There are moments in my business when I completely freeze.

I’ll find myself watching random videos on my phone while my mind is holding what feels like a full-blown emergency meeting.

You’re adding too much.

You’re moving too fast.

What if you can’t hold it all together?

I know exactly what I need to do. And still, I don’t move. I just keep watching random clips. It’s as if my mind is working overtime while the rest of me has quietly stepped away.

My husband has learned to recognize these moments.

“Let’s go for a walk,” he’ll say. “Maybe we could see a movie. How about the museum?”

Every suggestion is met with the same reaction from me: immediate, irrational resistance. Almost like a toddler throwing an internal tantrum over doing the very thing that might help.

Because somewhere inside me was a belief I couldn’t quite see: if I stop thinking about the problem, everything will fall apart.

Thankfully, my resistance is eventually overcome by his persistence, and we leave. We wander through the streets of downtown Los Angeles.

At one point we’re dancing to music playing from his phone like two carefree teenagers.

Later I’m unexpectedly moved by the breathtaking cinematography of a film.

Then I find myself standing quietly in a museum, grieving the weight of human cruelty captured in an exhibit called Monuments.

Nothing about my to-do list had changed but something inside me had. I realized how tightly my mind reaches for control whenever it feels afraid. How convincing it can be when it insists that safety comes from thinking harder, planning better, or gripping tighter.

None of those things had helped me move.

What helped was moving.

Stepping outside.

Feeling beauty.

Making space for grief.

Remembering there was a world beyond the one my anxious mind had constructed.

Sometimes I wonder if healing asks less of our minds than we think. Maybe it begins when we remember we are more than our thoughts.

Sometimes the next right step isn’t another answer. It’s simply an experience that gently invites us back to ourselves.