Our brains produce as many as 50,000 thoughts per day—and 95% of these thoughts are repeated the next day, reflecting our mindset and beliefs. So this means that every day…

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In my spare moments I voluntarily serve on the board of directors of my local homelessness charity. Last week a client died from an overdose in our shelter, and that death has caused great grief for our staff.

I can’t talk about the details or the client’s name. I have no idea whether the overdose was intentional or not – we’ll probably never know. But I do understand, in a general sense, and from the many, many similar cases I’ve seen after four decades of working with unhoused poor people, that the United States is now facing a full-blown drug overdose epidemic.

Meth and the synthetic opioid fentanyl, the two chief drivers of this epidemic, are cheap, easy to get, and very, very deadly.

RELATED: Opioids and the Loss of a Child: Heartened through Heartbreak

This isn’t just a local phenomenon where I live, either. Drug overdose deaths have risen exponentially in the United States over the past two decades. Take a look at this chart from the National Institutes of Health, and you’ll get a real sense of how terrible the toll has become:

Public health experts call these overdoses, along with fatalities from alcoholic liver disease and other kinds of suicide, “deaths of despair” – and point out that the rapidly-increasing sheer numbers of those kinds of deaths have actually lowered the overall life expectancy of the entire country. 

What causes these deaths of despair? David Introcaso, writing in the medical journal STAT, described the causes this way:

Insecurity, deprivation, the loss of possibilities, the lack of belonging, hopelessness, and social maladjustment lead to negative emotions including loneliness, unhappiness, worry, and stress that in turn lead individuals to, in part, experience more pain and pain sensitivity both physical and psychological. 

Sound familiar? Lately, many people have dealt with at least some of these feelings. After all, things are tough these days. The pandemic, economic distress, joblessness and homelessness have all added to the pain of the present.

So what’s the solution?

At the shelter I help run, we use a temporary solution called naloxone. Commonly known by its commercial name Narcan, it reverses opioid overdoses – if administered in time – and often gives those dying of despair another chance at life. Like many non-profit agencies and paramedics and clinics and hospitals, we’re using lots of naloxone these days.

Even transit system workers all over the United States carry naloxone now, to try and stop overdose deaths among train, bus, and subway riders.

But naloxone is only a transitory solution. It can save lives in the immediate short term, but does nothing to solve the inner pain and underlying despair, or change the conditions that produced them.

No medication could do that. Only a spiritual solution can permanently end despair and the unnecessary early deaths it produces.

The Baha’i teachings address those solutions directly, providing a permanent prescription for relief from despair and pain. Abdu’l-Baha, in a speech he gave in Paris in 1913, said:

In this world we are influenced by two sentiments, Joy and Pain.

Joy gives us wings! In times of joy our strength is more vital, our intellect keener, and our understanding less clouded. We seem better able to cope with the world and to find our sphere of usefulness. But when sadness visits us we become weak, our strength leaves us, our comprehension is dim and our intelligence veiled. The actualities of life seem to elude our grasp, the eyes of our spirits fail to discover the sacred mysteries, and we become even as dead beings.

There is no human being untouched by these two influences; but all the sorrow and the grief that exist come from the world of matter – the spiritual world bestows only the joy!

If we suffer it is the outcome of material things, and all the trials and troubles come from this world of illusion. 

For instance, a merchant may lose his trade and depression ensues. A workman is dismissed and starvation stares him in the face. A farmer has a bad harvest, anxiety fills his mind. A man builds a house which is burnt to the ground and he is straightway homeless, ruined, and in despair.

All these examples are to show you that the trials which beset our every step, all our sorrow, pain, shame and grief, are born in the world of matter; whereas the spiritual Kingdom never causes sadness. A man living with his thoughts in this Kingdom knows perpetual joy. The ills all flesh is heir to do not pass him by, but they only touch the surface of his life, the depths are calm and serene.

… the trials which beset our every step, all our sorrow, pain, shame and grief, are born in the world of matter; whereas the spiritual Kingdom never causes sadness. A man living with his thoughts in this Kingdom knows perpetual joy. The ills all flesh is heir to do not pass him by, but they only touch the surface of his life, the depths are calm and serene.

Today, humanity is bowed down with trouble, sorrow and grief, no one escapes; the world is wet with tears; but, thank God, the remedy is at our doors. Let us turn our hearts away from the world of matter and live in the spiritual world! It alone can give us freedom!

Turning our hearts and our thoughts toward the spiritual world – the eternal reality, as opposed to this fleeting material existence, which invariably disappoints us – gives us a respite from our temporal troubles. Focusing on that spiritual world helps us see the long view, far into the future, instead of the short-term, day-to-day one, which will perpetually challenge us with tests, trials, and tribulations.

Of course, like all things, developing this kind of joyous spiritual focus takes work. It doesn’t happen in a day or a week or a month. It requires an ongoing, systematic spiritual discipline – an agreement with yourself to commit to a daily practice of meditation, reflection, and prayer.

