The Thought Error That’s Making You Busy

A client came into our session this week carrying a lot of overwhelm.

They described the fatigue, the feeling of perpetually catching up. When I asked them to tune into their body, they felt it in their chest.

We tied it back to a question they were asking themselves on repeat:

“How do I handle it all?”

Sounds reasonable. It isn’t. But nobody trained you to question it.

That’s what I call a thought error.

Not a wrong thought in any moral sense — but a thought that doesn’t serve you. One that triggers your default approaches.

If you’ve spent twenty years being the person who figures it out, who delivers, who never drops the ball — your brain isn’t going to suddenly get creative. It’s going to do what it always does.

The workload is rarely the actual problem.
The thinking about the workload is.

Work harder. Do more. Do it faster. Eat into your personal time. Say yes to the thing you should probably say no to. (Spoiler: there is always another thing.)

Which makes everything heavier. Because you’re already doing a lot.

I see this constantly.

With clients still in corporate wondering if the leap is even possible. With clients already building who get overwhelmed.

The workload is rarely the actual problem. The thinking about the workload is. But we weren’t trained to question thoughts — we were trained to act on them.

Photo by Adhitya Sibikumar on Unsplash

So we did something different.

Instead of following the thought, I asked: how do you actually want to feel?

We worked backward to find a thought powerful enough — not aspirational, powerful, meaning true enough to land in your body right now — to produce that feeling.

The moment they landed on …

“I’m doing enough — I’m delivering value on the highest-priority work”

…and felt it settle in their chest, something shifted.

And then: ideas. Clear ones. Unprompted. Not by pushing harder — just there, because they weren’t scrambling anymore. They were grounded. In charge.

What came out of that ease was telling.

They didn’t reach for more tasks — they reached for structure that actually served them. A start-of-week intention. An end-of-week reflection.

But we weren’t trained to question
thoughts — we were trained to act on them.

It reminded me of something I’ve been experimenting with myself — replacing the to-do list with intention-setting. Less about what you have to do, more about what you want to accomplish.

This is what I work on with clients all the time.

Not productivity systems. Not goal-setting frameworks. Learning another framework feels heavy because you’re still pushing. This is about finding the thought that pulls you instead.

Learning to catch my own thought errors was one of the most important skills I developed early in my entrepreneurial journey. My brain, for the record, put up a fight. And I still come back to it constantly.

Here are some questions to reflect on:

What thought is running on repeat for you right now?

What’s it creating for you?

Do you feel pushed? Or do you feel pulled?

If pushed — that’s an opportunity to choose something different.

In your corner,

Pierre

Recovering IT guy turned Management Consultant. 30+ years in strategy, operations, and project implementation — now a Certified Professional Coach.

From the leap to the messy middle, I advocate for the entrepreneur you want to become — at the pace of your nervous system.

P.S. I use this every day — not just in sessions.

Six months ago I moved to a new city. Different norms, different vibe, different unwritten rules.

I keep catching myself running assumptions that worked fine where I used to live and are quietly tripping me up here.

This is the tool I reach for to break out of my frustration.