Part 1: How to overcome overthinking?

 

Thinking is “the process of considering or reasoning about something” or “using thought or rational judgement; intelligent“.

It is a flow of thoughts in our mind either willingly or unwillingly done. It is what makes us different from all the other living species on the planet and is also a major reason for our survival.

Thinking is a natural activity of our brain and it is because of thinking that we have questions and answers and all related curiosity.

But many times we fall prey to overthinking and find ourselves falling deep into an aimless and endless flow of thoughts. Most of the time this thoughts are not willingly generated thoughts and are random thoughts that we keep giving our energy and efforts to.

Overthinking is the cause of many mental instabilities likes depression, anxiety, etc. It makes things complicated and also creates a web of thoughts from where we rarely escape. Overthinking never lets you reach a firm and final decision or state of mind. It always fills doubts and anxiety about your own thoughts.

 

 

Overthinking make people do things that they may later regret in life and sometimes it results in no action from the thinker and he/she loses the moment or opportunity of action.

Overthinking takes away our peace of mind, stability, and clarity. We just start creating thoughts of possibilities of possibilities of consequences of an action. These thoughts are logical or illogical, reasonable or unreasonable but they are endless and aimless.

This clearly indicates that we should overcome overthinking and should stop falling prey to this habit.

So how to stop overthinking?

Before approaching towards the answer let us see what are different types of thinking?

Positive thinking and Negative thinking:

Positive or negative thinking implies to looking or thinking about the good or bad consequences or possibilities of an action or situation.

It is the vision or view of favorable and unfavorable outcomes of an action that we plan to take.

Positive and negative thinking is all about being optimistic and pessimistic about a situation.

Both types of thinking are necessary for human survival and thus if done in a balanced way they help us to live a healthy and prosperous life.

 

 

Right thinking and Wrong thinking:

Right thinking or Wrong thinking is all about valid or invalid, justified or unjustified thoughts about a situation or action.

Right thinking is having realistic thoughts that are complimented with clarity and reasoning. While the wrong reasoning is thinking in illusions and being unreal or unclear about the thoughts.

Both right and wrong thinking can be positive or negative thinking also and vice versa. And it is certain that there is a difference between right and positive thinking and also wrong and negative thinking.

 

 

Let us see an example to clear all your doubts and put our differentiation more clearly:

Consider there is a situation where you are in a relationship since the past few months or years and now it is time to move to the next level in your relationship. You and your partner mutually decide to have a thought about this and meet after a few days to discuss and see if they can move to the next level.

Now let’s see how a wrong thinker and a right thinker will use their brains and think about this situation and relationship.

 

 

Wrong thinker:

You think only about all the good habits, thoughts, and behavior that your partner possess and ignore all the incorrect or at some level bad habits that he/she may have. This may seem positive thinking and being optimistic about a person as no one is perfect. But isn’t this positive thinking or optimistic thinking a wrong thinking?

You are thinking about only one side of a person and making decisions or judgement on the basis of this one-sided or partial thinking. You may take the decision to go further in your relationship based on this thinking but the probability of this decision being right is very less.

 

Right Thinker:

You think about both positive and negative sides or habits of your partner, analyze them and make a decision which has a higher probability of being the right decision as you thought about both positive and negative side of your partner and then came to a decision of either being or not with him/her.

Here you thought in both positive and negative way but it is the right way of thinking.

There can be many more such examples of different combinations where all positive or negative thoughts can be either right or wrong thoughts.

Please read our next post Part 2: How to overcome overthinking? to know how the differentiation of this thinking will help you to overcome overthinking.