How to stop overthinking.

I met a new friend over Christmas. He said, “your ability for self-reflection and processing information and seeing it from so many angles is astounding! I don’t know how you don’t drive yourself crazy, though.”

I smiled at him and said, “I do drive myself crazy.”

And that’s my advice for you, if you’re an over-analyzer like me. Notice that you’re doing this to yourself. And try to catch it. And try to do it less and take action more often. That’s how you stop overthinking everything in your life.

Notice it.
Think less.
Act more.

Sounds so simple, right? Basic, even?

But why is it so hard?

Well, let me use my analytical brain to explore this. LOL!

Just kidding. We overthink from a place of fear. We try to figure out all the scenarios of our lives like a chess game and end up causing ourselves tremendous stress and anxiety. We avoid taking any from fear of what might happen. It makes sense! We want to stay alive, by golly. But often that inaction may actually deprive us of the very lives we want and need to live.

[Share that and quote me on it, will ya?]

I often overthink too much and then try to overcome that by acting more impulsively, which sometimes gets me into situations where I need to overthink solutions again.

Guess what? This is called LIFE, my friends. I wish I could tell you there was a simple formula that would make it so easy to follow along and then arrive at a system that worked perfectly every time. I haven’t found it and I’ve tried a lot of different things. If you’ve been following along, you know this about me.

But what you don’t know if how often I question myself. How often I get into situations that feel scary and hard and how little I trust myself. But that’s where I lose my power and it’s where you lose yours, too.

We overthink to try to overcome the fear and feel more safe and secure. We overthink to try to make sure the bottom won’t drop out of our lives. We overthink and often stop there. We never move forward.

It’s good to think things through. Like I said, I sometimes don’t think things through enough and end up with another problem to solve. But what I get from all that trial and error is more iron inside me, like Emily Dickinson said. Emily was amazing, I’m watching a new movie about her life called A Quiet Passion and I was overthinking something so was hardly paying attention so I need to go back and watch it again. Too much wisdom there to risk missing out!

Life is just one choice after another. Some will go well. Some will NOT. But trying is better than overthinking.

Notice something you’re overthinking in your life.
Try to get to the source of why you’re thinking so much.
Imagine what it would be like to take action in some direction.

Think less and act more.