3 Mental Rules to Help You Understand (and Finally Relax) Your Busy Brain When trying to relax stresses you out even more, these little-known principles are the key to calm.
By Leah Borski Edited by Kara McIntyre
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A client of mine, let's call her Sandra, came to me for help to handle high levels of stress in her life. She's the CEO of a 70-employee company in a male-dominated industry. That in itself was a lot of pressure. Add the strain of balancing work from home with parenting two small children. In her words, she wanted to be able to create her own calm during the chaos.
She felt so overwhelmed, that we needed a simple launch point to relieve her stress. I advised her to start by taking a five-minute relaxation break during each workday. I gave her solid strategies to weave it into her existing schedule right away. For example, we planned the break during regular lulls in her daily itinerary. She didn't need to rearrange her whole life to do this. With a little back and forth, we discovered early afternoon should work best. She never scheduled meetings then and her kids usually took a nap after lunch.
But at our next session, she confided that she was struggling. Instead of helping her relax, the downtime seemed to add to her stress. Her busy brain raced out of control. It clamored on about the meeting she just led, her afternoon agenda, what to cook for dinner, etc.
Sandra carried a heavy load of guilt with this revelation. She felt like she was failing. Worse, she thought it was because there was something wrong with her — but this couldn't be further from the truth. Relaxation anxiety is a common, very real, challenge. In one study, more than 50% of people reported increased tension caused by trying focused relaxation.
So my first order of business was to reinforce that this didn't mean she was flawed. She was not a failure. She could totally win this battle with relaxation anxiety.
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Mental rule No. 1: Cognitive dissonance
When our actions misalign with our values or beliefs, it triggers cognitive dissonance. This is mental discomfort that causes us to waiver in our efforts to change. Yes, she was busy. She had a ton on her plate. But when we dug to the root of it, we discovered busyness wasn't the actual reason for her relaxation anxiety. Instead, the problem was her deep-seated belief that "I don't have time to take breaks."
Attempting to embrace this new habit was inconsistent with that underlying mindset. Her brain switched into survival mode. It was trying to maintain safety and conserve energy. So it reinforced the comfortable option. It's easier to do what we've always done than to release those comfort habits and do something new. Her brain felt safer by pushing her to power through.
That's why these breaks were triggering more stress. It was already hard for her to sit still and not be doing something. Couple that with what felt like more stress instead of less, and now she felt like it was a huge waste of time.
Mental rule No. 2: The Zeigarnik Effect
Forcing herself to slam on the breaks from 100 mph to rest for five minutes wasn't working. One explanation for this is the Zeigarnik Effect. It's the tendency for our brains to remember and focus more on incomplete tasks vs. completed ones. This creates an "open cognitive loop." It's another of our brain's amazing energy conservation methods. Its purpose is to ensure we won't forget what we were doing or to make sure we find a solution to the issue at hand.
This is an automatic, unconscious process most people don't even know about. But with awareness and intention, we can flip it. Instead of a "busy brain" distraction, it can become a powerful mental hack that shuts down overwhelm so we can relax. With this in mind, we adapted the approach to her relaxation breaks. I recommended she take two minutes to do a "brain dump" on paper first. She wrote anything that came to her mind. Then, she settled in to close her eyes and rest for five minutes.
This strategy created her breakthrough. Now, she was able to actually relax during her break. Only one week of this daily practice improved her overall mood by 40% and boosted her energy by 30%!
The more she repeated this process, the better it worked.
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Mental Rule No. 3: Hebb's Law
Hebb's Law says "brain cells that fire together, wire together." In other words, every time we take a particular action, a cluster of brain cells fires in this direction. That firing reinforces these pathways. The process creates a new way of being. Repetition makes new habits stick.
Every time my client did that brain dump to transition into rest time, she was rewiring her brain. This helped stop it from fighting. Even if her subconscious still believed she was too busy to relax, it felt safe to take that tangible action. This resolved the cognitive dissonance. There was no more risk of forgetting all those things that had kept her brain racing before.
Then that firing action connected (wired) with the relaxation period. It forged a fresh habit. It cemented a new belief. She was ecstatic about her elevated mood and energy. She was more productive during work hours and more patient and present with her family. And best of all, she felt less stressed! She no longer felt these short relaxation breaks were wasting her time.
Related: New Neuroscience Reveals the Best Way to Form Powerful Habits That Stick
Relaxing your busy brain isn't as impossible as it seems
You just need to take a couple of simple steps. The first is understanding these mental rules. The next is using them to your advantage. Fighting against them is futile — that battle wastes more time and energy than taking a quick break ever could.
