by Robert Leary
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Overthinking
How to Declutter and Unfu*k Your Mind, Build Mental Toughness, Discover Fast Success Habits, Thinking & Meditation, Mindfulness for Creativity, Slow Down the Brain and be Yourself
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1: What is Overthinking?
Chapter 2: What Causes Overthinking?
Social Expectation
Relationships
Trauma
Social Media
Chapter 3: Information Overload
Information Overload and Decision-Making
Moving Away from Information Overload
Chapter 4: Declutter Your Mind
Effects of a Cluttered Mind Over Time
Harmful Coping Strategies
Let’s Declutter
Finding Your True Passion, Reason, Purpose, or Goal
Chapter 5: Declutter Your Environment
Minimalism
Chapter 6: Form Good Habits
Chapter 7: Remove Negative Influences
Chapter 8: Mindfulness
Mindfulness
Meditation
Positive Thinking
Cultural Backing for the Effects of Positive Thinking
Chapter 9: A Good Night’s Sleep
Effects of Inadequate Sleep
Circadian Rhythm
What Happens When We Sleep?
Making Changes
Conclusion
Introduction
Congratulations on downloading this book and thank you for doing so.
The following chapters will discuss what it means to overthink and what you can do to change it. You will learn about the symptoms of overthinking and how it affects your day-to-day life, before going on a step-by-step journey to alleviate the stress of overthinking and negative thought processes.
Many people overanalyze and overthink every aspect of their lives, whether it’s their jobs, their relationships, lack of fulfillment, or a constant stream of stress. All of these struggles seem inevitable in a normal life, and if you look around, people seem to have accepted that life and stress and negativity will always be connected, even in the best-case scenarios.
Forming good habits like mindfulness meditation, positive relationships, and adequate sleep will lead you to a place where the negative habits that lead to overthinking fall away. From poisonous relationships to a cluttered living space, shedding the things that hold you back will give way to a whole new you, ready to meet life’s challenges with a mind filled with positive thoughts and meaningful goals. It is my hope that by working every day to form better habits, you will come to realize your full potential without feeling like overthinking is an inevitable part of life. You can take back control!
There are plenty of books on this subject on the market, thanks again for choosing this one! Every effort was made to ensure it is full of as much useful information as possible, please enjoy!
Chapter 1: What is Overthinking?
How many times in the past have you heard a coworker, a boss, or a loved one say the words, “stop overthinking it”? Maybe the question has been directed at you in the past, and you’ve responded with something like, “I’m not sure what you mean,” or “I don’t know if you’re thinking through it enough.”
Many times, communication is one of the main factors in the misunderstandings that occur between people in relationships. We say one thing, but it is understood in a different way. This complication is made worse when we fall into the habit of overthinking, which is simply taking in and processing way more information than is necessary to complete a given task or figure out a problem. When we pull from a much larger pool of information than is necessary for what we are trying to do, whether it’s something as simple as picking out the appropriate tie or deciding whether to break up with that new boyfriend, we are guilty of overthinking and often make the task much harder on ourselves than it needs to be.
All those thoughts swirling around in your brain make even the simplest tasks difficult because it becomes nearly impossible to avoid distraction. Overthinking can lead to an emotionally damaging mindset, where you begin to think negatively about yourself, your loved ones, or even about the world. Too much negativity and worry in your mind will shut out any hope of positive thinking or finding the path toward becoming a more positive, productive person.
I am excited to take this journey with you, and I know that you are about to discover many things about yourself as a person. The simple fact that you’ve sought out help from this book is an important first step forward. Many people continue through their entire lives living with the chaos going on inside their minds while they try to seek out a pleasant existence. But we’re going much further than this. We’re going to shed that old chaotic mindset and find the path to clarity.
The title of this book refers to finding a path through the noise inside your mind, but we’re not just going to walk casually by and leave the chaos where it is. Many people are very skilled at something called “compartmentalization.” This is where, in order to deal with many sources of stress, worry, and overthinking, people will carefully store different thought processes in different parts of their brains and train themselves to ignore one thing while they concentrate on another. Many men and women experience this after a trauma. In order to escape the grief, they will concentrate on something that is productive, like their jobs, and not think about the pain that must be worked through.
