Do you find it hard to sleep at night and want to stop overthinking? The art of thinking is what we refer to as innovation and advancement. Inventors like Guglielmo Marconi, Alexander Lodygin, and Herbert Simon have revolutionized the world through the inventions like telecommunication, electricity, and artificial intelligence, to name a few.
Innovation rules the world and thinking plays a crucial role in giving birth to innovative ideas. Brainstorming is a creative technique that fosters innovation. In a world where creation, innovation, and ideation attract attention, how do we differentiate the generic term thinking from overthinking?
Table of Contents
What is overthinking?
A mere habit of thinking about a particular thing, be it a depressing event in the past, uncertain future ahead, or even bewildered thoughts regarding an unresolved problem is referred to as overthinking. It is redundant feedback to our bemused mindset and negative presumptions. If we keep thinking about a particular thing over and over again, we will end up being trapped in the world of imagination, let alone actions. If you identify yourself as an overthinker, it is high time that you take baby steps to overcome it and stop overthinking.
Some ways to stop overthinking are as follows:
1. Keep yourself occupied
Overthinking happens when we have a lot of time to laze around. So, dig up the problem to identify a solution. Yes, you guessed it right. Get yourself engaged with various activities. Organising your room, dishwashing, reading a book, binge-watching a favourite TV show, cleaning your surroundings are few alternative options one can try out to stop overthinking. This way, you can kill time and set your brain free from overthinking.
2. Find solutions
What makes you overthink? Take time to process your thoughts and figure out the root cause that makes you overthink. Uprooting the fundamental cause of a problem is the best remedy to control overthinking. Instead of spending your time and energy on problems, invest your time in coming up with a solution to the same. Once resolved, it will no longer haunt you. Finding solutions is the best way to stop overthinking.
3. Embrace your imperfections
Psychology defines perfectionism as the urge for flawlessness. This is when a person self-evaluates oneself beyond limits and takes into account the evaluations and judgments made by others. Humans are bound to make mistakes and can never succeed in achieving the tag, ‘The Perfectionist’. People, who are in dire need to embrace perfection are often the ones who overthink a lot. The need to satisfy others, comparison of one’s weakness against another person’s strengths, and the inferior complex that one develops out of it are two prime reasons why people end up being insecure. This is why it’s significant to embrace our imperfections and to experience happiness for being the best version of ourselves. This will surely help you to stop overthinking.
4. Master a new skill
When you try to learn something new, your focus gets diverted to another area of interest. Be it learning how to play guitar, getting started with shuffle dancing, learning how to skateboard, taking new painting lessons, or even trying to gain expertise in mastering a new language can help you stop overthinking. This is because you tend to invest more time in being excellent in the domain you chose.
5. Mindfulness skills
Acquiring mindfulness skills through meditation along with some physical exercises can help you beat rumination. Studies have shown that meditation plays a major role in combating rumination and minimizing the symptoms of depression in cancer patients. This is attained through non-judgmental mindfulness activities. Here we tend to divert our focus from the causes that keep bothering us to our inner self. This is when we try to perceive everything as the reflection of our thoughts in mind. In other words, instead of letting the external world (our insecurities, fear, people, situations, and circumstances) take control over us, we possess the urge to take control over the world.
6. Be grateful
It’s human nature to keep wanting for more as time flies by. Dissatisfaction thrives you to work hard and achieve more. But we often fail to experience the joy of gratitude. Feeling grateful to have experienced all the achievements we have accomplished is important to keep us going. Taking a moment to look back to thank ourselves and almighty can help us find happiness in our success, no matter how trivial it may seem. Being grateful helps in an inflow of positive thoughts which automatically will help you to stop overthinking. Retrospection of good old memories, writing a daily gratitude list are simple but credible ways to become optimistic, and hence ward off all negative energy.
Conclusion
Overthinking can be unhealthy if you let yourselves get stuck in the thought cycle that’s futile. Having prolonged thoughts about something that we cannot control is acutely pointless. Realize that we cannot change the past and predict the future. All we can do is to be in the moment. Overthinking grabs away our valuable time to enjoy the present. So, we must take prominent measures to restrain ourselves from getting engaged in sustained, repetitive, and negative thoughts and try putting baby steps to stop overthinking.
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