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Have you ever been in the middle of a busy week, energy running low, and had a thought cross your mind that you should leave the office early, only for another voice to arrive almost instantly telling you what your team will think, what it will look like, whether you’ve done enough to justify it? So you stay. Tired, half-present, staring at a screen. Doing nothing particularly useful, but you stay… Maybe it shows up differently for you. A relationship that hasn’t felt right for a while, but you can’t quite justify the decision because nothing is technically wrong and you don’t yet have the words to explain it. A business direction your gut settled on months ago, but you keep researching, keep gathering data, keep waiting for the evidence to give you permission to act on what you already know. A conversation you’ve been meaning to have for weeks, but you’ve rehearsed it so many times inside your head that somewhere along the way you talked yourself out of having it at all. This is overthinking. The everyday kind that most of us don’t even notice anymore because it has become the default setting. The constant running of calculations, the replaying of conversations that haven’t happened yet, the overriding of what you actually feel in favour of what seems safest, most logical, most acceptable to the people watching. You may already know the answer or choice you deeply want to make. You may have known it for a while. You may find yourself simply not trusting it yet, because your mind keeps asking for more evidence before it will let you act on what your body has been telling you all along. The Second Mountain Requires Something Deeper The first mountain is the one most of us have been climbing our whole lives: the career, the credentials, the external markers of success. The second mountain is what calls you once you’ve reached the top of it and realised something is still missing i.e. the business with a purpose, or a creative project, the next phase of your career. The mind that built the first mountain of your life is extraordinary. It earned you the results, the career, the reputation. But it has a ceiling, and most hit it without knowing why. What happens at that ceiling is this: instead of feeling your way through a situation, you think your way through it. Instead of checking in with what you actually know on the inside, you run a calculation of what everyone on the outside might think. The question stops being what do I actually need right now and becomes what is the safest move given the audience. That is overthinking. And its less talked about partner is underfeeling. Here are three things I have come to understand about the importance of feeling more. 1. Your feelings are a GPS, not a weakness Your body is giving you information constantly. The tightness in your chest in a conversation that isn’t right. The heaviness that comes from staying in a room you should have left an hour ago. The pull toward something you keep talking yourself out of. That is data. In my upcoming book, Lead From Within, I describe your emotions as your inner sensory system. In the same way your hand pulls back from a flame before your brain has named what’s happening, your body is always signalling what is and isn’t aligned for you. The distinction that matters is between a feeling coming from fear and one coming from truth. Fear contracts you, tells you to wait, to hedge, to stay. Truth expands you, even when it’s uncomfortable, even when your mind hasn’t caught up yet. Many of us have spent decades being trained to override that signal in favour of what looks right, what seems logical, what others might approve of. The result is a life that looks good from the outside and feels slightly off on the inside. 2. Slow down before you speed up You cannot access that signal at full volume. The psychologists Richard Carlson and Joseph Bailey describe it like a walkie-talkie: when you’re pressing talk, you cannot listen. As long as the mind is transmitting, there is no room for a different kind of intelligence to come through. The practical shift here is not complicated, but it does require something most of us resist: the willingness to stop thinking long enough to receive new insights. A walk without a podcast. Five minutes before the phone in the morning. One genuine pause before you react, respond, or decide. That is where the space to feel opens up, and where new clarity tends to arrive. 3. Ask yourself: how am I feeling right now? Not as a passing thought, but as a real check-in. Take a breath and then actually listen, not for what you should feel or what makes sense given the circumstances, but for what is genuinely there. I started doing this a few times a day and over the last few years it has helped me avoid burning out and make decisions I actually stand behind. Try it in the middle of a difficult conversation or before making a big decision. Your body already has the answer. It has had it the whole time. The overthinking is just very loud, and the feeling has learned to wait. The first mountain was built by thinking your way forward. The second one asks you to feel your way forward as well, not instead, but alongside it. The leaders I see flourishing in this next chapter are not the ones who stopped thinking. They are the ones who learned when to put it down, check in, and trust what they find there. Reflection question Where in your life right now are you overriding a feeling because you’re waiting for a thought to make it acceptable? J P.S Here are 4 ways I can support your journey: 1) Join our next Connected Leadership Experience on Wednesday 24th June 5pm-6:30pm BST – A light touch intimate online circle where you uncover of your truth with other growth minded professionals. Only 3 spaces remaining. Details and application here. 2) 📓 Journal with Jaineel 7 Day Experience for Free – 7 days, 10 minutes a day. One prompt. Start your journaling here. 3) 🧘 Download my free guided meditation – 20 minutes to calibrate your energy and shift your state. Remember: you don’t attract what you want, you attract who you are. Download the free meditation here. 4) 📞 Let’s talk – If you’re ready to do this work 1:1 or in a group setting, book a call with me here. Enjoyed this newsletter? Send it to a friend or colleague. |
