How To Stop Overthinking
Ok, I’ll admit that’s quite a clickbait-y title, and I don’t know whether it’s possible to completely stop overthinking. But before you switch tabs feeling short-changed, hear me out. When we have any problem, be it overthinking, low confidence or perfectionism, we want to be able to stop it entirely, overcome it - grind it to dust. The trouble is, that takes a lot of time and a lot of energy – time and energy you’re not spending on your business. The fears aren’t ever going to go away entirely, and while we’re focused on them, our dreams are stagnating. So rather than try to stop overthinking, let’s think about how we can keep going in spite of it.
What’s important is what’s on either side of the overthinking - the cause, and what it’s stopping you from doing. When you understand why something like overthinking is happening, you can better understand, accept and work with it to get to the thing you want on the other side in spite of it.
Let’s consider an example here. One of my recurring areas of overthinking is around responsiveness to messages and comments, particularly on Instagram. I’ve spoken about this many times in the past, where it makes me nervous to even read comments and messages, and I overthink what to say and when to the point that I just don’t say anything. Clearly, this overthinking is preventing me from connecting with others, and probably also affects my reach and word of mouth too.
Where this comes from is harder to pin down. I think there is a general baseline of the fact that I am extremely introverted and struggle energetically with speaking to other people – which is likely why I gravitate towards writing and more “broadcast” methods of communication. I also think there is a worry about needing to be excellent, to come back with the most helpful/funny/expansive reply in the history of the world, which makes me overthink the gravity of the situation.
This is something I’ve by no means “fixed”. But I do have some scaffolding in place that can help me get to that connection without spiralling into overthinking, and that’s to give it a specific time and place in my week. I formalise replying time into part of a posting routine where I have a focus time to go in and do it without stewing about how I’m not doing it the rest of the time. I also have time to connect more proactively, as well as reply to emails etc. This isn’t a failsafe solution as sometimes I do still fall behind – but I at least have a bit of a handrail to pull myself back up and into the routine.
How about you? How do we work out why you overthink? I find this to be an exercise in re-tracing one’s steps. When you find yourself overthinking about something, imagine a small ball of string has plopped to your feet - pick it up and start winding it back in, following where the string has come from. Is it rooted in a belief that stuck when you overheard something as a child, or in a part of your personality, or part of your conditioning?
Often, these things are rooted in something fearful, and the impulse is to shut it away and stick our fingers in our ears and pretend it’s not there. But when you do the opposite of that, when you look that fear in the eye, it becomes less intimidating. When you acknowledge its existence and understand where it comes from, you can start to take back the control it has over you.
Next, we need to work out what you really want that you’re not getting to. What is it that your overthinking is stopping you from doing? And again, here we need to go deeper than the thing itself – because not posting on Instagram or starting your podcast isn’t enough in itself to help you stop the overthinking. What does not doing that thing hold you back from? Maybe it’s connecting to a buying audience, collaborations with other business owners, sharing the content that most feels like you – and in turn these things stop you from getting to where you want to be. You need to find the result, the thing that’s more important, and aim for how you can get that result by working around the overthinking.
This is where we come to building that scaffolding. Instead of spending all your effort on getting over the overthinking, look at what structures you can put in place to help you get the result you want. There isn’t a definitive set of instructions here, as your scaffolding will depend on your natural inclinations and how you work – creating a habit to track isn’t going to work if you naturally rebel against routine. Look at how you manage to motivate yourself for other things: is it the threat of a deadline, accountability, promising yourself a reward? Use those things to get yourself motivated to work towards the result, whilst not allowing the fear at the root of your overthinking to take over.
This is the process of the Accept stage of the Inward Attainment Map. We cannot get away from the fact that this business of business will throw up fears and blocks, and although they will make you question just what the hell you are doing, they are not a reason to stop. When we accept they are part of our journey, reclaim some of their power and start carrying on anyway, that’s when we’re really doing it.
Find out more about how you can work through the Inward Attainment Map in The Trail here.
