5 Ways to Stop Overthinking (Part 1)

Lying in bed and overanalyzing your voice tone during an elevator pitch, or sitting at work and going through an argument with a complete stranger that happened last week. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? You’re building ideas about people and yourself out of thin air, with little to no evidence to support your notions. I would be completely lying if I’d say that I am absolutely not guilty of such self-destruction. Why did I just refer to overthinking as a form of self-destruction you might ask. Since it doesn’t really do anything harmful? Since it doesn’t necessarily affect me on a daily basis? The truth is—it does. Your thoughts are preoccupied with moments that are long gone, and you will never get a chance to relive them all over again, unless you are in one of those time-travelling movies, where you are stuck in the same day, and you have to figure out how to fix some aspect of it in order to move on to the next one.

So, clearly, you are wasting your precious time and energy on yesterday instead of planning for tomorrow. Some even refer to excessive overthinking as a form of mental illness. I, on the other hand, think it is completely natural and everyone does it, whether they admit it or not. Overthinking is something you can work on and you should start right now.

1) Keep track of your thoughts.

Awareness is key to change. Don’t let yourself get lost in all sorts of one-sided debates and brush them off once they occur. It is easy to get stuck and lose track of time, spending unreasonable amounts of energy, while spinning through an overflowing circulation of thoughts. Whenever you find yourself drowning in anxiety, take a step back, slowly breath in and out, clear your mind, and look at your surroundings rationally. Why are you responding to a certain situation the way you are? Good advice my mom gave me, and which I finally implemented years later is if it is not going to matter five years from now, don’t spend more than five minutes thinking about it.

2) Focus on what can go right, instead of wrong.

Many of us anticipate failure almost as if it is a must, in everything we do or think of doing. It is a basic human instinct. What helped me to turn that perception around is watching Tim Ferris TED Talks. He challenged himself every minute of the day to do something that is new, something that he wasn’t familiar with. Something that got him out of his comfort zone. And instead of gathering all the possible things that could go wrong, he focused on all the things that could go right during his uncountable journeys towards many triumphs. The hardest kind of work is the one that requires you to work on yourself. And the sweetest kind of victory is the one you achieved over yourself. Visualize that bright light at the end of the tunnel, and focus on it.

3) Stop aiming for perfection.

The beauty of perfection is its unreachability. It’s an enticing illusion, a mirage. And if you are anything like me, an adamant perfectionist, quit it. It is better to move towards something, than wait until that ‘perfect moment’ to embark on your journey. That moment never existed, and never will. Start now, there is no better time than now. You may never reach that highest goal you set for yourself, but at least you will be closer to it than you would’ve been if you never started in the first place. Failure is a very important component of the success formula, and you can’t sit in constant fear of facing it at some point. What you should be afraid of is letting your dreams just stay where they are right now, somewhere high up in the unattainable clouds of imaginations and what ifs.

4) Analyze! And analyze with a time restriction.

Sit down, clear your desk, close your eyes, and give yourself those alluring five minutes to worry, think, and analyze. As soon as those five minutes are up—pick up a pen and write down everything that is worrying you. Make three columns. The first one will consist of things that are worrying you. The second one is various ways of how you can resolve them. And the third one is what you want to achieve at the end of the process. It's as simple as that. And if you stumble upon a tricky one, where you do not see a possible resolution—leave it until next time and move on to something fun. Something to keep in mind is that if you cannot find a way to fix things—stop worrying. The outcome of the situation is inevitable if there is nothing you can do about it. Writing these things down not only helps you to calm down, but also frees up some space in your mind from all those crowded thoughts for something more important. You can’t keep everything stocked up in your head, you are not iCloud, and organizing your thoughts is much easier than you could’ve imagined.

5) Keep yourself busy.

Have you ever noticed that those ‘stressy’ episodes occur when you have nothing better to do? Think of how much time you could put to work instead of sitting there like a potato and analyzing something that is so irrelevant. You can do that when you retire, but I guarantee that by that time you’ll have a ton of much more important things to stress about, like fighting that arthritis or buying a new blood-pressure monitor. So while you are young and have other things to do than just sit around waiting for your retirement money to come, go and do it! Get up and find yourself a hobby that makes you happy. Go for a run, meet up with some friends, get wasted on some great wine, and focus on how amazing today is! Turn all that energy and time you spend overthinking into doing something useful, fun, and rewarding. Thank me later :)