Do You Think Overthinking Is Bad? Let Me Prove You Wrong!

Overthinking can be the coolest tool to achieve your dreams and build a beautiful life if only you know how to do it rightly.

For as long as I can remember I have been the most confusing soul — someone who is always in her mind trying to figure out what to do next, if my decision was right, or what can go wrong in my life.

I grew up as an underconfident child. I neither had self-belief nor did I know what to do next. Fast forward, even today when I have more than I could wish for with strong self-confidence, I sometimes suffer from overthinking.

There were times when I would end up being in my mind so much so that I couldn’t feel connected to real life. Isn’t that what we call overthinking?

Overthinking Is A Practice:

Social media gurus say, ‘Overthinking is bad for you, you should quit it.’

Oh as if I didn’t know that already.

The thing is you cannot just give up on overthinking. It’s more like your ex — always finds a way to crawl back into your life and poison it until you mentally feel choked.

But why is that so? Isn’t this mind yours? So why does it go against you? Why does it not listen to you? Why instead of favoring your dreams, does it make you afraid of your potential?

The answer is — Practice.

In India, there is a proverb that says, ‘Mind is like clay. It will take the shape of anything you give it to.’

Well, if that is true, then you and I have given our minds the shape of overthinking.

Think about it. Every time you want to start working on something new, whether it is learning a new skill, adopting a new habit, or getting out of your comfort zone, you always imagine the worst results.

For example; Before starting to write on Medium, I imagined what if no one read my work. What if everyone thinks I am stupid and writes like a child? What if people laugh at my articles?

Why did my mind imagine the worst?

Because I have trained my mind to always go against me. The very time your mind went against you, you didn’t stop it. You didn’t say, ‘Well, no. Why am I thinking bad for myself when thinking good is also an option?’

What started as an unconscious habit is now eating most of us alive. Most of us kill our dreams inside our minds because we ain’t sure about the power we hold. We question our worth based on our mind’s guidance. We accept the bare minimum from people and ourselves because we think ‘more’ isn’t for us.

We have trained our minds to practice overthinking.

Now the question is why do we overthink so much even when everything in us wants to live a quiet and happy life?

Why Can We Not Stop Overthinking?

I heard this somewhere and it changed my perspective on overthinking.

‘We overthink because it gives us the illusion of control over our future. We overthink because it gives us a hint of a future.’

It is a fact that no one can foresee the future. You have no idea what can happen to you in the next 10 minutes or 10 days which makes the future seem scary at times if you sit down to think about it.

Now understand this carefully.

You have a habit of not believing in yourself. In that case, when you sit down to think about your future, you only imagine the worst that could happen to you because you think you can avoid that ‘bad’ if you know what is about to happen. So instead of thinking about all the good things, you think about the bad things. Thus, mentally you feel you have control over your future.

In reality, you have no control over what may happen in the future. But when you overthink, you create 50 different scenarios in your head. In all these scenarios, you have either figured out what you will do if something goes wrong or you are scared when something does go wrong.

Either way, you feel you know what can happen possibly in the future. Because you have created not one or two but 50 different probable future options.

So we can safely say that overthinking is nothing but an attempt to either control your future or the desire to re-shape a past incident.

Now you may think, ‘Renuka, why are you telling me about the problem? Tell me about the solution.’

Well, without knowing the roots of your problem, you can never solve any problem. I can write an encouraging article just to make you feel good or to give you the illusion that I have helped you. But you need to understand what initiated your problem and what encourages it.

Now that you know it, let’s get into the solution.

In my experience, only two things helped me to use my overthinking in the right direction.

1. Reverse The Flow of Water:

Tell me why do you want to stop overthinking?

We don’t want to stop overthinking because we are tired of thinking too much. We want to stop overthinking because our minds have become a living cage for us — always going against ourselves, right?

The best way to deal with overthinking, in my opinion, is to reverse the flow of your thoughts.

Thoughts in itself aren’t bad. What you think and where your thoughts take you to decide if they are good or bad.

If you didn’t understand, I want you to imagine the absolute BEST for yourself. You have trained your mind to a) overthink and b) always think worst.

To break this toxic cycle, I want you to do two things:

a) Take 5 minutes every day to imagine your dream life. Imagine yourself as someone who shows up for herself/himself. Someone who is working on their dreams.

PRO TIP: If your dream is to achieve a perfect body. Instead of imagining a perfect body. Sit down to imagine yourself working out, going to the gym, and eating healthy. If your goal is to become a YouTuber, instead of imagining a big channel for yourself, imagine yourself recording the video, and talking about the things you feel excited about.

The bottom line is to — focus on the actions instead of end results. Because if you only imagine results, you won’t like your current life. You would feel desperate to skip this part. And since, in your imagination, you never had to work, in real life working will feel daunting.

So imagine yourself taking the action with confidence, which is the ONLY thing you skip in real life. Do it and you will thank me.

Your mind is trained to imagine the worst for you. With this practice, I want you to gradually train your mind to imagine BEST for yourself.

2. Do What You Have Been Skipping:

Two months back, I was going through a tough of my life and I felt there was no hope for me now.

So I turned on to this spiritual speaker who I listen to. Someone asked him, ‘I overthink a lot, what should I do?’

To which he replied instantly, ‘Why do you give your mind the time to think? Your thinking is useless. It cannot change anything. So do what can change what you are fearing.’

What he meant was:

a) There is very little in your control starting with your own life. So surrender your thinking. And believe that things will turn out better even if you cannot see the evidence of it.

b) Your overthinking cannot change your future but your actions can. You may not be able to control what will happen in the future but you can control your actions to make sure that future is in your favor.

For example; If I had never started writing on Medium, all these wonderful things wouldn’t have happened to me. Before starting, I was only imagining the worst but after starting, I felt little rays of hope shining at me.

When you take action, you start to feel that there can be a different side of the coin. But if you never start, you only see what you think is possible at this moment.

Conclusion:

Start with whatever it is you are skipping whether it is learning a new skill, moving to another city, starting your small business, becoming a writer, leaving a toxic person, or anything else.

Just don’t hold yourself back from the possibility of a beautiful future. Don’t hold your past failures so tightly that your future becomes a reflection of your past.

And trust me, overthinking can be good if you know how to redirect your thoughts.