Please, Stop overthinking everything

By Angelica Maria Andujar De Jesus

I’ve struggled all my life overthinking every move or decision. Most of the time I think about the future and my goals, and I forget to live in the present and understand we are constantly learning with every decision we make. For example, spending long hours scratching the skin of my fingers - a compulsive behavior which makes me lose track of time. Something that has helped me is finding ways to stay occupied and not let any intense thoughts come to my mind. 

In addition, I have also struggled to be more secure about myself. Always thinking about being a better person is my main goal. It's exhausting for me to try to meet all the expectations of society and myself - expectations about achieving a graduate degree, a higher salary, a house, and a family. I've learned we can't rush things to come easily; instead, we must work on each task with time and discipline. When we have intrusive thoughts, we can recognize that they aren't really ours. These thoughts come from the outside, influenced by society and our environment.

We want to be more concentrated and productive. We must occupy our minds by doing manual jobs such as art, cooking, painting, cleaning or exercising to calm down what I call our “demons” (not desire thoughts). We should keep our minds forward, ahead and in constant movement. When our hands and feet are at rest, it allows us to procrastinate and stop doing. In a society taught to value intellectual jobs more than manual ones, we must find a balance and put our bodies in motion.

We must keep our minds focused on what really matters rather than on everything coming from outside. Every time we put our bodies to work, we are also working on our minds and feelings. We become better thinkers, writers, artists and analysts, because when we are doing something, we are being creative, generating ideas, and producing. This helps us stop intrusive thoughts and organize our minds to be more structured. That's the good thing about routines, exercise and jobs that require constant physical activity - we concentrate on what we have at hand rather than thinking too much about the future.

Reading The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, I found out that interdependence is more important than independence - working together allows everyone to create something more valuable than our individual desires and ambitions. When we work together, we are better; we create better, we think better , and we build harmony. Also, while reading the book I realized that we must work from the inside out, which means working on small tasks with ourselves each time to truly achieve something bigger.

Solutions I have found to be more productive:

Talk about what I really want and how to archive it. Make lists of goals I have in mind. Clean everything around me to start fresh. Avoid trying to do everything at once; always remember to take things task by task. Verify everything and write it down. Furthermore, don't be afraid of failure - doing what you desire even with fear is the way to create a new habit. 

We are truly going to live our lives w\hen we start from the inside out to change for the better. It's not something someone is going to tell us; it's something we are going to analyze and figure out by ourselves - that we must stop overthinking and start doing for good. We must start with private victories to increase self confidence. Then come the public victories. where we create and regenerate better relationships with the family, at work and with other significant people around us. We can always replace bad habits with new patterns that allow us to grow and have better relationships and opportunities in life. 

Through reading the book and reflecting on myself, I’ve learned that we can't be victims all the time, and also we can't react to everything. It's important to have goals and write down and look at them over and over. Don't leave anything to luck or “go with the flow”. We must work on things every day, consistently. Don't see life as a competition with others but as an opportunity for you to grow and do the things you love. Everyone is fighting a batter that we really have no idea about. We must listen to everyone's opinions with respect and keep our own perspectives. It is important to take time for yourself to relax and generate new ideas.

And please, don't overthink.

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