I was a chronic overthinker. My mind was constantly racing 24/7.
My days were spent trying to find solutions to my internal problems or judging myself for my anxiety.
I hated my mornings because I knew I had to spend my entire day fighting my overthinking mind.
At one point in this anxiety phase, I had no energy or focus to even do basic stuff.
I avoided people because I thought about what to say and what they might think unable to have a genuine flowing conversation.
I was completely out of touch with reality. I was stuck in a self-created nightmare. I just want to sit and think all day.
This went on until finally I stopped fighting my thoughts and started accepting them.
My mind became much quieter finally when I took the perspective shift from believing my thoughts blindly to simply observing them.
Losing touch with reality: living in fiction
If you overthink, you live in a fictional world created by your mind.
You become so out of touch with reality because you believe the stuff your mind feeds you about reality without questioning. And it’s false 99% of the time.
Your mind brings up information from past beliefs and memories and makes you believe this is how reality works in the present when the actual situation would be entirely different.
This creates all the unnecessary self-inflicted drama and suffering in your life.
For example:
Let’s say you were about to give a speech to 50 people.
And you prepared the script for a week and primed your mind to get on the stage and deliver that speech.
Everything goes well until you see someone laughing in the audience. This triggered your mind to feed all kinds of troublesome things to you.
“You are no good. They are making fun of you. etc..”
The reality of the situation would be entirely different. The person might be joking about an entirely different event that happened in his life. You never really know.
This thought train brought you so much anxiety that you completely even forgot the speech.
People suffer through a ton of dramatic scenarios like this created by their overthinking minds.
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Sabotaging opportunities for comfort:
An overthinking mind is the only thing that stands in the way of creating a fulfilling lifestyle for yourself.
It downplays or makes you think that you are not worthy of opportunities that might change your life.
It feeds you all kinds of bullshit like:
“It’s very hard to do.”
“Let’s skip this one time.”
“you don’t deserve this.”
And once you skip those opportunities believing your mind, it judges you for not acting on them.
If you notice carefully, your mind plays both the victim and the critic. Its only job is to continue talking and confuse you even if it contradicts its own words within 5 minutes.
When your mind is stuck in survival mode, it seeks control and safety. It somewhat feels comfortable when you just do things that are not so new and challenging.
In this way, you skip a ton of opportunities to improve your life and stay stuck in the prison cell you have created inside your head.
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A quiet clear mind is your birthright:
Almost everyone believes that they have to tolerate their troublesome minds their entire lives.
They think that their only options to find some relief from their overthinking mind are to find ways to numb or distract their minds with alcohol, social media, avoiding people, etc.
Some even think that overthinking is the way to find solutions to their problems, when it’s actually creating 99% of the problems.
There is a paradigm available to you where you use your mind to think only when needed. Where most of the time your mind will be resting in its quiet and clear natural state.
A paradigm where you use your mind as a tool as intended, instead of it toying with your life.
This inner peace is clearly evident in kids, animals, and people who have done the inner work and freed their minds.
It takes a ton of inner work to realize that you are not your mind, your true nature – Pure awareness is beyond every experience this world can bring into your life.
Relieve your overthinking: “Awareness meditation”
You will be able to relieve your overthinking mind by practicing the 3 step meditation outlined below.
Without further adieu, let’s dive in:
1. Stop fighting your thoughts
You might have realized by now that fighting or escaping your thoughts never works.
It only amplifies your overthinking as the thought patterns are still active inside you and gathering speed every moment.
Start accepting your thoughts. As it stops creating additional thought loops that come with judgments.
2. Listen to your mind
Listen to your mind no matter how dark and disturbing the thoughts might seem.
Even if you get lost in your thoughts, catch yourself and step back to just listening to them.
When you just listen instead of trying to fix/escape from your mind, at some point you will realize “you are not your thoughts and feelings. Your true self is much bigger than that.”
You know you are thinking because you can hear them inside your head, otherwise you won’t be able to realize you have thoughts. You are the one who’s listening to your thoughts.
3. Relax into the listener
Once you fully relax into being the listener, you will realize that your true self is beyond all definitions.
Your true self comes with peace, love, and joy that is fully available to you every moment.
This practice is simple but not easy. It takes some consistent practice to reconnect with your true self again.
Hope you enjoyed this read. Talk to you next week.
Thank you
Pranav
