Think Twice When You're Overthinking

I’m an overthinker; that’s not really news. But it’s been a long time since I’ve had to stop myself from getting lost in the maze of overthinking. So, when I caught myself doing it the other day, I had to ask myself why I shouldn’t just embrace it. If every coin has two sides, if there’s good in the bad and bad in the good, then surely this applies here as well.

Overthinking is when you insist that you don’t have all the information you need to make a decision or reach a conclusion. So, you think about it, and then think some more, but no matter how far you go, you’re back to where you started, only this time, the problem is more complicated. Every round trip of thinking makes you less certain. Thinking is supposed to bring clarity. Something doesn’t add up.

At first glance, I saw uncertainty as the culprit. We want to be certain, so we make sure we are as informed as possible. But uncertainty exists in every decision and conclusion, and we don’t always care to eliminate it. So, in comes fear. But fear is very generic, and it usually attaches itself to a host: fear of failure, fear of success, fear of rejection… Something else must be at play.

Desire. We tend to overthink when we care deeply about the outcome. The stronger the desire, the more we want to be prepared. And that would be a sane approach if the preparation phase didn’t last forever. Uncertainty invites fear to latch on to desire. Thinking under these circumstances drives overthinking. But what alternative is there? Desire, fear, and uncertainty are always in play. To say that overthinking is the product of these elements isn’t saying much.

Then it hit me. It is not a product. It is one of the elements.

See, somewhere along the way, you figured out that you’re not the type of person who can pretend that a desire doesn’t exist. But if you’re not ready to pursue it yet, you keep yourself in a preparation loop. Ironically, where there is overthinking, there is avoidance.

Hear me out.

The mind is the perfect place to protect desire from disappointment. It is the perfect way to avoid finding out for sure. You’re not ignoring the desire, and you’re not being held back by fear, because, technically, you’re working on it. And the proof is in your mental exhaustion. And then you tell yourself that what you need is time and more information; the stakes are high, and you need to be diligent. So, you get to keep working on it without actually having to do it.

If overthinking carries a desire to find answers, then fearing what you might find makes perfect sense. And it makes sense that you never seem to. You got ahead of yourself, and you need to buy time until you become mentally, emotionally, or spiritually ready to face the truth.

But that can’t be all there is to the positive side to overthinking. The payoff is not worth all that trouble. And even when we recognize that we’re doing it, it doesn’t stop. In fact, it leads us to believe that we are onto something, that we are so close, if only we could just find that one missing piece. Well, it is because we are.

When you’ve highlighted all the paths that lead away from the answer, you’ve inadvertently highlighted the ones that lead to it. When you keep finding yourself right where you started, what you’re actually doing is drawing circles around the answer. And if you do that enough times, it becomes insanely frustrating that you still don’t see it. The answer to your question has been there all along, but you assumed you could reach it by following a trail of thoughts. That assumption is correct, just not in the way you think. And when you finally see it, it’s the real question you should’ve been asking all along.

Copywriter

Got a question or a comment?