RELATED: How Meditation Jump-Started My Journey Out of Darkness

That regular spiritual practice gives everyone who engages in it the great gift of detachment. With it, your own immediate concerns recede in importance, and the concerns of others become more significant. Spirituality causes a sense of selflessness to arise. A calm comes over your consciousness. Newly engaged in the lives of others, each person with a consistent spiritual discipline watches the world with a wider lens, which minimizes individual difficulties and maximizes awareness, allowing our hearts to obtain the beauty and love and unity our souls truly need for spiritual and psychological health.

Once you’ve done that work overtime it definitely pays off, reducing existential pain and despair. Multiple scientific studies have shown that this kind of spiritual discipline, when employed regularly, helps lower blood pressure, alleviate stress and anxiety, and create more emotional resiliency. Also, those who enter into and honor a commitment to a sustained spiritual discipline gradually become less concerned with their troubles and less agitated by the changes and chances of the material world. Their stress diminishes. They enter into a spiritual state that confers peace rather than pain, that centers on the happiness of others rather than their own, and that allows individual despair to be replaced by collective joy.

In Mahmud’s Diary, Abdu’l-Baha described that spiritual state with this beautiful metaphor:

Man must become evanescent and self-denying. Then all the difficulties and hardships of the world will not touch him. He will become like unto a sea, although on its surface the tempest is raging and the mountainous waves rising, in its depth there is complete calmness.

If you haven’t already developed that complete calmness, you can start today. Simply sit yourself down in a quiet place, give yourself some time, and allow your mind to meditatively reflect. Pray, if you like, and ask the Creator for the answers to your questions. Or pose those questions to yourself: how can I transcend the petty material concerns I encounter every day? How do I connect with a deeper and more profound reality? How can I sustain the feelings of peace and joy I need?

Don’t just do this once. Make it a consistent practice. Find time for it every day. Soon, if you let it become a regular part of your life, you’ll begin to see it as essential to your well-being. You’ll discover depths in yourself that you weren’t aware of before. Ultimately, your despair will dissipate, and your happiness will increase.

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Go on, admit it! You refresh your social media feed like you’re expecting either a winning lottery number or an IRS audit notice. You binge-watch like you’re training for the Stream-a-lympics. Congratulations, you’ve been caught in the tantalizing trap of “nexting”!

In a world characterized by instant gratification and constant stimulation, nexting is the premiere, modern habit. This phenomenon revolves around the compulsive anticipation of what’s to come, fueling the release of dopamine in our brains. But what if there was a way to break free from this cycle and find solace in the present moment?

Science suggests that mindfulness-based practices, what I like to refer to as “owning the moment” may hold the key to overcoming the allure of nexting.

Understanding “Nexting”

Nexting can be likened to a continuous scroll of possibilities, where the excitement lies in what lies ahead rather than what’s happening right now. It taps into our brain’s dopamine pathways, creating a cycle of anticipation and reward. Yet, the constant pursuit of the “next” can result in anxiety, dissatisfaction, and a disconnect from the present. There’s a pervasive sense in your mind that what is shouldn’t be what it is; it should be what’s coming!

The Science Behind It: Dopamine’s Role in “Nexting”

Research, such as that reviewed by Taber et al. (2012), has delved into the neural underpinnings of this behavior. The research suggests that the environment cues up anticipation of rewards (through some sensory signal like a smell, an ad, a notice on our phones, even a single word choice) and this activates the brain’s dopamine system, fostering a cycle of habit formation because of the reward this chemical release provides. This neurochemical response explains why “nexting” can become “addictive,” as the brain associates the mental (“I want that” or “If I could just…”) or emotional (i.e., felt urges) or behavioral (e.g., adding unneeded items into your Amazon cart) acts of anticipating with a pleasurable reward.

The Mindful Antidote: “Owning” the Present Moment

Mindfulness, with its emphasis on being fully present and aware, offers a powerful counter to the grip of “nexting.” Instead of merely possessing or controlling outcomes, adopting a mindset of “owning” allows us to engage the present moment in a nonjudgmental way—embracing only the moment at hand, without all the mental and emotional junk cluttering you up and compelling you toward what’s next.

Studies like the work of Brewer et al. (2011) suggest that mindfulness practices can decrease the activation of the brain’s default mode network associated with mind wandering and angsty, anticipatory thoughts. Recent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies show that consistent, brief mindfulness practice can tamp down the activity in this network of brain structures that tend you toward pressured thoughts of “if only __” or “when I get __” or “I have to get __.”

It’s like taking the wheel away from your brain’s daydreaming and doom-scrolling tendencies. With mindfulness, you’re not erasing thoughts; you’re choosing where to steer attention toward owning moments just as they are.

Meet Lisa: A “Nexting” Survivor

Picture this: Lisa, a master “nexter,” a mythological hero of multitasking. She was always onto the next thing—text messages, emails, social media posts—all in hot pursuit of her obsession with becoming the next (pun intended) Mr. Beast-like YouTuber. It’s like her life was an endless game of tag with the future.

