10 Simple Ways You Can Break the Habit of Overthinking
Overthinking doesn’t sound so bad on the surface–thinking is good, right?
But overthinking can cause problems.
When you overthink, your judgments get cloudy and your stress gets elevated. You spend too much time in the negative. It can become difficult to act.
If this feels like familiar territory to you, here are 10 simple ideas to free yourself from overthinking.
1. Awareness is the beginning of change.
Before you can begin to address or cope with your habit of overthinking, you need to learn to be aware of it when it’s happening. Any time you find yourself doubting or feeling stressed or anxious, step back and look at the situation and how you’re responding. In that moment of awareness is the seed of the change you want to make.
2. Don’t think of what can go wrong, but what can go right.
In many cases, overthinking is caused by a single emotion: fear. When you focus on all the negative things that might happen, it’s easy to become paralyzed. Next time you sense that you starting to spiral in that direction, stop. Visualize all the things that can go right and keep those thoughts present and up front.
3. Distract yourself into happiness.
Sometimes it’s helpful to have a way to distract yourself with happy, positive, healthy alternatives. Things like mediation, dancing, exercise, learning an instrument, knitting, drawing, and painting can distance you from the issues enough to shut down the overanalysis.
4. Put things into perspective.
It’s always easy to make things bigger and more negative than they need to be. The next time you catch yourself making a mountain out of a molehill, ask yourself how much it will matter in five years. Or, for that matter, next month. Just this simple question, changing up the time frame, can help shut down overthinking.
5. Stop waiting for perfection.
This is a big one. For all of us who are waiting for perfection, we can stop waiting right now. Being ambitious is great but aiming for perfection is unrealistic, impractical, and debilitating. The moment you start thinking “This needs to be perfect” is the moment you need to remind yourself, “Waiting for perfect is never as smart as making progress.”
6. Change your view of fear.
Whether you’re afraid because you’ve failed in the past, or you’re fearful of trying or overgeneralizing some other failure, remember that just because things did not work out before does not mean that has to be the outcome every time. Remember, every opportunity is a new beginning, a place to start again.
Give yourself a boundary. Set a timer for five minutes and give yourself that time to think, worry, and analyze. Once the timer goes off, spend 10 minutes with a pen and paper, writing down all the things that are worrying you, stressing you, or giving you anxiety. Let it rip. When the 10 minutes is up, throw the paper out and move on–preferably to something fun.
8. Realize you can’t predict the future.
No one can predict the future; all we have is now. If you spend the present moment worrying about the future, you are robbing yourself of your time now. Spending time on the future is simply not productive. Spend that time instead on things that give you joy.
The fear that grounds overthinking is often based in feeling that you aren’t good enough–not smart enough or hardworking enough or dedicated enough. Once you’ve given an effort your best, accept it as such and know that, while success may depend in part on some things you can’t control, you’ve done what you could do.
You can’t have a regretful thought and a grateful thought at the same time, so why not spend the time positively? Every morning and every evening, make a list of what you are grateful for. Get a gratitude buddy and exchange lists so you have a witness to the good things that are around you.
Overthinking is something that can happen to anyone. But if you have a great system for dealing with it you can at least ward off some of the negative, anxious, stressful thinking and turn it into something useful, productive, and effective.
Helpful ways to stop thinking and become present
One of the greatest addictions of humans, according to well known spiritual teacher and author Eckhart Tolle, is thinking. While it’s an addiction you won’t usually hear about, we all struggle with it. We can’t stop thinking. We find it difficult to let go of thoughts and this creates havoc in our lives as well as much confusion.
The author of The Power of Now, encourages us to become more aware of the present moment and to let go of the pseudo sense of self.
“I don’t like mindfulness, which implies your mind is full of things. To be present, first of all use the present moment. Presence is a space of no-thought and can be there in the background when thinking is happening.”
Here Eckhart Tolle shows us ways to drop the endless cycle of thinking.
Dysphoria is a state of feeling unwell or unhappy due to insomnia, depression or overthinking.
Read more psychology facts Here
“Most misunderstandings in the world could be avoided if people would simply take the time to ask, “What else could this mean?”
“We are dying from overthinking. We are slowly killing ourselves by thinking about everything. Think. Think. Think. You can never trust the human mind anyway. It’s a death trap.”
“Thinking has, many a time, made me sad, darling; but doing never did in all my life… My precept is, "Do something, my sister, do good if you can; but, at any rate, do something”
“True saddness is when someone still thinks your the same person after all these years. They brand you because of their own ego, fear and lack of spirituality. What’s sadder is when they are Christian.”
