The Curse of Over-Thinking.
“I’m an over-thinker” she said to me, quietly and somewhat reluctantly. We were discussing a future event which will happen, and which will be very difficult for my friend, who has been somewhat occupied with fears about it.
I’ve known her for almost 10 years now, and as well as being an over-thinker, she an intelligent, articulate, fun, talented and caring person. Not that she’d agree with that of course, but more on that another time.
“So why do you over think things?” I asked, because you know how much I love it when people self define an aspect of who they are. :)
For a moment she looked at me as though she couldn’t tell if I was serious, or just stupid. I gave her some time, and she just stared at me, head to one side, a quizzical look in her eyes.
Finally she uttered the words I had been expecting. “I don’t know” she said quietly. Then she added the words I wasn’t expecting. “Why don’t you tell me”.
It’s a terrifying yet humbling moment when someone opens up enough to seriously ask you for your opinion. I knew in that moment that my answer had to be my most honest, humble and heartfelt one possible.
So I looked her straight in the eyes, and as lovingly as I could stated the truth that seemed most apparent to me.
“You over think it, because you are afraid that you won’t be able to handle it when it happens. You don’t have enough confidence in yourself to make it through, even though you know you will, but it’s just going to hurt a lot”.
She thought about my answer for a while, and admitted that my thought might have some merit.
In my own life, I’ve found that the things I tend to dwell on are those things which are either incredibly good, or things which scare me because I’m not sure how I’ll handle it.
I’ve reached a point in my life where the concept of discomfort, or a moderate level of pain, are just parts of life, so I don’t worry about those, but the things that keep me up all night are the things that I’m not sure I can handle without my life falling apart.
And I wonder how I would put myself back together.
So now, when I find myself over-thinking things, which happens a lot more than it should, I apply a very old formula that I learned from Dale Carnegie.
First, imagine the very worst that could happen. Then, and this is the hard part, accept that it could happen, make peace with it as much as you can.
Then try to find anything that you can do to either prevent it from happening, or to make it less painful, avoiding as much of the pain as possible.
It sounds simple, because it is simple to understand, and very difficult to do well.
If we were to spend as much time thinking about the solution as we do over-thinking the problem, we might find life to be greater than we can possibly imagine.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings