The Reality and Effects of Worrying and How to Stop Overthinking
The question how to stop overthinking first begs to understand the effects of overthinking. Overthinking does not only destroy the mood, it destroy the happiness, career, friendship, our own reputation and so many things. A malady that never seems to go away. Ignorance is indeed far more peaceful on a number of occasions.
If you must know, Rumination is the bad brother of overthinking and the fed up cousin of perfectionism. We need to check on it and divert our mind to positive thinking instead
Some call the overthinking phenomenon “Analysis Paralysis”. It leads to myriads of problems one of which is procrastination. Have faith enough to give it a good shot. A shot not taken is 100% target missing. Overthinking will also often prevent you from taking action when you would have succeeded if you had just gone for it
We make a problem where there is none. It is something that you have to teach yourself not to do. Don’t allow yourself to become trapped it’s a big web. Definitely not worth it. Give it some thought then let it go and move on.
It’s hard to teach yourself to not do something when the mind is focused on not doing it. We draw it to us the more we voice what we don’t want. When we say what we truly want, we begin to embrace the principles of success.
Understanding How to Stop Overthinking and Relax
The more we analyze things, the more our brain starts to look for things that make the things impossible. If you want to find your obstacles, you will certainly find them but if you focus on all the things that will go great you will find them too. Chose your focus, let it go and start crushing it.
In the depths of your hopes and desires, lies your silent knowledge of the beyond, and like seeds dreaming beneath the snow, your heart dreams of spring. Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.
Finding your life passion can mean the difference between happiness and frustration. Do you know what you are passionate about? Is there anything in your life that makes you feel really, really good? Excited, alive, and switched on?
If not, you either haven’t found your life passion yet, or you are neglecting it. Our passions are what give life its juice. To find your passion, and pursue it is one of the best ways you can use your time.
Even if we do know what we really love, many of us feel that it is selfish to spend time and energy on doing things ‘just for fun.’ We think we should be serious and responsible, and spend our time working hard at fulfilling obligations. We feel noble and virtuous when we attend to endless chores and slave away at jobs we hate. We feel guilty about spending time on things that make us feel alive and happy. What a messed up way of looking at things!
7 Proven Techniques on How to Stop Overthinking and Relax
Here’s 7 tried and tested techniques to overcoming overthinking. Overthinking is a problem with many primary symptoms, stress, anxieties, anger, indecision, over-doing things and many secondary symptoms such as addictions, broken relationships and weight gain.
When we overthink, we have a little voice in our head, the one that knows all the answers and can solve every single problem there is to be solved, and this little voice likes looking for problems doesn’t it. The little voice will tell you what’s wrong with your world, tell you why things won’t go right, and tell you that it’s not even worth trying. The little voice will like to find blame, blame can bring an end to the endless thinking, so blame is often a good outlet for the little voice. All of this is usually made up though, and we know that on some level. So recognizing the little voice, recognizing that the thinking is taking place is the first step to overcoming it. Without this recognition, there’s no overcoming it, so we need to tune in if we aren’t yet tuning in.
The overthinking will try to play many games with us; it might try to pretend that some thinking is good thinking, in order to justify the overthink – it’s best that we proceed with guilty until proven otherwise though. Bearing this in mind, here are the 7 tried and tested technique we can do to overcome overthinking:
1. Busy the mind
– If we can replace the overthinking with something more structured, we can derail the overthinking and stop it in its tracks and it’s easier than we would think. Counting numbers is a great way of achieving a quick release, if we find ourselves overthinking. To do this we simply count in our heads from 1 to 100, if the thinking comes back while you’re doing it, as it often does in the beginning, then we just need keep going. The more you practice this, the more you’ll be able to overcome the overthinking and take back control. This works because it sets our minds a challenge, to focus on the counting which is melodic and requires focus to the exclusion of other things such as the overthinking.
2. Question our thoughts
– Once we are comfortable with slowing down the mind by using the counting technique, we can start to question thoughts as they come into our head. Simple questioning like “why”, “what if it does/doesn’t”, “how do I know that” are great questions to really understand all the stories we tell ourselves and many of us do spend our days telling ourselves story after story. Getting an understanding of the thoughts that drive the thinking and taking control of the thought will allow us to put distance between the thoughts and the thinking.
3. Stop taking stimulants
– Caffeine and nicotine are harmless in small enough doses according to medical advice. But drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes just encourage us to think and at an increased rate. Cutting out caffeine and nicotine slow the mind down naturally (from its normally heightened state). The second thing about these too drugs it that we often them to either escape from the symptoms such as stress, or we use them to take a break. During that break we’re overthinking and at an increased rate. Neither caffeine nor nicotine are particularly useful to us and they aren’t particularly useful for our sleeping routines either.
4. Understand the escape route
– When we overthink and we start to suffer the symptoms of overthinking, we tend to look for an escape. Maybe we read novels all night, maybe we watch TV all night, maybe we drink, may we read online blogs, maybe we eat cakes and crisps. When the symptoms of overthinking start to take over, we naturally need an escape from them.
The escape is our balance to the overthinking, and if we upset the balance then the overthinking will be less comfortable in its current environment. We should ignore the overthinking’s natural rebound plan “I’ll join a gym”, “Just the one glass”, “Just 30 minutes a day” – this is just another reason to overthink about something else and plan out something new with the space that we’re creating in our thinking. Fill it with nothing, fill it with living now, fill it with nature, if we need to fill it with anything.
5. Relax
– Meditation is useful, but so is having a nice hot bath. The key with both of these things is that we can relax the body which is probably feeling the symptoms of the overthinking. We need to be careful with this one though, because the mind will want to wander and that’s maybe where the counting technique can also help us if it does.
6. Sleep right
– When we overthink and the body starts to feel the symptoms of that we naturally want to sleep more. We often need less sleep that what we think we need, and by changing our sleeping patterns. We’ll start to validate to ourselves that we’re not as tired as we think we are and we’re not as tied to this way of life, even if we don’t remember it any other way. This only works if we consciously make the effort to change our sleeping patterns; being awoken by kids or neighbors doesn’t achieve the same outcome. Consciously choosing to go to bed an hour later or arise an hour earlier, will break the routine and supply us with another hour to achieve our ambitions in life.
7. Understand our role in life
– If we have no ambition, no role, nor direct purpose, then we will think we HAVE TO have one and we’ll overthink our way towards an ambition, role or purpose – or at least try to. By understanding our purpose, we then have purpose to plan towards that rather than simply responding to thoughts as they enter our mind over “what we should be doing”.
By using these 7 techniques to overcome overthinking, we can start to take back control and relieve ourselves of the symptoms of overthinking, which can often trap us further in an overthinking spiral x
The role of the brain on how to stop overthinking
Your brain is made up of dendrites, which is the Greek word for trees and it makes sense because these dendrites look like trees. When your brain is used, it creates a waste product (amyloid beta) causing your dendrites to look like trees after an ice storm.
There are four thought processes and each thought process can be identified by a range of activity measured in Hertz. The three thought processes identified by psychology all result in a “beta” wave:
Self-Regulation/Focus: 12 to 22 Hertz
Regulation/Automatic: 22 to 28 Hertz
Dysregulation/Triggering: 28 to 38 Hertz
When we are in a Focus mindset, for every 10 amyloid beta molecules of waste we create, we are removing 1 molecule. We can’t stay in this focused mindset indefinitely. Everyone drifts to Regulation/Automatic when they get exhausted, having too many thoughts or isolating
The main ability each person ought to have is to know how to think. Do you know how to think in a healthy manner?
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