Can an overthinker actually meditate? I could not for twenty years, because I thought meditation meant no thinking. It does not, and that changed everything.
Can an overthinker actually meditate? I could not for twenty years, because I thought meditation meant no thinking. It does not, and that changed everything.
At 40 I hit rock bottom, could not sleep, and every book I picked up told me to meditate. I was diagnosed dyslexic so I had stopped bothering with books, then started again because reading was the only thing getting me to sleep. Your mind is built to think the way your heart is built to pump. Meditation is not the absence of thought. It is the gap between the text arriving and your reply.
One thing to try: Notice one gap today. Between somebody speaking and you answering. That is the whole practice.
In this episode
(0:00) Why meditation comes up this early in the podcast
(1:30) Is your mind one of the busy ones?
(2:54) Rock bottom at 40, and not being able to sleep
(4:30) Reading myself to sleep, having given up on books
(5:54) Diagnosed dyslexic, so why bother reading at all
(7:33) Every book said meditate, and I put every one down
(10:02) Your heart pumps, your mind thinks. That is the job
(13:17) The gap between the text arriving and your reply
Support the podcast and join the Weekly Calm: stevenwebb.uk
Thank you for listening.
Steven
The question this answers
Can an overthinker actually meditate?
Yes, and I could not for twenty years because I thought meditation meant no thinking. It does not, and understanding that changed everything.
The heart of it
Your mind is built to think the way your heart is built to pump. Asking it to stop is asking it to die.
Meditation is the gap between the text arriving and your reply.
When your attention wanders, pick it up and put it back, like a puppy. No telling off.
I tried it first in my late twenties, for entirely the wrong reasons, and it lasted about four minutes.
Then at forty I hit rock bottom, and the only thing my mind would do was interrogate my ex. What are they doing now. Why did they do it. Round and round, at three in the morning.
I drank to sleep for about a fortnight, doubling it every four days, which got awkward because I am paralysed and had to ask my carers to pour it.
So I started reading instead, which took some doing. I am dyslexic, diagnosed after I gave up copying from a blackboard because the teacher rubbed the top off before I had reached the bottom. I never put my hand up to say so. I blagged my way through school by asking friends in the queue what happened in the book.
The first book was forty pages and took me weeks, which was ideal, because reading it put me to sleep every night.
And every book I picked up after that said the same thing. Meditate. And I would put it down, annoyed, because not me. I think too much.
Here is the meditation I was actually doing at that point. Deep breath, arms down, relax. Why not check Facebook. No, I am meditating. Send that text and then meditate. Thirty seconds in and I am planning things I do not care about.
One small thing to try
Ask one question and sit with it for two minutes.
Can I listen without judgement, opinion or belief?
Whatever comes in, let it be sound rather than a thing you have views about. That is it. That is meditating.
Then the second half, which is the actual skill. When you notice you have wandered off into a story, smile, say thank you for the thought, and come back. Not once. Constantly.
Try this too, right now. What will your next thought be?
You just had a gap. That is what one feels like.
Questions people ask
What if my mind races the second I sit down?
It always does, and it always did before, you have simply never watched it. That is the first thing you were meant to notice rather than proof you cannot do this.
What am I actually training?
The pause before you react. That is why it matters outside the cushion. Most of the things we regret happened in the two seconds when the habit answered for us.
Do I need to sit properly?
No. Bed, chair, train platform, walking to work, driving. If it needs a cushion and a particular position it is not going to be there on the day you need it.
Read along
The transcript
It follows the audio. Press any line to jump there.
meditation-how-to · overthinking · mindfulness
Read the transcript
Hello and welcome to my podcast. I'm Steven Webb and this is Stillness in the Storms of Light. It's the
podcast that will help you have a little inner peace when you have it least and you need it most.
On today's show, I'm going to help you to get the benefits of meditation, even if you're somebody that cannot
shut off your mind.
How does that sound? But today, first of all, let's have a word from my sponsors.
Okay, I haven't got no sponsors yet. But if you would like to sponsor the show, if you would like
me to give you a shout out, head over to stevenspodcast.com and you can support me on Patreon and then
I will give you a shout out on the show. If you're a business or you know a business or
somebody that really wants to support and help the show grow so I can reach more people, help more people
have a little little more inner peace. They almost said have a little less inner peace. If you can support
the show in any way like that, head over to my stevenspodcast.com and you'll see a link to the Patreon
site in which you, but not only that, you get videos. Like right now I'm recording the video of this
and you'll see, and it's very much uncut the video, which makes it a lot better. A lot more
entertaining. So you see me, yeah, I was going to say doing all sorts of things. Probably just scratching my
nose, to be quite honest. It's one of those things.
But on today's show, why did I start meditating? Let's start with that, because it'll make sense.