“The more you overthink the less you will understand.”
“The sharpest minds often ruin their lives by overthinking the next step, while the dull win the race with eyes closed.”
“Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way. The enjoyments of life (such was now my theory) are sufficient to make it a pleasant thing, when they are taken en passant, without being made a principal object. Once make them so, and they are immediately felt to be insufficient. They will not bear a scrutinizing examination. Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so. The only chance is to treat, not happiness, but some end external to it, as the purpose of life. Let your self-consciousness, your scrutiny, your self-interrogation, exhaust themselves on that; and if otherwise fortunately circumstanced you will inhale happiness with the air you breathe, without dwelling on it or thinking about it, without either forestalling it in imagination, or putting it to flight by fatal questioning.”
“Don’t get too deep, it leads to over thinking, and over thinking leads to problems that doesn’t even exist in the first place.”
“To think too much is a disease.”
“Fear is a product of doubt. it is a negative energy. Fear is an opposite of faith. Law is not necessary for people who have freedom. Law is the control switch that produces fear. That Fear produces lawful citizens is a delusion, it only creates fearful citizens .”
“Your addiction to thinking will come back to haunt you.”
“so many thoughts, my kvothe. you know too much to be happy.”
“Thinking too much leads to paralysis by analysis. It’s important to think things through, but many use thinking as a means of avoiding action.”
Robert Herjavec, The Will To Win
“The more I think about it, the more I realize that overthinking isn’t the real problem. The real problem is that we don’t trust.”
“By morning I was worn out. My limbs felt heavy as wood, my head cottony. I might’ve felt better if I hadn’t slept at all.”
Ransom Riggs, Hollow City
“Too much thinking leads to paralysis by analysis.”
“Live your insanity and leave those who want to be normal in the average.”
― Aniekee Tochukwu Ezekiel
“Nobody can teach you what you cannot perceive.”
― Aniekee Tochukwu Ezekiel
“Overthinking. A powerful drug of mentality.”
“The third person. There was no sign of this happiness on the outside, she knew. She was bored by this happiness that seemed out of place, impatient to get rid of it. The feeling was less pleasurable than she had imagined it might have been, less well-defined, and when she felt along its strings she found it was not easily traced or attached to the objects she thought it might have been attached to. Perhaps it was not attached to anything at all.”
“Over-thinking, a devouring monster,
entice, only the inky reflections;
there’s a pleasure you come by,
from this anomalous encounter;
kills your desire, for human affection.”
“Overthinking will not empower you over things that are beyond your control. So, let it be if it is meant to be and cherish the moment.”
“Don"t gaze too hard at your belly button
Or you will unexpectedly hit rock bottom!”
“Overthinking, also, best known as creating problems that are never there”
“This time, something different happens, though. It’s the daydreaming that does it. I’m doing the usual thing—imagining in tiny detail the entire course of the relationship, from first kiss, to bed, to moving in together, to getting married (in the past I have even organized the track listing of the party tapes), to how
pretty she’ll look when she’s pregnant, to names of children—until suddenly I realize that there’s nothing left to actually, like, happen. I’ve done it all, lived through the whole relationship in my head. I’ve watched the film on fast-forward; I know the whole plot, the ending, all the good bit. Now I’ve got
to rewind and watch it all over again in real time, and where’s the fun in that?
And fucking … when’s it all going to fucking stop? I’m going to jump from rock to rock for the rest of my life until there aren’t any rocks left? I’m going to run each time I get itchy feet? Because I get them about once a quarter, along with the utilities bills. More than that, even, during British Summer Time. I’ve been thinking with my guts since I was fourteen years old, and frankly speaking, between you and me, I have come to the conclusion that my guts have shit for brains.”
“Less thinking, more living.”
“To get it all done I have to dim my brain, turn it down by notches like the flat-turn knob on a gas lantern, leaving only a nub of flame.”
“I understand that your brain is large and perpetually at war with itself”
“Some thoughts should never be conceived. Some questions should never be asked, because they have no answer, and the questions themselves serve only to haunt with grinding guilt and second guessing.”
“Don’t overanalyze what you see. I have a felling that you’re over-thinking things. Give it some time, and the pieces of this puzzle might come together.”
“Don’t overthink yourself out of something good!”
“You know, it is a little known fact that thinking is entirely overrated. The world would be a much better place if we all did a lot less of it.”
via : upliftconnect.com, inc.com
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