Compartmentalization is an avoidance of the problem, and though it can be helpful in traumatic experiences, it is essential to address what is going on in our minds if we are to move past it. So, if you’re ready, let’s get started!
Chapter 2: What Causes Overthinking?
There are many, many causes of overthinking, many catalysts that trigger the bad habits of overthinking which can lead to anxiety and excessive worrying. These are not pleasant emotions, and what can seem like simply being careful and thinking things through can easily turn into something much more serious and damaging.
We’ve all experienced worry at some point in our lives. I remember when I was a child, my mother would leave the house very early in the morning to go to work at the post office, and I would wake up just as she was walking out the door and feel a desperate need to run out to the front door and catch her so I could say goodbye and “I love you.” This didn’t last long, but I remember for a few nights I was overcome by the worry that she was going to leave the house and I would never see her again. This is easily attributable to me being a young child but let us think about another example.
You are an adult, and your older brother is flying out to Colorado for a ski trip with his friends. He’s just turned 21, and you
know that there is going to be a good deal of partying and drinking going on. Now you start worrying about all the things that could happen. What if he gets in an accident driving around an unfamiliar area? Would he be tempted to drink and drive? What if he falls while skiing and breaks a leg or an arm? What if he runs into a tree and has a concussion and he goes to a hospital and I don’t know about it because he doesn’t have his phone and…and…and…
Okay, so this is an extreme case of acute worry, but I’m sure you know what I’m talking about and have experienced something similar concerning a loved one. To throw a wrench in the works, let’s say you just watched a video on Facebook where someone ran right into a tree while skiing a few days ago. Now you have this mental image to feed those worries running through your mind like a broken record. Perhaps you saw a story about a car accident in Colorado caused by bad weather, and now you have that worry going through your mind.
An occasional bout of worry is perfectly normal, but when a person’s life becomes plagued by constant worry about things that could happen without a good reason or basis, that person may be suffering from anxiety. There are different forms of anxiety, but two of the most common forms are social and generalized.
We may think of anxiety as a chronic form of overthinking, and many people experience such intense anxiety that they choose to take medication to assuage this feeling. Generalized anxiety applies to everyday experiences which most people get through without trouble. Some people describe the feeling as a “fear of everything.” Generalized anxiety affects day-to-day life and manifests as intense worry and fear of things like leaving the house, going to the grocery store, your loved ones’ health, what will happen in the world, possibility of war, whether you are eating right, whether you might be sick with serious disease and not know it. Some people suffer from a specific phobia, but generalized anxiety tends to react to many different things at once and can become overwhelming.
You may have experienced some form of anxiety while you began to recognize the habit of overthinking. The first step to address overthinking is to figure out the causes that are specific to you. There are many causes to explore and you will learn as we discuss several of them, even if they don’t all apply to you. Hopefully, as you read through this list, you will be able to pinpoint which factors may be playing the biggest role in your overthinking.
Social Expectation
Living and working in the world today is more demanding and challenging than ever before. Yes, we have the modern conveniences that make life more comfortable and convenient, but we also must contend with the structure of social life and the expectation that we follow a timeline that follows something like this: school, more school, entry-level career, climb the ladder, senior-level career, retirement.
For a long time, this was the norm for people living in countries of economic power. But a lot has been shifting over the course of the last few decades, and at an exponentially increasing rate. Finding a job in a lucrative career that will be enjoyable and satisfying for thirty or more years is not so simple anymore. The competition has grown right alongside the earth’s population and the staggering advancement of technology. Many of the jobs readily available to our parents no longer exist, and nowadays, you would get a strange look for physically walking into a business and asking for an employment application instead of applying online. If you do manage to get that dream job right out of high school or college, then the real trial by fire begins. We could talk office politics, competition, and rivalry all day, but for right now, let’s focus on some of the core triggers for overthinking in two of life’s most influential domains: work and school.
We’ve started to discuss the challenge of finding gainful employment as a young adult in the modern age, so let’s continue exploring where overthinking may come into play here.
