How to Escape the Prison of Overthinking

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I don’t know about you, but I’ve been feeling that thinking, or more accurately overthinking, is a disease. We can’t help but obsess over something in the past and re-enact it over and over in our heads, like when I accidentally touched my driving instructor’s leg instead of the gear stick (just me?). We know there’s no use in thinking about things that have been and gone but we do it anyway.

What Makes Overthinking a Disease?

Well, the more attention you give to your spiralling thoughts, the more they spread and pollute your mind, warping every life decision you make. From second guessing big decisions like what clothes you should wear to an interview, to the smallest decisions like if I should quit my job. You might think I got those mixed up but that’s the warping I’m talking about. In this topsy-turvy world my mind’s created, small is big and big is small. No matter what your decision is, when you overthink it, it’s like the meme of the guy picking a button with his eyes closed.

We might call defeat too early and concede that our brain is just broken and there’s nothing we can do about it.

This isn’t true. Although we don’t have a say in the thoughts that cross our mind, dwelling on a negative thought is a choice. Plus, just because you feel an emotion doesn’t mean it’s valid as emotions develop at a faster rate than our rationality. In fact, we may be giving our unproductive feelings too much attention, attaching meaning which isn’t there.

For me, I dwell on these feelings at night when I should be in the clouds dreaming.

So, at this point, I’ve already done 2 videos laying out the consequences of overthinking (ironic I know but check them out if you want to understand the neurosis more). Anyway, this video is for the people who already know they overthink and want some practical advice on how to overcome it.

Although thoughts can suddenly appear without our say, it’s still our choice whether we let it affect us or move on. Most of the time we get in our own way and submit to wasting our lives thinking about things that don’t deserve attention.

Now before I get to the step-by-step guide of how to stop overthinking, I want to be clear that everyone’s different and what I’ll share isn’t a quick fix. These thoughts won’t magically disappear; there’s not much we can do about having an unproductive thought but what we can do is stop it in its tracks and learn how to move past the barriers we put up.

How To Stop Overthinking?

Well, the first step is to let go of our need for perfection. This is still a work in progress for me… I can’t count how many hours I’ve wasted staring at a screen trying to perfect each one of my thumbnails for these videos, as if changing the slightest angle of an image is what’s stopping the video from blowing up.

It’s Time to Let Go of Perfection

If you, like me sometimes, are obsessed with every detail of your life, you’ll be too hard on yourself and end up making things even worse, as a rebellious act against yourself.

Even seeking perfection becomes a disease the moment we fall short of the person we think we should be. Once we inevitably fail this impossible goal, it becomes a tempting prospect to make things even worse for ourselves. For example, say you are an alcoholic and you relapse with one drink. As soon as you “break the seal”, it becomes easier to rationalise the next drink, easier to make excuses until before you know it you’ve broken your principle.

There’s actually a lyric that I like that encapsulates our formidable ability of creating excuses, don’t worry I won’t sing it but drop a comment if you know who the singer is.

“As long as you still keep peppering the pill, you’ll find a way to spit it out again”.

We might just cling to negative thoughts for the familiar comfort they bring. If we become too used to feeling helpless, then the next helpless thought we have will feel like home, albeit not a pleasant one to be in.

The Notice Method

If you’ve seen my article on the notice method, (you probably haven’t but that’s alright) I came up with a practical way to spot and stop these unproductive trains of thought. It’s simple: all you need to do is say to yourself ‘notice this’ when you notice yourself following an unhealthy train of thought. No judgement or frustration, just stopping and taking notice.

If you constantly notice thoughts that don’t serve your interests and nip them in the bud, one day you’ll notice them right when your intuition flashes, stopping the thought right there in its tracks.

With this, it’s also important to not control what has already happened. As I mentioned in my last video on why we can’t stop overthinking, sometimes it’s better to just laugh at the time we wasted thinking, or the mistake we made and move on instead of resenting the missed time and the things we could’ve done instead.

In the words of David Lynch:

“Keep your eye on the donut and not on the hole”  

Closing Thoughts

Unfortunately, with our human nature to interfere and control everything,  it’s difficult not to overthink. We’ve got to get out of our own way, drop perfection, follow our intuition and get better at noticing when we’re following a regressive train of thought. It’s not easy, but it can get easier.

Thanks for reading,

Brandon

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