First of all, I want to tell you that there’s nothing called as – ‘overthinking’. Or if there is something like that, it’s not named well, so it’s messing with your understanding of what “thinking” is in the first place.
Whether you overcome overthinking or not, but never shun “thinking” from your life. Never make “thinking”, the enemy. Thinking is an invaluable gift given only to humankind.
And it’s not just a gift, it also comes with certain responsibilities – the responsibility to design and redesign our own life. The universe behaves differently for animals, under any situation demanding problem-solving. For humans, the universe is very reluctant to move on without making them learn. We saw in blog 76, how through Hardships & Pain, the universe is making us think the right questions and come up with constructive solutions. Again, thinking is very crucial in one’s life. So, never make it the enemy.
It is “thinking”, only if it’s deliberate and productive. [Blog 126: 9 Highly Useful Frameworks for Life!] And especially if it’s hurting you, it’s not “thinking” at all.
This term called Overthinking is a sham. When someone says overthinking, what they actually mean is that they cannot control their own mind. They are referring to the overflow of thoughts that they have very little or no control over. If they did not think it, how is it overthinking? Thinking happens only when you have control over your mind. Did you get it? So what people actually are experiencing is their failure in handling their super powerful computer – their brain. Overwhelmed would be the right word.
Why & How do we get overwhelmed?
More is not always good. More information, for example, is not always good. Information is not lacking in this world. Information overload is more of a real problem than the lack of information in this era. Contemplating the information that you receive, brings clarity, hence growth. Not contemplating the received information is the biggest problem. Knowing dates & names in history is not as useful as the lessons you get from it.
If you’ve read my previous blogs, you know which school of thought or Philosophy I belong to – “All pain arises from ignorance, Awareness liberates us from all suffering”. The cause of all pain and suffering is ignorance. And most of that ignorance comes not from not knowing the unknown-unknowns. It comes from not knowing the known unknowns & unknown knows and not acting on the known knowns. In other words, ignorance comes not just from not knowing unknown facts, it mainly arises from lack of contemplation.
Passively consuming is very easy. Introspection & Contemplation, however, is very hard. Since thinking has reduced or gone poor in quality and/or depth, consumption has also reverted to a “passive” state. We’ve all shifted our defaults from active consumption and introspection, to passive consumption and surface-level thoughts, words, and actions that arise from it.
And this passive consumption will lead to the sense of feeling overwhelmed. It’s like we have two tanks in our brain, one is for temporarily receiving new information, and another is for storing the received information after it has been processed. And when the first tank is filled and we’ve not processed a significant portion of it or even bothered to process any of it, we feel overwhelmed.
It’s natural that we get overwhelmed on certain days of our life. Sometimes it feels great too to have varied experiences in a short span of time. But we soon realize “it’s too much”. [Even something we love can become too much]. We loose the connection with that stillness within. And hence we feel lost. We forget how to actually think. We forget how to think about what actually matters. Here’s a list of things I’ve tried and have worked for me when I’ve felt overwhelmed:
- No words In. Consume very little or nothing (both physically and mentally). At least for a few days, till you get your mind stable and strong again. This one is the very obvious point I know. But I still had to mention it because most people overlook this simple step.
- No words Out. The Pot of Solitude. I’ve already written a dedicated blog for it. In short words, this would be staying silent for a day, week, or month to refresh our minds. Read more about it here.
- Write – Just Express how you’re feeling now. Gradually you’ll notice yourself writing the reasons why you’re feeling overwhelmed. Make a List of all that you’ve told yourself you’ll do but haven’t done. Just noticing & writing those reasons & pending tasks will make you feel lighter because it was taking up your cognitive bandwidth at least at the subconscious level.
- Increase in quality, quantity, and/or consistency of your Nithyānushtāna. Sometimes in this world of hustle, we get so occupied with tasks that we forget our rituals/daily habits that keep us sane, stable, connected, aligned & strong. So check if that has happened with you, if yes, bring back the consistency of the habit, and if possible increase the quantity and quality of the habit too.
It’s not easy to overcome the constant flow of unintentional random thoughts. You have to reap the ill effects of your past actions, no hack to bypass that. However, we can try to eliminate or reduce the effects of the core creators & catalysts of those thoughts, at least for the future, through the above-mentioned methods.
Thank You
Sanath Kumar Naibhi
