Skip to main content

Overthinking

In one of my posts last week, Anonymous left a comment telling me to cogitate, then decide. This got me thinking about... well... thinking.

I've always been guilty of over-thinking. In fact, I used to pride myself on being a super-rational person who was able to put even the strongest emotions to one side in favour of what my brain told me was the 'right' thing to do. But in the past few months I've changed my mind.

In hindsight, over-thinking always got me into trouble, resulted in mistakes being made and made me shy away from good opportunities. My best decisions have always come from what you might term as being 'gut-feel', 'intuition', listening to that 'inner voice' or, perhaps, simply following my heart.

Over-thinking kills spontaneity and breeds fear. Instead of going out and embracing life, we overthinkers merely spend that time sitting and mulling over all the possible things that could happen if we take this course of action, and the other things that might happen if we take another course of action.

In truth, all we're doing is projecting into what is always going to be an uncertain future; a great big guess 'informed' by prejudice, learned 'truths', cultural norms and all the weighty baggage collected from past experiences (good and bad, undoubtedly skewed in some way).

The result of all this thinking is that we stand still, we become stuck - rooted with one foot in the past and one in the future, leaving a gaping void for the now.

I call it 'Thought Paralysis'.

I'm not urging you to throw caution to the winds and go out to do whatever you feel like doing at any given moment - that's a recipe for anarchy - but what I am saying is that sometimes, in some situations, it might be wise to cogitate on a higher level. What I mean by this is to examine your thoughts to identify their source; don't merely accept them as a given. If, upon closer examination, these thoughts appear to be born out of fear, anger, pride or remorse, then you should probably discard them and start again. The same goes for thoughts that start with the words "I should" or "Everybody else says/ does/ thinks..."

Then take a good, hard look at what your instincts are telling you, marry the two, and go for it.

With a bit of practice the doubt goes and you just know when you've come to the right decision - not because you 'should', or you're scared of what might happen if you choose a certain path, or because your mum will or won't disapprove. It's also wise to remember that sometimes the best outcomes mean choosing the more difficult, riskier and less immediately appealing route.

Yes. I realize I'm making it sound really simple. It's not. It's so much easier just to throw reason and logic at a problem rather than to identify what you truly feel about something (at core). But like most things in life, putting in the required effort usually yields the best rewards. Eventually, anyway.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Great, thank you!
Mimi
Anonymous said…
Very well put - very balanced.
Anonymous said…
I've always found that instinct serves me well. In fact, I've seemed to have lived most of my life on instinct, in a funny sort of way.

I suspect (as I think you're implying) that the trick is to temper what you feel with what you know; of course, finding the right balance between the two relies upon a number of things, not least of which is knowing yourself. Not enough people bother to do that bit properly, unfortunately.
Kate B. said…
Thanks Anons.

Yup, and it's about being able to identify the difference between what is a thought and what is an emotional reaction hastily disguised as a thought (i.e. the emotion says "this is scary!" which the brain translates as "I don't want to do that because...(insert 'rational' excuse here)" . Reactions are nasty things designed to derail you and get you into all kinds of trouble. Knowing who you are helps, being able to properly inhabit your own skin (at which point outside opinion or censure may stop and make you think, but it no longer has the power to cause any serious dents in your own sense of self-worth or trigger a negative reaction) is the crucial bit.
uae company said…
I read your post. It was amazing. Your thought process is wonderful. The way you tell about things is awesome.
offshore company dubai
uae offshore company incorporation

Popular posts from this blog

Apologies for being incommunicado this week and hope none of you out there are too distraught not to be receiving the usual almost-daily MotV missives. The reason for the silence is that I'm up to my neck, metaphorically-speaking, in research papers for my first grad course assessment. This experience has made me realise how rigorously un-academic I am in my thinking. It has also illuminated how reliant I am on red wine in order to get through endless evenings typing furiously on my laptop, not to mention the fueling of increasingly colorful curses that I feel obliged to aim at the University's online library system which consistently refuses to spit out any of the journals I'm desperate for (I refuse to believe this is 100% due to my technical incompetence...) Oh well, if this is the price one has to pay in order to realize a long-cherished dream then it's not all that bad... No one ever said a mid-life career change would be easy. Wish me luck!

Environment

Being an expat, a favorite topic of conversation is 'where I/you want to go next?' or 'When do you plan to go home?' It's a good question. I'm not sure I want to stay in Dubai for ever, but I'm also not sure about how long I want to be here for or where else I would like to live. For almost the first time ever, I have no fixed plans apart from keeping my eyes and mind open to interesting opportunities. And as to going 'home', I have no idea where that is. Constantly moving around as a child left me with the feeling that 'home' is wherever I am right now, so in effect 'home' could be anywhere. The longest I've ever lived in one fixed place was 18 years in London, on and off, but that doesn't feel like 'home' either - I love going back to see family and friends, and it's a great place to shop, but that's about it. I have a great love for California, which is where my extended family is from (and where most of the