Why your mind never stops racing
If your head runs from the moment you wake until you go to bed, it isn’t that you think too much: your attention is never directed, it is claimed all the time by whatever turns up. Kalisme, a way of living born in Lausanne, comes down to 13 simple sentences that remind you what you’re allowed to do for yourself. This one says: “You’re allowed to take your attention back”.
It isn’t overthinking, it’s a watchfulness that never stops
You hold a conversation having already started the next one. You drive while replaying a sentence you said this morning. You put your head on the pillow and tomorrow starts without you. People call this thinking too much, but it isn’t thought: it’s a watch with no clocking-off time.
A head running like that isn’t reflecting, it’s checking. It goes back over the list, controls for anything forgotten, anticipates the reproach. The movement gives itself an air of usefulness, while producing no decision at all. That is why it doesn’t tire you the way work does: it tires you the way noise does.
Scattering is a state, not a character trait
Nobody is scattered by nature. You scatter when nothing decides between what deserves your attention and what merely demands it. With no sorting, everything becomes equally urgent, and a head with no order of importance can only hold it all at once.
The feeling of no longer being able to concentrate often comes from there. It isn’t the capacity that dropped, it’s the number of things that keep the right to interrupt you at any moment. Taking that right away from three of them can change more than any concentration method.
What Kalisme says about attention
This idea rests on two things: treating yourself as someone who matters, and choosing where your attention goes. Here, it’s the second, and the third sentence of Kalisme puts it plainly: “You’re allowed to take your attention back”. The verb “take back” says it already belongs to you. What you really think about becomes real for you, and what you never think about ends up vanishing from your life, even if it matters.
If your attention belongs to you, you can give it, and so you can refuse it. That’s the uncomfortable part. As long as you live it as something taken from you, you have nothing to decide. The day you treat it as something you grant, every demand on it becomes a request you can answer no to.
What is attention taken back for? So that your days stop belonging to whatever shouts loudest.
Three moves to direct your attention
Write down what your head is holding. As long as a list stays mental, it repeats itself so as not to be lost. That is literally its job. A list put on paper stops turning, not by magic, but because it no longer needs to be memorised on a loop.
Give your checking an hour. Choose one moment in the day when you go through what worries you, and send all the rest of the time back to that moment. The mechanism doesn’t disappear, it loses its right to interrupt.
Choose one thing at a time, and say it out loud. Naming what you are doing, at the moment you start, sounds trivial. It is nonetheless the gesture that gives you your attention back: you can only direct it if you know where you put it.
When it weighs more
If the thoughts turn to the point of keeping you from sleeping for weeks on end, settle into permanent anxiety, or come back in a form you no longer control, this is no longer a sorting problem, and no principle will replace the opinion of a health professional.
In an emergency: 999 in the United Kingdom, 911 in the United States, 144 in Switzerland.
To talk to someone, day or night: Samaritans on 116 123 in the United Kingdom, the 988 Lifeline in the United States, La Main Tendue on 143 in Switzerland.
Elsewhere, the numbers for your country are on findahelpline.com.
This idea comes from “The Kaliste”, the free text at the heart of Kalisme, available in 15 languages. A short book explores it: “You’re allowed to take your attention back”.
Frequently asked questions
Why do I think about everything at once?
Because no order of importance decides between what deserves your attention and what merely demands it. With no sorting, everything becomes equally urgent, and a head with no priorities holds it all at once so as to lose nothing.
Does this mean I overthink?
No. Reflection ends in a decision. This movement ends in nothing: it checks, it goes back over, it anticipates. It looks like thought and produces none.
What does Kalisme say about attention?
That it is a power rather than a mere ability: the power to choose where it goes. What you really think about becomes real for you, what you never think about disappears from your life. It belongs to you, so it can be given, and it can be refused.
Where do I start if I only have five minutes?
Write down what your head is holding right now, without sorting or ordering it. A mental list repeats itself so as not to be lost; a written list no longer has that reason to turn.
Read further
Guideposts
Your attention is the one thing nobody can take from you without you giving it. The rest of this text is only a consequence of that sentence.