What is Overthinking?
Overthinking is simply the act of “thinking about something too much or for too long”. In fact, studies have shown that overthinking raises your levels of stress, clouds your judgment, reduces your creativity and strips you of your power to decisions making. The power to imagine has been a great evolutionary advance, making human beings not only be able to live in the moment, but we can also remember past situations and also consider future ones.
But that’s not totally good. Sometimes, remembering what we have already lived or thought about what may happen to make the mind, which could seem so liberating at first, the true prison of our species.
Our highest ability becomes a trap, causing us to enter a loop of rumination and obsessive thoughts that can be paralyzing. Faced with this type of situation is when we consider how to stop thinking so much, and this article aims to be the answer to such a complex question.
How to stop thinking so much and learn to relax and connect with yourself?
Certainly, in anxiety, something that can make us very desperate and frustrates and tires us is to feel that I cannot stop my mind. That it goes like a constant little “traca-traca” path and you can’t stop thinking.
The first problem that we see with this is that you despair not to stop thinking and the more you try to stop thinking the more it seems that you tell your mind “keep thinking.” Here’s How to Improve Your Self-Esteem as a Woman?
4 Tips to Stop Overthinking:
1. Stop Fighting:
The first key point that we recommend is that you stop fighting. It is a fact that your brain is designed to generate thoughts that your mind is thinking a lot about. Surely you bring a lot of accumulated mental tension, so take a little pressure off the matter and simply accept ok, I’m thinking too much, I’m generating a lot of thoughts, I don’t want to change it. This is how it is now, it does not mean that it will always be like this, nor does it mean that I will never be able to stop thinking and that I will disappear from so much thinking. This is going to happen, now I’m like this, I’m going to stop fighting.
As soon as you stop fighting and begin to accept the stressful situation, immediately the level of stress and pressure go down and then you can start doing something different.
2. Control your Thoughts:
The second recommendation is that you do something with those thoughts. Surely your thoughts are around some concern, some issue, something that happened and charms here you have to solve, face.
What am I thinking about?
What do I need to do with this I am thinking?
Maybe I need to face, solve something. Maybe I need to take responsibility and take action. There is something you can surely do to resolve the mental stress and conflict of what is going on in your mind. Something that works a lot is that you can write feeling that you empty your mind of all the thoughts you are having and that in this writing you look for the solution, you look for the agreement … the way out of the mental conflict that you may be having at this moment.
Something I’ve learned a lot in my life is that solving in my head almost never works for me. The answers or solutions to your mental conflicts are better to speak or write them because there we find the answers. But if I want to find the answer by thinking, and if you have been thinking for more than 3 days and you cannot find the answer, you will not find it by thinking.
The problem is precisely overthinking and stopping acting, writing or talking about it in order to find the answer or the solution to the mental mess that you bring. Here’s Personal Development: “ Step by Step Guide to Change Your Life.
3.Divert your Attention:
The third point that is very important is that you need to channel your attention. I am convinced and every time I confirm it more than when we have this accumulation of intense thoughts that you do not stop thinking, it is because you have a lot of physical and emotional tension and how it is not channeled. It does not go anywhere.
In a certain way it rises towards your brain and then all that force, which is physical energy, has to be channeled in some way and the neurons are overactive. They have too much sugar, so to speak, it is as if you have a shot of sugar in your head, and then I recommend that you release that energy.
Exercise, go for a walk and as I told you in the last tip, talk and write. Talking about what you think, taking it out, is as if you added water to the sugar and it was going to dilute and do the exercise, remove the physical tension and vent your emotions most likely, it is what you need, for that I recommend a post about: “How to control your emotions.” With this, your mental stress and anxiety will most likely decrease a lot.
4. Accept the Present:
The next point that we recommend is learning to be in the present. This means that you connect with your senses, that you connect with smell, touch, sight, hearing and your breath. They are things that are happening in this present moment and that at the moment in which you let yourself feel the experience of the present moment, the mind rests because you could not be doing both. You could not be thinking and paying attention to what you think at the same time as feeling and paying attention to the present moment.
So the key that we can recommend you to start practicing is “let’s see ok, my mind is thinking all these things. I’m going to return to the present”
How are you going to achieve it?
Feeling your breath and then connecting with your senses. It does not matter how many times you go to your mind and return to the present. The more you do it the better it will be. Because that way your internal muscle of being in the present is reinforced.
You can feel the sensations of your skin, when you take a bath, focus on feeling the water, without judging yourself if you think again. What matters is that you realize that you slip into the mind and return to the present, feeling the water, the air, the food, the steering wheel as you drive, listening to the sounds around you. All that makes you connect with the present, where those thoughts lose weight or value.
We are not alone in the Universe, and we spend much of our time interacting with other people, so our relationships have an important influence on us. I encourage you to spend more time with those people who have positive effects on your way of thinking, and therefore on your life.
As you can see stopping overthinking is possible, you just have to put some of the above actions into practice.
So those are the key points that we recommend to stop thinking so much. Follow these steps to stop overthinking and step into a happy life. You definitely need to do something with mental intensity and what we recommend the most is that you release it, channel it: writing, speaking, exercising and then return to the present to collect yourself with what is happening.
Recommended Books to Overcome and Stop Overthinking:
The Book of Overthinking: How to Stop the Cycle of Worry; Book by Gwendoline Smith
Overthinking: Turn Off Your Thoughts, How To Overcome Your Destructive Thoughts And Start Thinking Positively; Book by Alexander Parker
Women Who Think Too Much: Book by Susan Nolen-Hoeksema
How to Stop Overthinking? 8 Proven, Practical Techniques to End Anxiety, Stop Negative Thinking, Overcome Worrying and Live a Healthier, Happier Life. Book by Charles P. Carlton
Am I Overthinking This? Over-answering life’s questions in 101 charts Book by Michelle Rial
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