Following the effect of globalization, the world is now overrun with advertisement and marketing schemes. From the very beginning of your career, you’ve been told that you will have to compete with many other candidates, many of whom may be more qualified than you. The interview process challenges candidates to make a compelling argument for why they should stand out above all the rest. You may practice in front of a mirror at home or think about all the possible questions that may come up. It is here when you may start thinking about how you measure up next to others in your field. You’ve just graduated from college with a degree and, at the time, you felt like you were on top of the world with a million different prospects awaiting you (best case scenario, of course). Fast forward a few months, and you start to realize that the job market is a tad more competitive than you thought, and you haven’t proven yourself to be a shoo-in to some of your dream companies who have already passed on you. Many young adults in the millennial generation can attest to the challenges of having graduated during a recession in the US and having trouble finding any reasonable employment at all, let alone a prestigious start to a career in their fields.
The pressure of the social expectation that you can and will find a great job if you are smart and work hard enough becomes a great burden if and when things don’t work out the way you’d imagined them throughout your time in school. At this point, you may begin to wonder if it is some fault or deficiency within yourself keeping you from your dreams.
The truth is, there are countless factors at play when it comes to finding or landing your “dream job,” and sometimes, hard work and a positive attitude are just not enough, despite what your parents or teachers told you. This is why many young adults begin the cycle of overthinking that is dominated by questions of self-worth and adequacy. If society says I’m supposed to be here or there at this point in my life, that means I’ve failed and there is something wrong with me.
Once this conviction takes root, it is very hard to ignore the myriad images, slogans, and advertisements all around us which display the ideal professional man or woman in their nice corner offices, dressed in the latest fashions, sharing how they’ve made it this far because they work for this or that company, attended this or that school, bought this or that car, bought a house in this or that city, etc. This is when you may start to compare yourself to the success of others, which simply adds to the merry-go-round in your mind that feeds a feeling of inadequacy and low self-esteem.
But now let’s say you’ve landed a decent job. It’s not your dream job, but it may be a good start for you and your career. Now it’s time to prove yourself. You immediately look around at your coworkers, boss, and peers to assess where you are on the ladder and how you measure up to your competition. Depending on the type of personalities surrounding you, you may feel a lot of pressure to do well and grow within the company. Society teaches us that being the best is the only way to grow and climb within your company, so professional life instantly turns into a competition. This pressure may manifest itself as overthinking every day as you constantly analyze how well you do your job. This is not a bad thing in and of itself—everyone wants to be good at their jobs. A problem arises when we begin obsessively comparing ourselves to others, and when the job is no longer an environment of several likeminded people working to build a better company, but a cutthroat competition to the top.
Once you’ve managed to break into the top echelons of business society, the competition turns toward other companies in your field—overtaking their market, putting others out of business, etc. And we’ve all heard the saying, the more you gain, the more you have to lose. This opens up a whole new avenue of worry and overthinking as you assess how far you may fall if you make a mistake or fall off the ladder!
Is this you? Do you experience constant worry about where you are professionally? Maybe you are underemployed and feel embarrassed, like you haven’t gone far enough in life as you compare yourself to others. This may be one of the most common triggers for overthinking, but now it’s time to move backward in time to examine how social expectation first takes root in our minds as kids. Let’s take a look at social expectation in school.
As we grow older and enter the realms of middle school and high school, social pressure and expectation become more central to our lives in an immediate sense. We may be thinking of our future careers from a distance, but most of us are preoccupied with whether or not people like us at school, how popular we are, whether or not we’ll get a date for the dance, etc. Much of the social pressure at this age centers around physical appearance and either academic or competitive achievement. Sadly, most girls around this age start to become overly concerned about their physical appearance and may even begin to equate this with their self-worth. The trigger for overthinking has begun as these women look around at the beautiful women in social media and in magazines, and begin comparing themselves to those unattainable ideals. Similarly, young boys may have a role model in sports or even a father figure who has become very successful in their professional fields and begin comparing themselves as men, equating success in competitive sports or popularity or academics with their self-worth.