It’s 2am. The house is quiet, the day is long gone, and your brain has decided now is the perfect time to replay every unanswered email, every awkward conversation, and every “what if” it can find. You try to ignore it. It gets louder.
Most of us know that feeling. A racing mind doesn’t need a crisis to get going. It just needs a gap, and then it fills that gap with worry, planning, and problem-solving that never actually solves anything.
Courtney Carver wrote a thoughtful piece on this over at Be More with Less called 8 Ways to Slow Your Racing Mind. One point in it stood out to me straight away: even with a regular meditation practice and good sleep, she still gets swept up sometimes.
This is because a racing mind isn’t a sign you’re doing calm wrong. It’s just something minds do.
Her ideas are practical and easy to try, so I’ve grouped them into three parts: working with the mind directly, letting the body lead, and changing the conditions that keep the engine revving in the first place.
Part One: Work With the Mind Directly
1. Shift your attention
Fighting a racing mind rarely works. Giving it somewhere else to go usually does.
During the day, music is one of the simplest ways to do this. Calm, slow, instrumental music gives your attention something gentle to rest on.
Another option is to simply notice what’s around you. What can you see right now? What can you hear, smell, or feel under your hands? It sounds almost too simple, but paying real attention to your senses pulls you out of your head and back into the room.
At night, Carver suggests counting backwards from 125 in threes. It’s just hard enough that your brain can’t do it and worry at the same time.
A slow body scan works well too: start at your toes and relax each muscle as you move up. And if all else fails, she puts on a familiar TV show she’s already seen. Nothing new to follow, nothing to figure out, just a bit of gentle company until sleep comes back.
2. Get it onto paper
Thoughts look much bigger inside your head than they do on a page. Grab a notebook and write down every single thing that’s spinning around. Don’t organise it or try to make sense of it. Just move it out.
I journal every day, and I can say from experience that this is one of the most reliable ways to clear the noise. Half the time, seeing a worry written down shows you it’s not nearly as urgent as it felt.
Carver adds a fun twist: turn your worries into fiction. Write a story that borrows the feeling but has nothing to do with real life. At worst, you’ve had a creative workout.
3. Say it out loud
Racing thoughts get their power from being kept inside. The moment you share them, they tend to lose some of their grip.
Talk to someone who makes you feel safe, like a friend, a family member, or a counsellor. And if there’s no one around, say it out loud anyway.
Naming what’s going on (“I’m worried about money this week” or “I’m anxious about tomorrow’s meeting”) has a way of cutting it down to size.
Part Two: Let the Body Lead
4. Move your body
Stillness is great, but sometimes a busy mind needs you to move first. Go for a walk, stretch, shake out your arms, or put on a song and dance around the kitchen. Nobody’s watching.
Living out in the country, a walk in open space is my easy answer here. There’s something about sky and distance that makes your problems feel smaller. But even a lap around the block or ten minutes in the backyard can reset things.
5. Drink some water
This one sounds too simple, and it won’t fix everything. But there’s some research suggesting hydration and the body’s stress response are linked, including a 2011 study published in the Journal of Neuroscience.
The science is still early and mostly based on animal studies, so treat it as a small, low-risk thing to try rather than a cure. Pour a glass, sit down, drink it slowly. If nothing else, you’ve given yourself a pause.
Part Three: Change the Conditions
6. Spend less time online
Our minds have a lot more to race about when we’re constantly fed news, notifications, and other people’s highlight reels.
Carver suggests taking one full day a week completely offline and seeing what changes. Do you feel less anxious? Less tense? Does your mind have less material to spin?
Even if a full day feels like too much, try noticing how you feel during and after time online. Your body usually knows before your brain admits it.
7. Do less
This might be the hardest one. Many of us believe that if we just get everything done, we’ll finally feel settled. But the list never really ends, and a packed schedule gives an anxious mind plenty to chew on.
Carver puts it well: doing more doesn’t make you happier, it just makes you more tired. Look at your week and ask what you could drop, delay, or say no to.
Every commitment you remove is one less thing for your mind to race toward.
8. Check in with yourself
It helps to have a simple way of noticing when your mental health needs some attention. Carver uses a handful of self-check questions, and here are a few you might try:
- How am I actually feeling today, not how I think I should feel?
- Is creative work flowing, or am I forcing it?
- Am I reacting to small things more than usual?
- Is stress starting to affect my sleep, work, or relationships?
You don’t need perfect answers. The point is to catch things early, before a busy mind turns into a burnt-out one.
Pulling It Together
A racing mind is part of being human. It doesn’t mean you’ve failed at being calm, and it doesn’t need to be fought. It just needs a way back to a slower pace.
Try picking one idea from each part this week: something for the mind, something for the body, and one change to how you live. Notice what helps, and keep coming back to those.
What’s your go-to way of slowing a racing mind? Let me know, I’d love to hear about it.
Source: 8 Ways to Slow Your Racing Mind – Be More With Less.