Are you somebody that has got a really active mind, and your mind goes completely
blank when you don't need it to at the worst times like recording a podcast? On the other hand, does
your mind have... Constant overthinking when you want it to go blank a little bit. Like when you're trying to
go sleep or when you try to focus on something or you're listening to a really important podcast or
film but you're tired and your mind's like just I can't listen anymore. My
neurosynapsis is just saying enough. And then you get the idea that I'm going to sit down and meditate for
like 10 minutes. And there you go. Boom. Your mind goes into overactive mode straight away.
Well, I started meditating first in my late 20s. But it lasted about four
minutes, I believe. I started meditating for the wrong reasons. I thought it would be cool and I thought it
would might even get me a girlfriend or... Get me laid. Sorry to admit that on, you know, we were
all young once. But then when I turned 40, I hit rock bottom and I found myself in a position
where I could not sleep. I found myself single and my mind, the only thing my mind would do for
a long, long time was to go over the questions I had for my ex. I was mad. If I
settled down for just 30 seconds, it would go like, what are they doing now? What's happening? What are they
up to? Why did they do that to you? How dare they do that? And it would go to the
most craziest times of thinking, which is completely irrelevant. But it gave me no peace whatsoever.
And this is what, I started reading books a few weeks later because I couldn't sleep. So I had to
almost mask my voice. I had to mask the thoughts in my head. And the only way I could do
that was to keep my mind busier doing something else.
Alcohol did not work. I drank for about two weeks and after about four days I doubled the amount.
Then about another four days, I doubled the amount again. Got a little bit embarrassing because I have carers because
I'm paralysed from just below the neck. And asking the carers to pull me up drinks every night
is a little embarrassing. Although they would do it graciously, I'm sure they had plenty on their minds when they
did it. So after about two weeks of drinking more and more just to get to sleep for two hours.
Because it never kept me asleep for the night. It was always it was always broken sleep and it was
never great. I never felt refreshed in the morning. I had to find another way to go sleep. And that
other way was reading books. I I never really read books because...
Can you ever remember when you're at school when the teacher used to write on the blackboard for start at
the top and they used to write the lines out and you And she would say, well, can you copy
these down? No problem. And I'd be okay, I'd start copying them down. And then of course she would get
to the bottom of the blackboard and then start rubbing it off from the top as she was going down.
And I was like, oh my god you're rubbing out what I'm... I still haven't got there yet. I couldn't
read like a sentence off the blackboard and then write the sentence down. I was doing it one word at
a time because I couldn't hold the information very easily. So I used to get in trouble for not copying
it down properly and skipping words and And I just gave up in the end when she got to the
part of the blackboard that she was rubbing out what I was writing. I didn't want to put my hand
up and admit that I couldn't copy off a blackboard in front of everybody in the class. So I just
labbed it and got in trouble most of the time. Got low grades because I didn't copy it down.
So therefore, at that point, I was diagnosed dyslexic.
Because I was diagnosed dyslexic, I didn't really bother reading. I got a problem. I cannot read. So why bother
doing it? Made sense to me. All during my school and sixth form, I blagged it. If we had to
read a book, I can remember reading Of Mice, Of Men. I can remember we had an English session that
we had to go through it. Well, I would just have a chat casually to my friends in the queue.
So what did you think of the book? And I would ask them questions and I would discuss it. To
give me enough to give me enough that if I was picked on, I could say something. I got the
gist of the story, which is fine so
that So then fast forward to 40 years old, rock bottom, drinking to go to sleep. I had to find
another way. And reading was the perfect thing, simply because I had to focus. I picked up,
I found a free book on my iPad, As a Man Thinker. It was written over a hundred years ago
by James Allen, just up the road from me actually. Not only did the book change my life in the
way I think, but it also took me weeks to read it. And it was only like 40 pages long.
It took me ages because every paragraph I had to read again and again and again
would put me to sleep every night, which was ideal. You know, that's what I wanted. So
then I started reading more and more books. Every single book that I read had one theme. I would turn
a page and it would say, you need to meditate. And every time it said I needed to meditate, I
would either put that book away or be really annoyed or something because not me, I think too much. I
cannot meditate. My mind goes into overtime the minute I sit still. Impossible for me. I'm
just one of those intellectual type of people.
That's where I was wrong because at that point I thought meditating was about no thinking and
it's not. It's not about no thinking at all. Meditation is about controlling your thoughts, becoming
a master of your thoughts instead of your thoughts controlling you.
So how do we do that? And what is the point in that? Are we really? Are our thoughts separate
to us? Can we really control our thoughts? Especially if the thoughts are us, can we control them? So these
were the kind of questions that went through my mind immediately. So I started to sit down and meditate. And
it really did not go well for weeks, really. I started with five minutes here, five minutes there.