But, then, Lisa decided enough was enough. Family and friends were dope-slapping her with the pain of rejection from her obsession with “content creation.” “It’s like the Lisa we knew and loved was kidnapped by YouTube,” her best friend told her.

She stumbled around looking for help for a while and, ultimately, on the recommendations of friends and her therapist, embraced mindfulness. One day, she sat in her backyard and held her phone in her hand, feeling the weight of it as an object, hearing the wind in the trees, and tasting the metallic flavor of bile in her mouth. She noticed, seemingly for the first time, how much stress all the YouTube nexting was creating. That’s when she realized “when” her real life was—now. A wave of sadness swelled in her, and she cried for a long time about the damage done to herself and others. She set her phone down without opening any apps, felt her bare feet in the grass, and realized it needed cutting!

“Damn,” she thought. “This is messed up. I’m done missing so much!”

She was an owner of that moment. And though it would be ridiculous to say she was “cured” of all nexting, she now had a tool for working with it instead of being its servant.

Here’s Your Power Move: A Mindfulness Practice

Let’s put this into action:

1. Tune in: Notice when the urge to “next” comes knocking. Maybe it’s during a dull meeting or when you’re in line. When the itch to “next” strikes, pause. Just hit the mental brakes.
2. Breathe: Take a deep breath. Feel it, the inhale, the exhale—your invite to the present.
3. Witness: Observe your thoughts from a distance. You’re not your thoughts; you’re the observer.
4. Anchor: Feel your feet on the ground or your hand on your chest. This is your anchor to the moment.
5. Own it: Embrace now, exactly as it is. No rushing, no future-tripping. Just owning what’s happening. You’re not controlling it; you’re not anticipating or worrying. You’re showing up and engaging. That’s true “ownership.”

Mindfulness Essential Reads

Breaking the Cycle

As we navigate a world inundated with distractions and the allure of “nexting,” embracing mindfulness-based owning can help us reclaim our sense of presence and connection. By understanding the science behind the dopamine-driven cycle and practicing mindfulness, we empower ourselves to break free from the habit pattern and find contentment in the richness of the present moment.

So, next time you’re tempted to binge-watch until sunrise or keep scrolling until your thumb cramps, pause. Embrace ownership, because life’s happening now, not next.

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When I was first diagnosed with major anxiety disorder and depression, I clamoured for help. Apart from the normal course of treatment, I was also put on therapy. As I proceeded in my therapy sessions, mindfulness was introduced as one of the most effective techniques to help someone cope with daily surfacing challenges whilst staying calm. Just like me, countless people suffer from normal to chronic mental health issues in today’s times. With our mind juggling between past issues or future worries, we lose sight of the fact that what we have is just the present moment. Mindfulness is a practice that requires you to execute techniques that bring your attention fully back to the present. Once, we hone the skill of silencing and understanding our inner chatter, the world outside automatically changes. It is a tool to help us face the rough times of life with love and compassion.

However, we live in an era of unlimited knowledge and beliefs that have fogged our thinking, making us give in to myths about mindfulness with all the limited knowledge we have. In between distractions, people find it tougher to practice mindfulness. Fret not, we are here to help!

Health Shots got in touch with Sabrina Merchant, Internationally Certified Kids Yoga and Mindfulness Expert, and Founder of Li’l Yogis, Mumbai, to bust some common myths about mindfulness.

Engage in mindfulness practices, and do things that make you happy by being fully present. Image courtesy: Adobe Stock

What is mindfulness?

“Mindfulness is the art of being fully present in the moment, without judgement or distraction. It’s about observing our thoughts, emotions, and sensations as they arise, acknowledging them without getting entangled, and gently guiding our focus back to the present. Through mindfulness, we cultivate a deeper awareness of ourselves and the world around us. It’s not about emptying the mind, but about embracing the richness of each experience, whether pleasant or challenging. With practice, mindfulness can enhance our clarity of thought, emotional resilience, and overall well-being, leading to a more balanced and fulfilling life,” says our expert.

Also read: 4 simple mindfulness practices to stay calm and reduce stress

Common myths about mindfulness

It’s time to prick the bubble and address some common myths and misconceptions about mindfulness.

Myth 1: Mindfulness is all about relaxation

Fact: While relaxation can be a byproduct of mindfulness, its primary goal is to increase awareness and attention to the present moment without judgment. It’s about cultivating a non-reactive awareness of our experiences, which can include both pleasant and unpleasant sensations.

Myth 2: Mindfulness means clearing your mind of all thoughts

Fact: Mindfulness doesn’t aim to empty the mind of thoughts. Instead, it encourages observing thoughts as they arise without getting entangled in them. The goal is to develop a more balanced and less reactive relationship with our thoughts.

