Say goodbye to overthinking (and the stress with it)

We suffer significantly more in our mind than in reality.

We ruminate on the potential issues that could arise to disrupt our current situation:

Losing our job.

Losing a loved one.

Being referred to as a failure.

Breaking up with our partner.

Never reaching our full potential.

All of these create negative emotions compound and cause us to take actions we otherwise wouldn't.

The paradox of overthinking is that once we calm one worry, another one is front and center.

It causes a never ending cycle that can lead to burnout, poor decisions and unhappiness.

I personally suffer from overthinking and after years of therapy, self-improvement, and research-- I can tell you it never goes away.

At first this felt like a loss.

Until I came across work by Jordan B. Peterson.

There is a key personality trait called "Inclination for Neurosis"

Now that sounds like a scary trait but all it means is an individual's likeliness to experience negative thoughts or emotions.

Believe it or not there are some people who rarely experience negative emotions. Crazy, I know.

Learning this shifted my perspective on what my goal was.

I always thought the goal was to completely stop overthinking, but I found the most success in changing how I dealt with overthinking.

Problem-Solution Framework

The critical unlock for me was focusing my energy on changing how I reacted and behaved when it came to overthinking.

After 1000s of research, I came across the Problem-Solution Framework to deal with any negative emotions or overthinking.

The first step is identify what the actual problem is that is causing the overthinking.

This is beneficial for two reasons:

• It forces us to think logically (counters emotions)

• There may be no problem at all (eliminates the reason to worry)

A few years ago when I was working my first job out of college, I found myself overthinking daily.

I kept saying to myself "How am I going to move out on this salary?" "I'll never be able to afford anything I want" "Is this really all there is to post-grad life?"

The job felt empty, and I was lost.

But the key problem to all these thoughts was my job.

I needed a higher paying job that I genuinely enjoyed.

So that was the source of my overthinking.

The second step is identify the solutions (or steps) you can take to solve your problem.

For me, I needed to acquire higher income skills, identify what work I wanted to do, spice up my resume and nail my interviews.

The final step is a brain dump.

Take a sheet a paper out, write down all the things you have been worrying about, circle the ones you can control and cross out the ones you can't

This will give you a crystal clear picture of what you can and can't control.

To recap this is the process:

1. Clearly identify what the source of overthinking (problem)

2. Outline the potential steps you can take to solve that problem (solutions)

3. Brain dump all thoughts and circle what you can control.

The process is simple.

The hard part is consistently doing it to get rid of the overthinking.

I found this works well because it's rooted in logic and systematic thinking which is the opposite of overthinking (emotions and irrational thinking).

Happy thinking.

PS— if you struggle with overthinking, reply to this email with your biggest worry right now, and let’s tackle it together 🙂 

Talk soon,

Matt