Overthinking can take control of your life and can cause people to go into depressions. Although it is human nature, you should never let something like overthinking impact you, and there are many ways to stop it. You need to understand why you are overthinking in the first place in order to take the steps to stop it. Once you’ve figured out why you overthink, you can use some of the following steps to tackle it.
Don’t dwell on the past
Dwelling on the past can be very damaging on self-esteem and confidence. Hindsight is something that can be useful in moderation, but what happened in the past has happened and cannot be changed, and for that reason should not control your future. We also remember our mistakes and negative experiences too much, blowing the impact of them out of proportion. The chances are that your mistakes in the past have either been forgotten or forgiven by everyone else, leaving only you dwelling on it.
Things you can’t control
A really good way to stop yourself from overthinking is to stop worrying about things you cannot control. You might not be able to control it, but you can control how you react to it. If you can teach yourself how to do this, you will notice a drastic drop in how much you overthink and stress over things.
Stop waiting for perfection
Nothing is perfect, so letting something sit on your mind trying to perfect it will only make things worse. You need to be decisive and choose a point where you stop and accept the success you have, for example with a task at work, there will come a point where your time spent will outweigh the reward.
We recently discussed ways to help you overcome overthinking and how to stop it from controlling your life in our podcast. If you are interested in learning more about overthinking, you can find the episode here.