And then I read it again in a book and I would try it again. And my typical meditation was,
okay, I'm going to do it this time I'm going to I'm It's going to be a perfect, brilliant meditation.
Okay, Deep breath in. Place my arms down beside me and relax.
Okay, why don't you check Facebook? No, I'm meditating I'll go and check your email. I'm sure you've got that
email to reply to. No, I'm meditating. Just just send that text. If you send that text, you can meditate
afterwards. And then suddenly within like within like 30 seconds, you're thinking of such irrelevant things.
It almost makes it impossible to sit there and have some calmness do you experience Is that what you experience?
You know, the first time you sat down and meditated, doesn't your mind go up onto thinking? Well, guess what?
That's what the mind is designed to do, is to think. Just like your foot is designed to do, well,
be a foot. Apart from stand on it, I'm not sure what a foot's there for. But your heart's designed
to pump the blood around your body. It's designed to have intuitive feelings. That's why it's got
neurons around your heart, they found. Just the same as in your brain, they're in your heart. Your liver is
designed to filter your blood and stuff. I'm not a biologist, but I get the gist of some of the
stuff. Your kidneys are designed to filter the drinks and all that that you have.
And asking your kidneys or your liver or your heart not to do their job would be like dying. You
know, okay heart, don't beat for three, four minutes. It's not good no Not good in any
way. So, but we're doing the same thing. We're asking our brain to do that same thing, right?
Please brain, don't think for the next 15 minutes. Well, that's not going to happen. Now
we have little gaps between thought when the brain's probably thinking some other stuff up.
We have little moments of blankness. And I could give you one now
to Sit there just for a moment and I want you to think of your next thought that's coming. Right
now, think what your next thought is.
Pretty impressive, right? No thought. You cannot think of your next thought until your next thoughts generated.
It doesn't exist until... So you have that moment of blankness. But we often want that complete
blankness for like 15-20 minutes. Well, that's asleep. If
you've got no thinking, that means you are asleep.
Make sense? But we don't want to be asleep. That's not the idea of meditating. That's not the idea of
inner peace. So what is meditation then if it's not about no thinking? If
it's not about having a blank mind and complete like, ah, for 20 minutes, half an hour, what is it
about?
Well, meditation is like the gym for your everyday life. You want more peace
and you want more tranquility and in your everyday life. How do you get it there? Well you got to
practice.
You've got to practice the not reacting, not going to your habitable behaviour. And your
brain will jump to the habitable behaviour every single time. You see, when something arises, your brain will jump straight
to that habitable behaviour.
And it happens so quick that most of the time we don't even catch it. That's why we end up
snapping or we end up shouting or running out or sending the text that we really shouldn't send.
We've all done it, and I know you've done it.
So, the meditation is about creating that little gap between receiving that text and your reply.
So, how do we do it? Right. It's all about not only what arises on the outside, but what arises
on the inside and what we do with it.
So how does meditation help that? Well,
we sit down on the cushion or on the side of the bed or lying in bed or whatever we're
doing. We could be waiting for the train or walking in the woods, walking to work or driving the car.
And what you're doing is you've been aware of your thoughts. So we bring our attention to our breathing. It's
like right now you could do this with Take a deep breath in, hold it and then breathe out slowly.
During that process, you had very little thinking. Well, that's not true. You were thinking,
but you were thinking about your breath. Yeah. So it's about concentration focus and what are we going to focus
on.
Now, the breath is the easy one because we've always got that. If you haven't got your breath, there's a
problem. But no matter what's happening, there's always oxygen in and out your lungs. And you're
semi part of that. It is automatic with a little bit of input from you. So that's the
perfect way in which we can jump straight into a meditation. And you could do that hundreds of times a
day, just like I'm going to do one meditative breath.
I breathe in, pause, and I breathe out really
And that's one meditative breath. Now go and take 90 of them. That's meditated
But the problem is... Our mind will wander. We normally run into story or we run into
old habits. We run into images in our minds and all kinds of things, future
things and making up our imagination. That's what we mean by jumping out of meditation, jumping
out of the mindful moment that is right here now.
We could use something else. We can use sound, which is the one I use most of the time.
And part of the Mondo Zen process, one of the questions in that, which I'll put a link to below,
is that the first question, first Cohen,
which is like an introspective question that you have to look for the answer and come
up with it yourself.
The first question is, can you listen without judgement and without opinion or
belief?
So try it.
So try that for the moment now.
Can you listen to the noise coming from outside, to my voice?
Can you listen to whatever is coming in your mind as sound? Can you just allow it to come in
without forming an opinion of what it is, where it's coming from, whether it's good or whether it's bad? Can
you just allow it to happen?