Myth 3: Mindfulness is only about focusing inward

Fact: Mindfulness also involves cultivating awareness of the external environment and our interactions with it. It’s about being present in our daily activities and relationships, not just during meditation.

Also read: Children sleep better with the help of mindfulness training, finds study

Myth 4: You must meditate for hours to experience benefits of mindfulness

Fact: Even short moments of mindfulness throughout the day can be beneficial. Formal meditation sessions can range from a few minutes to longer periods. But the key is regularity. Consistent practice, regardless of the duration, can lead to positive effects.

Stop believing these myths about mindfulness and start practicing it the right way! Image Courtesy: Shutterstock.

Myth 5: Mindfulness is only for managing stress and anxiety

Fact: While mindfulness is effective for stress reduction, it offers a range of benefits beyond that. It can enhance emotional regulation, improve focus and attention, increase self-awareness, and promote overall well-being.

Myth 6: You have to sit cross-legged to practise mindfulness

Fact: While sitting meditation is a common way to practise mindfulness, it can be done in various postures – sitting, standing, walking, or even lying down. The key is maintaining awareness of your present experience.

Remember that mindfulness can be a personal experience, and its effects can vary from person to person. It is simply important to approach it with an open mind and a willingness to explore its potential benefits.

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I can’t remember the last time I did something before I absolutely had to. I don’t pay my bills until I get the second or third disconnection notice, and when my girlfriend and I took a vacation to Europe, I didn’t get my passport until the night before. Every six months I throw out the dirty dishes I’ve been putting off washing for half a year and buy new ones. At a recent writing job at a startup, my copy was due every two weeks; I’d do nothing for 13 days and then grind out 12,000 to 15,000 words in a brutal 20-hour marathon, during which I’d always, at some point, be nearly reduced to tears of despair, slumped at my desk, head in hands, swearing that I’d never, ever do this to myself again. (I always did it again, like clockwork, two weeks later.)

Procrastination is my own personal affliction; it’s also so common that it might be said to be universal. It’s not exclusive to losers, or even humans; pigeons procrastinate, and so do monkeys. Great men procrastinate. Leonardo da Vinci was once commissioned to complete a painting in seven months and took 25 years to finish it. Dying, he apologized for “leaving so much undone.” After Charles Darwin formulated his theory of natural selection and told friends it would completely overturn the scientific world, he took 22 years to actually put it to paper, spending the intervening decades on barnacle research about which, he wrote in his autobiography, “I doubt whether the work was worth the consumption of so much time.” The bigger the task, the more tempting it can be to wait until the last minute. In 2018, scientists started intensive efforts to save the northern white rhino—when there were only two left on the planet. I’m not criticizing; I understand. “Hey, should we start saving the northern white rhino? There’s only three or four left.” “Three or four? Man, what’s the rush?”

Procrastination is also becoming much more common; one study by Canadian professor Piers Steel found that the number of people who considered themselves chronic procrastinators had increased from 5 percent in 1978 to 26 percent in 2007. That figure has undoubtedly grown in the intervening years. Scientists have found that distractibility has a strong correlation with procrastination, and we’ve all become exponentially more distractible in the last decade and a half, if only because there are exponentially more distractions at our literal fingertips. This individual problem has become a collective one; after all, what is our boiling earth if not the result of us collectively saying, “Sure, we’ll stop burning oil—but not yet”?

But, for all that so many of us procrastinate, can anyone really explain why we do it? One theory lies in the word itself. While “procrastinate” is derived from the Latin procrastinare, which means “to put off until tomorrow,” it also shares etymology with the Greek term akrasia, which means acting against your better judgment. Technically speaking, procrastination is more than just delaying action; it’s a self-betrayal, a deviation. When we procrastinate, this etymology suggests, we are essentially misled by false desire, away from the path of proper action.

Squint a little and you can see this definition rests on the assumption that we are inclined, naturally and by default, toward proper action—“doing the right thing.” This is a widely accepted concept that’s spread from classical economic theory to much of the wider culture: that we are all innately rational actors who do what most benefits us. But what if we aren’t?

For the past couple of years, in an effort to trick myself into solving my little problem, I’ve redirected my procrastinatory impulse into looking for knowledge that will lead to a cure. Every time I stray from my work (OK, not every time), I force myself to eschew social media in favor of reading books, articles, and studies about how to overcome procrastination—a sort of meta-procrastination, a variation on “I have a book to finish, so of course I’ll clean my kitchen first.”

After a while, I had learned so much about procrastination that I was sure I could write a bestseller on overcoming procrastination. (I haven’t gotten around to writing it yet. Maybe next month.) But to my moderate chagrin, I’ve discovered that while everyone selling a book or course or app to help you blast through procrastination claims they’ve discovered the actual root cause of procrastination, and can often lay out a fairly convincing theory supported by varying amounts of evidence, a survey of the field reveals that there’s nothing even remotely resembling a consensus on what, exactly, my (our) problem is. Some believe it’s caused by a lack of confidence—that procrastinators fear, deep down, that they’ll screw things up, so their ego prevents them from beginning. (This was Sigmund Freud’s theory.) Others think the opposite, that it’s caused by overconfidence: that procrastinators don’t start their work until the last minute because they arrogantly overestimate their abilities. Then there are the “procrastinators are optimists” versus “procrastinators are pessimists” camps; according to the former theory, optimists believe their future selves will be more able and willing to tackle the task at hand, so they delegate to that more competent future self. The latter theory holds that pessimists overestimate how painful and unpleasant the work will be and are paralyzed with dread.

