Why You Should Take Steps to Stop Being an Overthinker
This is a collaborative post
Unless you are a very unique and balanced kind of person, you’ve probably noticed that, at times, you are prone to overthinking and experiencing the sensation of being overwhelmed by your own mental chatter.
For the most part, modern society tends to have only good things to say about thinking. Individuals who think as much as possible are considered to be smarter and more insightful, while individuals who don’t have as much inner dialogue are at risk of being considered dull and unintelligent.
Thought, and thinking, are obviously vitally important and useful processes in the human experience. It’s certainly the case that we all need to consider various things in our lives sufficiently to ensure that we are on the right path.
All the same, though, “more thinking” does not automatically equal “better.” In fact, in many cases, there are good reasons to believe that thinking too much can be highly detrimental.
Here are a few reasons why you should take steps to stop being an overthinker, whether the techniques you use to achieve this are meditation and yoga, or simply getting out and about and staying active.
Don’t Get Caught in a Loop as An Overthinker
Perhaps the most obvious reason why it’s important to take steps to avoid overthinking is because of the simple fact that it’s often all too easy to end up getting caught in self-reinforcing thought loops forever.
When individuals are caught in a spiral of overthinking, it’s normal that their thoughts will tend to be relatively negative. Intense rumination about the past, obsessive concern for the future, and an attempt to try to work at all possible variables to ensure that things turn out as well as possible.
At a certain point, however, one thought just leads to and reinforces another thought, and this then leads to the next, and the next.
Before too long, a situation can develop where you are essentially addicted to the act of thinking in and of itself; always feeling as though you’re just around the corner from finally figuring everything out and making a breakthrough.
But while it is obviously important to consider things properly before making a big decision, it’s essential to actually get to the stage where you stop trying to work everything out perfectly in your mind and move forward with taking action.
The simple reality is that it’s seldom possible to actually come to a point of certainty about anything. When it comes to thinking versus overthinking, there is definitely a sweet spot where you have weighed up the main factors to consider, and have decided on a course of action – but where you aren’t allowing yourself to become completely overwhelmed into inaction by the endless dialogue of your own mind.
The Rational Mind
When you first approached your significant other, did you do it because you felt drawn to them on an emotional level, or because you made some rational calculation that it would be a pragmatic thing to do?
When you last got excited about a particular decision you were making, or a pastime you were engaging in, was that because of some deep intuition and feeling within you, or was it because it seemed like the logically sound course of action?
When all is said and done, our deepest sense of drive, meaning, and purpose typically don’t come from the rational mind – or at least, they don’t come primarily from the rational mind. And that doesn’t make them any less of a valid, real, or an integral part of the human experience.
A major part of the reason why a business might wish to hire a skilled video production company to help them with their presentation and marketing is because of an understanding of this very fact – that a lot of our motivations are shaped by our feelings about things, and not by our thoughts about things, as such.
Overthinking can end up drowning out and distracting you from your deep intuitions, and your deeper sense of what you find meaningful in life.
While your thoughts should certainly be involved in the decision-making process, you shouldn’t let them overwhelm those deeper intuitions and senses.
Taking Action
No matter how much we may try to perfectly predict and assess the outcome of certain actions, or to imagine how a particular situation will play out, the fact of the matter is that our thoughts are often likely to be deeply mistaken.
You might, for example, avoid public speaking for years because you believe that the experience will be completely mortifying – but then one day you find yourself having to actually do some public speaking, and you realise that it’s nowhere near as bad as you had believed.
Our thoughts naturally tend to create and reinforce certain maps and presumptions about the world. Some of these will be quite accurate, others will be inaccurate, and many of the inaccurate ones can end up holding us back in various ways.
Often, it’s only by taking action and experiencing things directly that the reality of the situation, and the correct path ahead, actually become illuminated.
Appreciating the Beauty of the Present Moment
Life is full of all sorts of different beautiful moments and fascinating details, but if we are always distracted and stuck in our own heads, it’s unlikely that we will actually be able to notice and appreciate what’s going on in the present moment.
Everyone’s probably seen a group of friends or relatives sitting together around the dinner table, and all staring at their phones. Being completely lost in your thoughts isn’t too different from that.
By regularly engaging in practices that can help to reduce the tendency to overthink, you will likely find that you are better able to be present in your life and to appreciate all that it has to offer.
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