How To Avoid Over-Thinking

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You’ve probably experienced your own spiral of thoughts that lead to aimless rumination and often results in feelings of anxiety and hyperactivity or sleepless nights, to name but a few effects.

Example: You’ve just comfortably tucked yourself into bed, even started to think about something tranquil and beautiful, when slowly, and at first unconsciously, distracting thoughts creep into your previously calm mind:

A “brilliant” creative idea pops up. How can I get started? What does it look like?

What about this dreadful meeting tomorrow? Am I sufficiently prepared?

Then pictures of the last horrific news report sneak in? How terrible that was….

As if that could stop the keen chatter in your head, you put your hands on your ears in a desperate attempt to escape this mental self-chatter.

But wait; here are some suggestions that really help to avoid over-thinking:

11 Steps On How To Demolish Your Worries

 

1. Pinpoint the worrying thought

Worry is often a result of a number of half-formed thoughts chasing one another around in your conscious, and sometimes unconscious, mind. This vicious circle can be broken by deliberately ‘airing’ or identifying the worrying thoughts. Write down your top five worries. Bringing these out into the open relieves pressure and gives you something to work on. Deal with one worry at a time.

2. Look for the Evidence

Instead of assuming that your thought is true, examine the evidence. What is the probability that it is true? Test out your thought by writing down the evidence for both sides of the argument. Rate the thought on a scale of 0 to 10 in terms of how much you actually believe it. For example, if you think ‘I am useless at this job’, you might rate this as only 3 in terms of how much you believe the statement.