On a fundamental level, researchers can’t even agree if procrastination is doing something or doing nothing. To some, it’s what it appears to be, i.e., inaction, while others think it’s just the wrong sort of action, uncontrolled—that procrastinators are addicts, compulsively freebasing leisure with no thought of the morning after. There’s even a materialist wing of procrastination theory based on a 2018 study in which MRIs revealed that the amygdalas of procrastinators seemed to be fundamentally different from those of non-procrastinators—basically, you put off your work because you’re brain-damaged.

The theory that’s ascendant in today’s therapy-obsessed zeitgeist contends that procrastination is an emotional problem. (“Men will write 15,000 words in 20 hours instead of going to therapy.”) You feel bad, so instead of doing your work (which will make you feel even worse), you chase small immediate pleasures like scrolling on Instagram or watching YouTube videos, which makes you feel even worse because you’re still not working, leading you into a death spiral of avoidance.

Taken together, these theories call to mind the parable of the blind men and the elephant, in which each of them grasps a different part of the animal—the foot, the ear, the trunk—and comes up with a different description. But, as I went further down my procrasti-rabbit hole—the more I thought about procrastination instead of doing whatever it was that I was supposed to be doing—the more it seemed to me that there’s a fatal flaw at the heart of procrastination studies, that the elephant in the room isn’t actually procrastination, but something else entirely.

You’re not putting off your work—you’re choosing to fuck up.]

The main problem is that one of the foundational assumptions of how we define procrastination—that people are naturally inclined toward acting in their best interests—has been thoroughly debunked. Two Nobel prizes in the past decade have gone to men who’ve proven that we are not, in fact, rational actors at all: Richard Thaler, who demonstrated that people are predictably irrational, and Robert Shiller, who argued that markets, like investors, are not perfectly rational. This irrationality is apparent to anyone who’s ever worked in retail or gotten drunk in an airport Applebee’s, but it has somehow eluded, until recently, almost every economist in history. (No wonder their predictions are never right.) This is important because under the “rational actor” theory, every action that veers away from a theoretical utilitarian ideal has to be rationalized away as dysfunction—you’re looking at Twitter (X, sure) instead of doing your spreadsheets because your brain is damaged, or because your ego is locked into a defensive paralysis. It’s not possible that you might be doing exactly what you want, despite the fact that it’s a bad idea. You might say that you want pizza for dinner but, trust me, you actually want a salad. Desire doesn’t figure into this worldview, except as an adjunct to obligation—a conception that most adults recognize as comically wrong-headed. After all, no one ever procrastinates having sex, or eating ice cream.

A more realistic definition of procrastination is that it’s not a blockage of inherent reason, but a simple absence of desire. This seems both painfully obvious and vaguely revolutionary, and it’s not without its precedents. Socrates, according to Plato, argued that akrasia isn’t even a real thing, that it’s not possible to act against your better judgment because there is no better judgment. Actions have to be taken at face value, as de facto proof of motive. You’re not putting off your work—you’re choosing to fuck up.

Redefining procrastination like this makes a subtle but important distinction. Instead of seeing ourselves as rational actors who are mysteriously restrained—a quasi-medieval view of things that basically substitutes “an overactive amygdala” and “impostor syndrome” for “foul humours” and “evil spirits”—it opens a path to a more realistic definition of ourselves as fickle, irrational flakes who, like recalcitrant mules, must be cajoled, bribed, prodded, or bullied into action. (One of the only anti-procrastination strategies that ever worked for me was the trick—I can’t remember where I first came across it—of asking yourself, “How would someone handle this if they weren’t an absolute LOSER like you?” This would occasionally shame me into action.)

Jessi Gold

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This also changes the complexion of anti-procrastination advice. Rather than being about surmounting intangible obstacles, the question becomes a much more straightforward one of how to prod yourself into doing things—or maybe not doing them. Some of the ancients, unencumbered by rickety notions of human rationality or the Protestant work ethic, had much different solutions for procrastination. The Epicureans advised that, if you found yourself putting something off, you should abandon it altogether. Admittedly, they didn’t have to work a 9-to-5, but maybe there’s something to the idea that if you find yourself chronically putting off your work, you should get a different job. It also forces us to confront the role—or absence—of desire in our lives. Consider how many of us live lives that mostly preclude the exercise of individual desire, except in microdoses of the most vicarious sort—looking at photos of food, or videos of other people having sex. That we would occasionally, or often, resist this bloodless pantomime seems reasonable. When we have access to so few real pleasures, the pleasure of refusal is irresistible. Fixing your procrastination might require fixing your life.

