever it is in your sport, and it feels negative and it feels like, oh, I'm so embarrassed, like whatever emotion it is that you feel, you're gonna wanna keep doing it because you know that's the way you're gonna react. You know that you're gonna feel embarrassed once you make a mistake, and then you're gonna deal with it and you're gonna be like, yeah, because we do this every time and yeah, it sucks, but like I know how my body reacts to it, and yeah, we're just gonna keep overthinking and be in this cycle because it's so comfortable to me. No, no, no, no. We are breaking that. We are breaking that cycle right now. What I literally want you to do to instead of, you know, waking up with anxiety, waking up being stressed for the game day, I want you to just change something, change the scent that you put on for games. I don't know, like I mean, I never put perfume on before a game, but if you do, do that. If you don't do it, try a new perfume, get something going. And then when you're doing this, when you're spraying the perfume, when you're or I don't know, cologne, whatever, whoever's listening, or if you just do something like move your bed, literally consciously think, or not even consciously think. You're trying to feel an emotion, right? And thoughts lead to emotions. That's why I say consciously think to feel happy. And it's gonna suck. You don't want to feel happy, but you have to. You have to try to feel abundant. Feeling abundant when you're not abundant is super, super hard, but that's the only way you're gonna break the cycle. If you could wake up every day and you're like, I feel happy, I don't even care that you know, maybe I don't feel happy, but I'm just gonna feel it anyways. And you feel those emotions, it's going to your subconscious mind. Now, every day when you wake up in that new bed with that new scent, maybe you light a candle, I don't know, it's going to trigger happiness. That's literally what it does. So it's that for me, that would have helped me because I remember always waking up at my first school and just I literally would wake up and throw up. So I had to break that cycle. And eventually I did. You know, it did get a little bit better there, but thank God I transferred. But it I just want you guys to maybe if that's something you're struggling with, I want you to break that cycle first. So that could be applied to how you could break the cycle during practice or during a game. It's going to take time. It is going to take time. I think it's the best time to do it, is in practice too, is like going out there and just competing and being and working super hard and making mistakes. And then after you make the mistake, I want you to don't even you don't even have to try to feel positive. It's great. Kudos to you if you could try to actually feel positive in the moment. But if you could just make the mistake and train your brain to literally your subconscious mind, train it to feel an emotion of not caring. And that is an emotion, in my opinion. Like you are making an effort to like to not care feels like something. It feels in certain circumstances, it feels good to not care. And especially in that one, when you make a mistake and you don't care, it feels good. However, I will say it's going to be harder if you didn't change anything in the environment, like moving your bed or changing a scent. And you can't change a scent when you're in the middle of practice or a game, right? So what I would advise you to do is to snap, is to, you know, get your mind thinking that's what works, or um even clapping, or even whatever you need to do. Maybe you like move your, I don't know. Some people I know would used to like if they missed a shot, because you know, I play basketball, if they missed a shot, they would like move their shorts a certain way. For some reason that worked. Whatever works for you, like do a cue that helps you get out of your mind and trains your subconscious mind, hey, this is how we're feeling. And I will say, don't feel pressured that let's say that I make the cue to snap and I still feel negative. Like it's going to take time and that's okay. Like keep snapping, keep doing it and try everything in your power to feel good. You're not gonna feel good right off the bat. You're gonna, you're not gonna feel that emotion of not caring right off the bat, but you're gonna train it and it's going to happen. And I swear I the because I've always visualized like my whole life, of course, I've been doing it a lot more ever since I've been reading this book, but I swear I literally see results within a day. And I'm not gonna say, like, don't expect that to happen, but honestly, like I'm a slow burner with things. Like, I it does take me like to develop a skill. It does take me a few weeks to do something before I see success. But when I'm working with my mind and intentionally working with my mind, and I'm working hard on that, I literally will see a result the next day. And again, don't get your hopes up. I don't want you to be like, well, Coach Jojo said that this works in a day. No, no, no. It could literally take a week for you to see something. I don't think it would take that long, but if it does, it does. And that's why, like, we know as athletes, it takes time to build a skill. This is a skill. This is not only a skill, this is the most important skill in your life. This is creating your new reality. If you create this cue, if you create something in your environment where it's going to switch your mind from overthinking to just a clear mind, you have to try it. You have to try everything in your power. And that's why it's that's why I was saying at the beginning of this podcast, like, it's funny for me to teach this concept because it's basically saying, stop overthinking by thinking. But like, I'm telling you that it will be a different when you're intentionally thinking thoughts and you have control over your thoughts, I promise you, it feels clear. It feels like you're not thinking all of these doubts and all of this, like you don't believe in yourself and all of this fear. And this is so powerful for so many things. Like using your subconscious mind literally solves so many other problems, not just overthinking. If you are able to change your mindset in this way, it will develop trust. And trust is the hardest thing. And I know that feeling, like I know what it feels like to not have trust. It literally feels like you're not like you know you're yourself, but like you don't, like you're in this, like, you don't want to be in yourself, but you but it's the only I literally am trying to explain. Like I'm getting in the mindset right