Top 15 Lessons From the Book: Stop Overthinking

Top 15 Lessons From the Book: Stop Overthinking

1. What exactly is overthinking?

Overthinking is when you excessively analyze, evaluate, ruminate, and worry about certain things to a point where it starts affecting your mental health because you simply can’t stop.

2. There are two main sources of anxiety

The first one is ourselves. Unfortunately, some of us are just genetically predisposed to being more anxious than others.

Another cause of anxiety is our environment.

3. There are many negative consequences to overthinking

These include physical, mental, and even social harms that can become long-term issues. Some examples are racing heart, dizziness, feelings of fatigue, irritability, nervousness, headaches, muscle tension, etc.

4. 4 As of Stress Management

The first thing you need to remember is a mantra called the 4 As of stress management.

These are avoid, alter, accept, and adapt.

5. Avoiding

Avoiding things entails simply walking away from things you can’t control.

Some things are simply not worth the effort and are best removed from our environments altogether.

6. Alter

However, if we can’t avoid it, we must learn how to alter our environment to remove the stressor.

7. Accept

If we can’t alter our environment, we have no choice but to accept it.

8. Adapt

If we can’t do much about the situation at all, we must adapt to it and learn how to cope with our stressor and reduce its damaging potential to a minimum.

9. Journaling

When we overthink, we have tons of different thoughts swirling in our mind, which can feel overwhelming.

However, when we write these down systematically, we can analyze them and evaluate whether these thoughts are merited at all.

10. Time Management

We seldom take time out for adequate leisure and relaxation, so we must consciously do this in order to improve our anxiety levels.

Some tips to follow are making regular to-do lists, prioritizing your tasks in the order of your actual preference.

11. SMART Goals

This stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time-bound goals.

Assess how this goal is relevant to your value system and what purpose achieving it will fulfill in your life. Lastly, set a time limit for completing this goal.

12. When It’s Spiraling Out of Control

There may be times where you feel that your anxiety is reaching a fever pitch or that it’s on the verge of spiraling out of your control.

In such cases, you can rely on some tried and tested techniques to reduce your stress levels.

13. Autogenic Training

Through this, we aim to gain control over our thoughts and emotions through six different exercises.

14. Guided Imagery

Essentially, you find a comfortable position and think of a place which engages all your different senses like smell, sound, etc., in pleasantly stimulating ways.

This can be any place, it just needs to be one that inspires relaxation.

15. Progressive muscle relaxation

This technique relies on the theory that physical relaxation leads to mental relaxation. So, the goal is to physically relax your muscles by first tensing them up.

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