The problem with this line of thinking is that it isn’t really helpful as practical advice, which is probably why it doesn’t appear in the self-help books—which, in keeping with the spirit of the times, are more about making you feel good than actually helping you. Our day-to-day reality is that we all have things we must do in order to live—finish those spreadsheets so we get paid, write our high schooler’s college essay so they get into a good school, etc. How do we do them when we don’t want to?

As any true procrastinator knows, a look into the abyss is often the only surefire motivator.

My favorite anecdote about procrastination and motivation is from the life of Anthony Burgess, the author of A Clockwork Orange, among many other books. In the late ’50s, Burgess was teaching in Borneo, drinking heavily, and hadn’t yet seriously embarked on his writing career. When he was diagnosed with a brain tumor and given a year to live, he moved back to England and, desperate to leave a legacy, wrote four books in less than a year, one of which was his masterpiece, Clockwork. (Happily, the diagnosis turned out to be false, and he lived until 1993. Rumor has it that the false diagnosis was arranged by someone in Borneo who wanted to get rid of Burgess—a cruel deception that might have been the best thing that ever happened to him.) As Burgess learned, and any true procrastinator knows, a look into the abyss is often the only surefire motivator. Getting things done might be less a matter of “feeling good” (a theory that seems pretty dumb when you spell it out like that) and more one of simple urgency. But desire can’t be purchased cheaply—an unfortunate fact for everyone pushing a quick-fix procrastination cure of breathing exercises or Pomodoro Technique timers. That we often have to tiptoe right to the edge of literal ruin just to finally, reluctantly accede to our best interests suggests just how deeply irrational we are, and how procrastination and desire are often intertwined with another universal impulse—that of self-destruction.

But while I’m no optimist (or maybe I am; I admit I occasionally find myself rationalizing that tomorrow’s self will be so much more willing and able to tackle today’s work), I feel that the will to act tends to manifest when it’s needed. The real agony of the procrastinator isn’t to create desire out of thin air, but to trust that it won’t come too late.

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Most of us have felt stuck in our heads, replaying certain situations or interactions in our minds, wondering about what we should do, and weighing all the options. This is called overthinking. When working with clients who engage in overthinking, clinicians commonly use the term “rumination.” This refers to the practice of spinning thoughts in our head repeatedly, without ever coming to a conclusion. But whether we like to call it overthinking, rumination, or obsessive thinking, it’s not productive, and it can affect our mental health. Although many researchers have studied overthinking, and clinicians assist clients in attempting to overcome this challenge, it continues to plague millions of people, because when we are in the midst of it, stopping seems impossible.

Cognitive behavioral therapists tend to agree that strategies such as distraction are only a temporary solution. We can shift our focus from the topic on which we are ruminating, but inevitably our mind gravitates back to it later. Therefore, this is not a long-term solution for breaking the cycle of overthinking. Contemporary research and clinical practice emphasize the importance of mindfulness, which actually changes the way that we think about our thoughts. That’s right, we can think about the way we think, and in doing so, we will think less about thoughts that result in emotional distress and prevent the constant spin cycle that our brain creates when we overthink.

Mindfulness is the process of acknowledging thoughts, allowing them to exist in our brains, and letting them go. Often, when people think of mindfulness, they are thinking about mindfulness meditation, which is a wonderful practice, but is a specific example of how to incorporate mindful practices. We can engage in mindful thinking whenever thoughts come to us and we are tempted to run with them and imagine all sorts of scenarios.

For example, if we are thinking about the way we interacted with someone recently, we may start a ruminative pattern of wondering whether we did or said the right thing, what they thought about us, and how we should have behaved differently. This thought pattern may lead to hours of deliberation over what we did wrong. The end result may be feelings of guilt, sadness, or frustration. In contrast, the mindful approach to responding to thoughts about how we behaved would allow the negative or critical thoughts to exist rather than trying to push them out with responses such as “there’s no way for you to know whether you did the right thing,” or “don’t worry about it, it was fine.” This type of reassurance often leads to even more rumination and the need for more reassurance. The mindful approach would not directly respond to specific thoughts, but it would instead acknowledge the thoughts and recognize that they are just thoughts. They cannot be proven or disproven in this case. Not every thought is of equal value. Thoughts alone are not facts. Therefore, we acknowledge that we have them, and then we let them go.

This is not a simple process, and it’s not easy to shift from overthinking to mindful thinking. But it can be freeing to remind ourselves that thoughts themselves do not have power. We only give them power when we believe they could be true and we need to do something about them. Sometimes, we can handle situations differently. But continuing to ruminate over how it was handled previously does not change anything. We don’t need to keep thinking the same thoughts repeatedly to remember them or to change our behavior in the future. Continuing to cycle through our thoughts produces anxiety, and often depression, if we begin to feel helpless as we ruminate and re-live our experiences.

