Sometimes the way out of our head is to put ourselves back in the room.
I was struck by something musician Noah Kahan said in a recent interview.
He said:
“I get really stuck in my head when I’m making music – but if I sit in a chair and look in the mirror, it almost feels like I’m writing with someone else in the room.”
I think that captures something psychologically important.
When we get stuck in our head, we are often not simply “thinking”.
We are over-monitoring.
Over-editing.
Over-evaluating.
Over-identifying with the part of us that is trying to get it right.
Creativity tends not to thrive there.
What interested me about the mirror comment is that it seems to create a subtle shift.
Instead of being completely alone inside his thoughts, he becomes both the one who is experiencing and the one who is witnessing.
That can change a great deal.
A mirror can help us step back from mental fusion.
It can bring our body back into awareness.
It can make our process feel more relational and less trapped inside a private mental loop.
In other words, we may stop being just a mind trying to perform, and become a person in contact with themselves.
That matters.
Because many of us do our worst thinking when we are cut off from our body, our feelings, and any sense of compassionate self-observation.
And many of us do our best work when we are more connected to:
our bodily state,
our emotional truth,
our observing capacity,
and a less persecutory relationship with ourselves.
Sometimes what looks “weird” is actually wise.
The musician in front of the mirror may have found a way to become less cognitively trapped and more embodied, reflective, and relational with himself.
That is not only relevant to songwriting.
It is relevant to writing, leadership, therapy, performance, public speaking, and perhaps to any moment in which we are trying to create while under pressure.
Sometimes the next breakthrough does not come from thinking harder.
It comes from relating differently to ourselves.