Are you an overthinker? Do you get mired in a cycle of future-tripping, shaming yourself for perceived missteps, and rerunning disaster scenarios in your head? Do your looping thoughts keep you from moving forward? In our anxious, perfectionistic culture, many ambitious and driven folks find themselves helplessly caught in their own tangled mental webs, unable to make a step forward in work and life.

We don’t have to be passengers in our own self-punitive hamster wheel. We have control over the thoughts we choose to believe and our attitude toward mistakes and challenges.

How do we untangle ourselves in order to step out of the loop? Here’s a straightforward guide to get started. A cautionary note: No real change occurs overnight. Transforming mental patterns requires time, effective strategy, and good practice. A little progress every day will get us to our goal. Patience, and a little grace, will help us navigate the path more smoothly.

First, awareness is essential. In order to make a change in any mental or behavioral pattern, we need to become aware of it. I suggest starting by noticing when you become stuck in a looping wheel of thought, taking note of what prompted the cycle. Writing down your observations, either in a journal or on your phone, will help you keep track of your pattern.

Once we become aware that we’re in the cycle, we have the ability to interrupt it. A simple but very useful tool is to use your breath to interrupt the cycle and clear some of the mental "clutter." Take a moment to breathe in through your nose and allow the breath to exit through your mouth. Do this a few times and set an intention to let the clutter and the tension flow out of you. The breath should result in reduced tension and increased mental clarity, while helping sustain a space between the anxiety and the mental looping.

Next, challenge the disaster thinking. Disaster thinking is one way our minds try to keep us "safe." Most disaster thinking is exaggerated, overly dramatic, and unrealistic—aimed to keep us from doing anything new. But in order to achieve anything and grow, we have to allow ourselves to step forward.

For instance, I have a client who is a skilled equestrian. She is in a competent training program and has a trusted horse. Since turning 60, she has begun scaring herself with looping disaster scenarios: my horse will take off running, I will fall and hit my head and be crippled. Now, is this a possibility? Perhaps, but in reality she has the good skills to ride this horse; the horse is mature, well trained, and unlikely to run; she wears a helmet and a protective vest so even if she did fall off she is unlikely to be seriously injured. This rider actually wants to be more adventurous in her riding and take her horse out on the trails with her friends. Her mental disaster looping is keeping her from enjoying her horse in this way and advancing in her riding.

She is painfully aware of this disaster loop, and is angry and frustrated with herself. Outside of the saddle, she is a very accomplished person and has extraordinary expectations of perfection—which are interfering with her trying new things, like taking her horse out of the arena.

If she can unhook herself from the disaster scenario—by not automatically going along with the idea that any ride will end in her hospitalization— and give herself some grace to be less than perfect, she can start to experiment with more adventurous rides.

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Allow yourself to take small steps. As I mentioned earlier, real change does not occur quickly and it also doesn’t occur in one fell swoop. Break the challenge into smaller pieces. For my client, we’re working taking a small walk around the riding arena with a friend while she reminds herself that she a capable rider. In order to do this, I encourage her to give herself some compassion and grace, neither of which is easy for her.

Reward yourself for taking steps! Be sure to acknowledge your progress. Record your process in your journal so that you keep track. So many clients I work with are relentless in their ambition, quickly raising the bar once a goal is reached. Remember, Rome was not built in a day, but every day they were laying the bricks.

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Finally, it helps to gather supportive team members, whether those are friends, family or a coach. We all need a little help in challenging our internal road blocks, so don’t try to go at it alone. If you share your challenge and your goal with others, they almost certainly understand and step in to cheer you on.