I often tell clients that the first step to break the cycle of overthinking is to think about what a thought is. A thought is a message that our brain gives to us to provide information. Some thoughts are wise while others are ill-conceived out of fear or other negative emotions. We must ask ourselves if repeating negative thoughts, and drawing conclusions from them, provides us with something positive. Spending too much time in our heads, reviewing our thoughts and repeating them, ultimately makes us feel stuck. Our brain may shut down and be unable to solve problems or create more productive positive alternatives. Taking a break from thinking can be helpful, but remember that this is only a temporary solution. Ultimately, breaking free from overthinking involves a paradigm shift in the way that we engage our thoughts. They are not automatically true; they are hypotheses at best. Rehashing them prevents us from making decisions and moving forward.

The next time that you catch yourself overthinking, ask yourself these questions:

1. Are these thoughts helpful?
2. Will they change the outcome in some way?
3. Do I need to respond to them right now?
4. How am I feeling as I’m thinking about this?
5. Is there something I can do to resolve this dilemma?

Reflecting on our thought process is another way to engage in mindful thinking that can help break us free from rumination. Our goal in asking questions is to help us understand that continuing to repeatedly think the same things is not only counterproductive, but it can be harmful to our well-being.

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L’Oreal Thompson Payton

L’Oreal Thompson Payton is a bonafide overachiever with the receipts to prove it. She’s an award-winning journalist with her work featured in esteemed media outlets such as Bustle, ESSENCE, SELF, Shondaland, People, Publishers Weekly, and Well + Good, an experienced communications executive, a motivational speaker, and a wellness facilitator, not to mention a mother and wife. She also serves as a health and wellness reporter at Fortune, covering women and wellness in the workplace. Her writing is inspired by her personal experiences of trying to navigate the world as an ambitious Black millennial woman who was raised outside of Baltimore by working-class parents to believe that she could outwork all obstacles, but who has come to learn over time that success is not always guaranteed even if you follow all of the “rules.” 

With her new book, Stop Waiting For Perfect, she’s inspiring other women to break away from specific “rules” or programming, including the need to achieve at any cost, and sacrificing their well-being and mental health, which are concepts that society or family might’ve placed on them to thrive. Meant to be a self-help book, Payton wants to help her readers step out of their comfort zones and into their power, starting with sharing her own experiences with self-doubt, imposter syndrome, perfectionism, self-doubt, imposter syndrome, infertility, and postpartum depression. From inspiring career journey anecdotes to stories about pivoting professions to sharing how it was vital for her to accept that her life may not turn out as she envisioned, the book represents an honest and relatable blueprint for anyone tired of striving to achieve perfection and would like the agency to be human. 

Perfectionism and “Black Excellence” have been ingrained in Black women since we were little by many of our parents. We’ve all heard the saying, “You have to be twice as good to get half of what they have.” The quote, in many cases, speaks to systemic racism and how Black women have to overachieve, perform, and shine to find their place in the world successfully. Our lifelong pursuit of perfection most likely starts at home, at least it did for Payton. She notes in the book: “My lifelong pursuit of perfection, perhaps like many of you reading this, dates back to grade school. At a young age, I realized that getting good grades and receiving awards garnered positive attention from adults. I grew addicted to this attention, seeking to obtain it by any means necessary. Anything less than an A wasn’t good enough.” 

But what happens when perfectionism isn’t serving you anymore or it’s not enough? What should you do next? The next step is being comfortable, secure, and confident with yourself outside of your professional achievements. With Stop Waiting For Perfect, Payton provides an accessible toolkit to make positive changes while giving recovering perfectionists actionable advice and tips to apply to quiet their inner critic, as it’s necessary to learn how to move forward, even when frightened. 

Perfectionism, procrastination, and fear, prevented her from finishing things, like writing her first book. She writes in the “Peloton, Perfectionism, and Me” chapter of her book: “And not only am I guilty of trying to be perfect myself; I also have a tendency to wait for (or if we’re keeping it 100, procrastinate) the perfect moment in life. The perfect moment to trust my gut, to quit a job and take a chance on myself as a full-time freelance writer. The perfect moment to write this very book.” 

She continued, “There truly is no time like the present to learn, to fail, to wonder, to try. This, my friend, is where the magic happens – in the imperfection, in the failing and doing. And believe me, any time you put yourself out there, you can expect to make mistakes. But that doesn’t mean you’re a failure, it simply means you’re human.” 

Throughout the book, readers will learn, laugh, and probably cry. They’ll write goodbye letters to their inner critic and develop positive affirmations to remind them of the badass they already are. Most importantly, they’ll understand how to trust their vision to take control of their future. 

Stop Waiting For Perfect has a nice blend of Black women’s perfectionism stories, humor, and yes, even Beyoncé references – what else did you expect from a millennial? I spoke with Payton about why she decided to write this book and how Black women can continue to thrive in their success joyfully. 

ESSENCE: Why did you decide to write this book?

L’Oreal Thompson Payton: I love that question for so many reasons. I remember reading this Toni Morrison quote, where she said, ‘If there’s a book you want to read that hasn’t been written yet, you have to write it.’ I took that to heart. I love self-help books. I’m an avid reader. However, what I saw missing from that space, was that peer-to-peer kind of conversation. What I wanted to do was share the trials and tribulations that were happening. I know I don’t have life or all the answers, but I have some tips, tricks, and strategies that have helped me succeed and overcome impostor syndrome and self-doubt. We’re working on perfectionism. That’s a harder pill for me to swallow. This book includes the lessons I’ve learned along the way, and I’m sharing them in hopes that it’ll help someone else overcome those obstacles as well.

What I did appreciate about the book was it felt like I was talking with my girlfriends. I believe you intended to create this safe space for Black women who might be struggling but are uncomfortable sharing outwardly.

Absolutely, yes. This book is a pocket-size pep talk for high-achieving and aspiring individuals. It’s a love letter for Black women and a hug in a book. I wanted to have an honest conversation and let go of that perfectionism we’ve all been raised and conditioned to aspire to and live out. I wanted to be authentic and vulnerable, which Black women don’t always get to do. 

As a millennial, I’m caught in the two generations. My mom is a boomer, and I am so grateful for what she sacrificed for me, my sister, and our family. Being that role model, taking on leadership positions, and providing for us came with a hefty toll when it comes to mental health stress and the exhaustion that Black women have faced and endured for generations. My daughter will be two in October, but I think of the legacy I want to leave for her. I want her to be a soft black girl. And so, for her to do that, I have to show her the way and create that blueprint that I didn’t have for myself.

A lot of perfectionism is rooted in fear. What you lay out in specific chapters is excellent because you’re giving people prompts to first name their fear, work through it, and then solve it. How is fear intrinsically linked with perfectionism?

That fear is very much tied to that inner critic, right? And it could be your voice. It could be your mom, a spouse, or a friend. They usually mean well; they want to keep you safe and in that comfort zone, but that’s not where the magic happens. You can also do a disservice by keeping yourself in that comfort zone. There will never be that moment when you’re suddenly cured of all fear and emerge fearless and ready to take on the world. 

This book is undoubtedly necessary because it allows Black women to know failure’s okay. Was that one of the goals that you wanted to achieve with this book?

Yes, absolutely. I wanted to give them that permission slip. In the book, I mention how important it is to fail, experiment, try something new, and step outside that box.  We’ve been told, especially “good little black girls” growing up, that if you follow all the rules, do everything right, and check all the boxes, you’ll be guaranteed success, which isn’t always true. The goalpost always moves. 

What was your favorite piece of advice that you’ve included throughout the book?

I asked for help because I was talking to a friend earlier about how it’s tough for perfectionists to admit that we’re not perfect and need our village’s help. We need people that we can rely on. 

How can someone struggling with impostor syndrome and perfectionism silence their inner critic to develop confidence?

That’s such a great question. I encourage people to think about what they want out of life. What legacy do you want to leave behind? All of our success depends on each other. We must lift as we climb. And at the end of the day, remind yourself how talented you are and deserve to be there. And even if you don’t believe it in that moment, like faking it until it’s true. You’re worthy. You’re enough; you must walk into any room like you own it.

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CNN
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In a society that prizes productivity, where busyness becomes a point of pride and the “grind” a badge of honor, fun too often gets cast aside as trifling rather than a vital part of a meaningful life.

In his science-backed guidebook, “The Fun Habit: How the Pursuit of Joy and Wonder Can Change Your Life,” organizational psychologist and behavioral scientist Mike Rucker shares evidence for the physical and psychological benefits of prioritizing pleasure.

A component of our well-being relies on fun, play and leisure, Rucker argues. His book explains how intentionally increasing joyful moments can improve health, relationships — and even productivity — and offers practical tips, tools and tactics to encourage everyday acts of fun.

Fun isn’t “extra,” Rucker insists. “It’s an act of radical self-care.”

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

CNN: What is fun? How is it different from happiness?

Mike Rucker: Happiness is outcome-focused. Too often, instead of mindfully enjoying what life has to offer, we’re using energy to unpack why we are or are not happy. We can get stuck in ruminating on the gap between where we think we are and what we think happiness is supposed to be like.

Fun is less “think” and more “do.” It’s demonstrable, observable, real and immediately within our grasp. Are you drawn to, finding pleasure in and engaged with an activity? That’s fun. Available to anyone at almost any time, fun offers a direct neurological route to improving our well-being.

It doesn’t need to be something whimsical either. Quiet, low-arousal activities that provide balance and renewal — like gardening, meditating or reading — count as fun.

CNN: What effect does nurturing a fun habit have on our lives?

Rucker: Too often we look at our lives through the lens of productivity rather than based on what would be restorative or enjoyable.