It's interesting because that's meditating. That's what you're doing. And the second part of the meditating
is the bringing it back. It's realising when you're when you go away. You know, you don't have to be
down on the cushion You don't have to put your legs above your head in some yogic pose that just
is wrong. The whole idea is that you pain your mind to recognise when you're not being
present and to bring it home. Bringing
it home to the current moment. So like, When I'm doing this podcast, every now and again my mind will
wander off to perhaps something to eat or perhaps something I'm doing later or what was that noise and I
get distracted.
Now then I can either go with that noise, go with that thread, or I can go oh there was
the thought that was outside what I'm focusing on right now and bring it back. And it's the same when
you're meditating. If you sit there and meditate.
You might think about that you've got to check your phone or that you've got to do something that day.
A favourite of my mind is to do my to-do list. Oh great, you're gonna sit and do nothing. Let's
do your to-do list all day. Let's work out everything you haven't done and everything you need to do for
the next 20 years. It happens most days unless unless you want it to happen then it won't happen.
I thought about that this morning on my meditation. I thought, okay, let's, for the first five minutes, let's go
through what I need to do today. And it just did not happen. It's funny. That's that's your subconscious mind.
It's like that sometimes
it's got It's got a mind of its own. It's not your mind um which is interesting. We'll talk about
that on future episodes. So how do you bring it back? So why and how do you bring it back
when you do find yourself distracted into story? Well, you bring it back because the more
you train your mind to be present in the current moment, the more we can respond rather than react. You
know, when something goes wrong, we can, if we're present and we're here right now, we can look at the
situation and go, okay, let's look at what's happening here now and let's respond in the best way possible. If
we're not present, we go ah what's just happened? Oh my God, panic. Not saying I don't ever panic anymore,
but I panic a lot less than I used to. It's because I wasn't in control at that point. So
it's all about gaining control of our mind. It's all about not allowing our mind to control us. So how
do we bring it back? I've told you why we do it. We bring it back by just smile and
bring it back. Just the same as a puppy. If you're trying to get it to stay in a certain
place, you pick it up and put it back. You don't get mad. You don't get angry. Just pick it
up and put it back again and again. That's what we do in meditation. So if you're concentrating on your
breaths like I'm breathing in,
I'm breathing out,
I'm breathing in. So if you're if that is your meditation or sound or focusing on emotions
or whatever you want to focus the concentration on, it could be a spot on the wall.
Every time you recognise that you're not thinking about that, you're not concentrated, Concentrating on that.
Just smile and bring it back and go, thank you for the thought, but we're going to concentrate on this
spot on the wall or the breathing or whatever you choose to focus on. And this is the same for
over thinkers intellectual people. This is the same for you if you think you cannot stop your thinking.
I
tell you, you cannot stop your thinking. It's
impossible. So
we've got to learn to tame it.
It's like a puppy. You're not going to stop the puppy wanted to run around.
So at certain times, you'll be like, okay, I've let you run around for the last little bit. Now we're
going to come back and be a little more calm.
And you teach it the times it can.
Have an imagination and go with it. Because there is times when you need to. And
there's other times when it's not appropriate to go with it. You don't need to go with it. And it
might even make things worse if you do. And
then you just return it to the breath or the spot on the wall or whatever you're choosing to focus
on during this meditation.
So you can meditate even if you overthink because I was one of them. I really,
really was. And I'm not just saying that as some marketer. You know, you have these marketing videos. Trying to
sell you something. Well, I'm not trying to sell you meditation. I'll tell you all the benefits and say it's
incredible. It'll make you healthier or lower your blood pressure. It will stop you regretting things. It will make you
feel better. You'll have more inner peace. You'll have more healthier control over your life. I could list all the
benefits all day. I invite you to sit down and ask yourself one question.
Is it possible to purely listen without opinion and belief
And Just do that for a couple of minutes, a couple of times day That alone you'll start seeing the
benefits and changes.
Now next week we will expand on this and I'm going to go through the 10 myths of meditation. This
is kind of one of them about the thing I'm going to go through the 10 myths of meditation in
next week's podcast. Because why am I tackling meditation so early on in my podcast? Well because it's really,
really important.
And I'm not talking about asking you or inviting you to sit in a cave for three years. You know,
if you want to go and do that, please be my guest. Invite me along at least like a couple
of days a week. I would love to sit with you. But that's not what I'm asking you to do.
I'm asking you to open your mind and open your heart to the possibility that you can
meditate. And it's not what you thought it was.
So I'm Steven Webb, an Inner Peace Mentor and I help you to get a little more inner peace in
life. When you have it least and you need it most. You've been listening to Stillness in the Storms.
And if you can hit the subscribe button so you do not miss any more episode And if you would
like to support, that would be amazing and you'll get a shout out on my next show. Just head to
stevenspodcast.com and it'll take you to a page where you can listen on your favourite platform.
And you can go to Patreon and support me, which would be absolutely incredible and amazing. And thank