now of like when I used to not believe in myself and not trust myself. And you know, it's always there. Like it's always there's always going to be a voice that's in your head that tells you, oh, I don't know if you could do this because it's new. Oh, I don't know if you could do this because you messed up last time. Can you do it again? Can you prove to yourself that you're better than you were last time? Did you learn from your mistakes? But we're going to ignore that noise. We're going to make it stronger. We're going to make sure that we shut that little voice up by creating our new reality, by telling ourselves, I'm gonna trust myself even though I feel scared. I'm gonna trust my cue right now, even though I feel like this isn't gonna work out. You have to, I mean, that's like it will develop over time. It's like confidence. You only are gonna get confidence. If you are doing action. And the only way that you're going to do action is by being brave. You have to be brave to do all these things. You have to be brave to make mistakes and know that there's that there's going to be opportunities that it's going to go bad. And that's okay. That's okay. The world still spins. Your world still is spinning. A sport is so important to us. It really is because we define so much of ourselves and our sport because this is our life. Like this is what we we're doing. And I get it. I totally get that. But it's okay. Our sport really is not, it does not define us. And that's a whole nother concept. And I do talk about that in my other podcast. But like you can't think that the outcome of any game defines you. And that's what you're scared of. That's what you're overthinking. You're thinking that you need to prove to yourself that all the hard work you've been putting in is going to show up and that you're not a failure. I get that. I understand that. But if you're always going to be scared of failure, then that means that you don't want to have opportunities to grow. The biggest way that we're going to grow is from messing up. That's literally how the biggest milestones in our life happen. I have, I'm like starting my business with everything right now. I'm doing, you know, all this mindset coaching for you guys and athletes and stuff. I've had so many failures right now. And I have grown so hard and so much that I'm so thankful for all these road bumps I'm going through. And you know, that's just because it's most recent. I've had so many road bumps when I was an athlete, and I'm so grateful for those failures. Those failures made me who I am. It's literally why I'm doing right now. If you guys have ever felt, I've said this before, but if you guys have ever felt like you don't understand why you're doing your sport right now, and you're like, what is all this overthinking for? What is the point of me losing my confidence in my sport and not feeling like myself and being miserable? I'm telling you that it's building resiliency and it's going to apply for the rest of your life. You are growing so big right now, and I think that's why we have to reflect on our failures. We have to, we have to put ourselves in opportunities to fail. We have to be thankful for that. And we have to make sure that we're always trying our hardest and knowing that there are going to be opportunities to fail. And that's okay. That's okay. Making mistakes grows us so much. And like I'm saying in this whole podcast, I know that scares us. I know that for the people who overthink, that's the thing that you want to avoid the most. But I want you to put yourself out there and I want you to do your cue. I want you to create your new reality. And the only way that you're going to create your new reality is by taking these scary opportunities, getting past the fear. The only way you're going to get past the fear is if you go head on and face it and do it. And it's going to fucking suck, but you're going to fucking do it and you're going to feel great. And it might take time. It might take time. I'm telling you, as a very, very, very experienced athlete, as a very experienced person who has gone through so much hard shit. I'm telling you so much. I am so grateful for all of the shit I've been through. And I've been, guys, I've been through so much shit, and I know you guys have been too. If you are an athlete, one time or another, you have gone through something so difficult in your life. It is growing you. You need to be thankful for that. And I promise you, you could do it. I promise you. I'm so proud of you. And you should really be proud of yourself. You have done so much for yourself. And this is the point right now. You've listened to this podcast, you're gonna do your cue, you're gonna create your new reality. And I'm always here to help you guys. Always reach out to me. If you guys ever need any other help, I have so many resources for you guys. And oh my god, I need to breathe right there. I am also so thankful I went through all that shit through my college experience and my career because I'm here now. Like I'm here to help you. That's all I want to do. I don't want you guys to feel like I did, and I know you are at that point that I did. I want to get you out of that. So I'm just letting you know you have somebody on your side, and I'm here, and I'm so happy that you found this podcast. Like, really, you should be so thankful that you listen to this and like put yourself first right now, and you're trying to work on your mind and just letting you know you got to be proud of yourself. I know that you're like, well, how do you know if you know I should be proud of myself? You don't even know me, but like it doesn't matter. You're an athlete, you're a freaking athlete listening to a podcast right now on how to get better, on how to improve your mindset. You how would you not be proud of yourself? It doesn't matter if you haven't accomplished shit in your life, it doesn't matter if you haven't reached the goals that you've set maybe six months ago. You're doing it now, you're working right now. Keep going, keep going in this process, keep creating your new reality. Okay. Just want to say all that, okay? Because I really have so much love for you guys. Anyways, that's all that I have for you guys today. Thank you so much for listening. And like I said, thank yourselves for listening and make sure that you guys could reach out to me. All of my stuff and links and everything's in my description of how to contact me, how to sign up for stuff. I have free things, I have courses coming out, so stay tuned for that. And yeah, I just love you guys and keep working hard. Create your new reality today. Let's play without