The Cost of Overthinking: What Silence Taught Me About Making Decisions

This is my first day back working here after nearly two weeks of back to back volunteering at Stockholm Pride and working at the hotel on my days off from that. I was struck down with a cold at the end of last week - I always get colds when I’m run down - and today is the first day I have had any energy at all. Although, it’s kind of lacking. 

I realised it’s also the first day I’ve spent any time in silence for all of that time. Pride is loud, building the park is loud, the hotel is loud, once I finished all of my shifts I then have Dr Chris at home who isn’t exactly a chatter but isn’t silent either and as I’ve been poorly I’ve been watching TV and listening to podcasts to keep my mind occupied on something other than feeling shit. 

Why Your Brain Needs the Quiet to Actually Decide 

I happened upon a Reddit post the other day, on the ADHD and women board, about how important silence is in allowing our brains to feel rested and relaxed. It had a link to some science stuff which I still haven't read properly, but a bit of digging afterwards turned up that it centres around the ‘default mode network’.

This is the brain circuitry that switches on during rest and does the quiet work of memory, reflection and creativity. It’s important for putting the world and your experiences into order, understanding our sense of self and problem solving. It doesn’t require silence but it is the mode that your brain goes into when it’s not actively thinking about something else - so silence can be a key component. I thought this was a good explanation of the default mode network but they do go on to sell something which feels a bit whacky and I’m not endorsing that. 

It really made me consider when am I ever in silence? Really? Not very often. There is very little of the day where I am not cramming my brain full of outside influences. Not all of them are bad of course, in fact, I try very hard to make sure a lot of them are good - but reading, social media, chatting with people, podcasts, studying - it’s all input. 

Today, as I potter around my house in silence, trying to put it in some sort of order so I can actually concentrate, I am appreciating the space that the silence is creating for me.

I was about to go into how much stuff I’m getting done, and I am, but more, I am forming long trains of thought - my hands are moving, sweeping, sorting, scrubbing and my brain is threading from memory to idea to worry and right the way back through to planning. I’ve been taking odd moments to write things down because as nice as it is to allow this weaving to happen, I do need to bring it all back into some sort of order. I had a Thai massage the other day, a birthday present to myself, and it sort of feels like my brain has been squeezed and massaged a bit - that fresh, joyful and limber feeling. 

A Book That Let Me Sit With Someone Else's Noisy Brain 

I just finished a book last week, The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion (that’s an affiliate link). I actually recommended it in the newsletter about grief a couple of weeks ago. Didion was a well known US journalist and the book loosely follows the year after her husband suddenly died and how she dealt with the aftermath. It had been recommended to me, a couple of times actually, but I have to admit I didn’t love it. I found a lot of the references hard to follow, she’s from a different country, generation and political affiliation so I didn’t feel naturally at home but I carried on and settled into enjoying the bits that were enjoyable. 

I then started to really appreciate how her writing respected the way that her brain responds to stuff - she would literally take us on the memory journey sparked by some specific event. Somebody would say something and it would remind her of this moment, which took her back to this book, which she dug out to reread and was able then to understand something more from what was happening now. For my ADHD brain it was comforting to be let into somebody else’s bouncy, fractious, rebellious internal rhythm.

You Already Know What You'd Choose - You're Just Avoiding Choosing It  

Something I’ve been thinking about quite a bit recently is checking in on myself and my decisions. When I had the shop I was making decisions, some of them quite important, each and every day and with little time to really sit and over think them, or check in with other people. I’m not saying I made rash decisions every time, but I also didn’t have the luxury of time, there were always 1,000 other things to do and decisions still got made. Some of them worked out well, some didn’t, I mostly went with my gut and it mostly worked out. 

As I’ve been concentrating on making friendships here in Sweden recently, I’ve been hanging out with two wonderful women that I met through Dr Chris, and I showed them the Netflix show which featured my shop (this is the link and it’s episode three if you’re interested). It reminded me that I literally made the decision to be on that show in an instant - even if I told them I had to think about it… As soon as I knew about the show and what it entailed, I knew I was doing it. And it turned out to be such a great idea for the shop on so many levels. 

Now since I have more time on my hands I am using more of that time to think and ponder over stuff. I am googling. Gathering resources. Asking people. Considering. Writing lists. Walking it out. Writing out the options and the pros and cons. 

All of this sounds great, and a thoughtful, considered approach is often a great place to be, but for me, it feels a lot like procrastination. 

Once you’re past having the facts (and if we’re talking about big financial stuff then gathering information and assessing the validity and reliability of it is super important) then a decision has to be made. Reddit can’t make it for you, or Vera down the road, neither can Claude. You have to make it. Maybe your partner or whoever else is involved, but it is not a virtue to take more time than necessary on something just because it makes you seem slower, more considered, more grown up. 

A Solid Sense of Self and Decision Making

One thing this relies on, bringing me back to the noise thing and the default mode network, is knowing who you actually are. Not who you want to be (although we can all aspire to be better versions of ourselves), not who others want us to be, not what looks good or right from the outside but actually who we are, what we want, where we’re going. Knowing all of that takes time with ourselves.

It’s one of the things I’ve found most surprising ad truly joyful things about coaching so far actually, a lot of it is less about the practical stuff (although there’s plenty of that - education, understanding terms, setting up budgets etc.) and more about helping people define what is actually important to them, so then the way forward is obvious.

I think that’s why this silence has felt so wonderful to me today. It’s been time with myself after some busy weeks where I have only been with other people and my brain has felt quite mushy. I feel lucky that I actually like myself even if brain works a bit weirdly. I’m certainly not perfect, but I have ideas and experiences that are uniquely mine and impact how I see the world and I can trust that I know what I’m doing. I can’t truly utilise my ideas to their best effect if they’re constantly fighting with everybody else to be heard. They deserve a bit of space. 

As do yours. My financial coaching could be that space for you - asking the right questions, following the right trains of thought, digging into the fiddly bits that don’t feel quite right. You feel confused and overwhelmed about your finances but you don’t have to be - you can be confident, decisive and joyful! I’d love to be part of it - book a slot here.

Love Eleanor. xxx