I sat with my morning coffee longer than usual today, watching the steam curl and disappear. There's something about that moment—the heat rising, the quiet before the day really begins—that feels like a small permission slip to just be. I've been thinking about how we often mistake stillness for emptiness, when really, it's just space. Space to notice what's already there.
A friend asked me yesterday, "How do you know when you're overthinking?" I didn't have a clean answer. I said something about loops—when the same thought circles back without moving forward. But later, I realized I'd missed something. Overthinking isn't just repetition. It's the absence of curiosity. When I'm truly thinking, I'm asking. When I'm overthinking, I'm just rehearsing old scripts, trying to control outcomes that haven't happened yet.
I tried a small experiment this morning. Every time I caught myself spinning in worry, I wrote down the question I was actually afraid to ask. Not the surface worry—the real one underneath. "What if I'm not as capable as I think?" "What if I hurt someone without realizing?" The questions were uncomfortable, but writing them down made them less like monsters in the dark. They became just questions. And questions, unlike fears, can be investigated.