How To Stop Overthinking!

Overthinking creates and amplifies stress and anxiety, which can impacts all aspects of life. In this talk I tell you the secret to help you stop overthinking and give three examples of what you can do to stop… as well as help you to understand why you would do them and why they work.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the Peacekeeper Project.

My name is Ben.

Now,

How often do you find yourself overthinking?

Thoughts running around and around in your mind and you just can't stop them.

Maybe overthinking until the point where you can't make decisions.

Maybe overanalyzing things and situations and the things people say.

Somebody said this,

So that must mean that.

And that must mean something else.

And that stirs up more emotion and more intense thinking.

Or maybe there's something unresolved at work or in personal life,

Maybe an unresolved conversation or a problem you're trying to solve.

And you just can't stop thinking about it until there is some kind of resolution or a solution to the problem.

Now,

Overthinking creates stress,

Anxiety and then that creates more overthinking and it can drain our energy.

But as the expression goes,

Overthinking is the art of creating problems that don't exist.

But if you do wanna stop this overthinking and quiet your overactive mind,

Then there are some things that you can do.

And that's what I'm gonna share with you here today.

And not just share with you what to do but also help you to understand why you would do it.

All right,

So what is the secret to letting go of overthinking?

How do we let go of thoughts?

Well,

We can let go of thinking by feeling.

So what does this mean?

Well,

It means that you can let go of your thinking by bringing your awareness into the feelings and the sensations in your body or feeling the sensations in your body.

Now,

There are always sensations happening in our body but we're not always aware of them because when we're caught in our mind when we're overthinking,

We're more in our head than in our body.

We're thinking,

Not feeling.

But the act of feeling brings us back into our body which brings a grounding and a quieting because it brings us into the present moment.

And it's this being present in the moment that brings the quieting and the calming of our overactive mind.

All right,

So I'll give three examples of what this might look like.

The first one is bodily awareness.

So this means feeling your body.

That could be something like just feeling your feet,

Feeling your feet on the ground,

Feeling the weight of your body through your feet on the ground.

Could be feeling the sensations in the palms of your hands.

You know there's a feeling,

There's a sense.

If you close your eyes,

You don't have to look at your hands to know they're there.

You can feel them.

So there's a sensation,

There's a feeling and you're bringing your awareness into that feeling.

So you could also feel your chest,

Your belly,

Your head,

Your back,

Feeling your body.

Okay,

So the next example is feeling your breath.

A common technique or suggestion to help calm the mind is focus on your breathing,

Conscious breathing.

But what does that really mean?

It means feeling your breath.

So whether you're feeling it through the nostrils,

Maybe you're feeling the breath in the chest as it expands or maybe in the belly.

You're not thinking about it,

You're feeling it and that's what slows our overthinking mind.

So you can use that,

Use this focusing on the breath,

Feeling the breath to help quiet your overactive mind.

But now what if your overactive mind,

Your overthinking is fueled by emotion?

Maybe something happened,

Maybe you thought of something and it triggered emotion or maybe someone said something and it triggered an intense emotion inside you and that intense emotion now becomes the fuel for more thinking,

More intense thinking.

So that can be really challenging.

So what do you do?

Well,

It's essentially the same principle and the two examples I've given so far can definitely help.

But the third example works directly with your emotions.

What is it?

Feeling your emotions.

It's more than just knowing that you're frustrated,

Angry or upset.

It's one thing to know that you're emotional,

It's another thing to actually feel it.

So it can be helpful in the beginning to acknowledge what you are feeling.

Give it a name,

Label it.

Are you feeling sad,

Angry,

Frustrated,

Disappointed?

Give it a name,

Label it.

But that's just the start.

That gets you started because remember,

You're not thinking about it,

You're feeling it.

And it's the feeling that takes us out of thinking.

This means feeling the emotion in your body,

Feeling the sensation of the emotion in your body to the degree that you're able.

So where is it in your body?

Is it in your chest?

Is it in your solar plexus,

Your abdomen?

Or is it in your throat?

Just noticing it and then feeling it.

Remember,

Not judging any of it,

Just feeling it.

Judging is just more thinking and we're trying to get out of that,

Remember?

So coming back into the body,

Into the sensations through feeling.

And then notice the quality of the sensation.

Is it hot,

Cold?

Is it sharp,

Dull,

Diffuse?

Does it feel more constrictive or is there a grasping quality to it?

Again,

Just notice it.

So that when I say notice,

I mean feel it.

Come more into the feeling,

Coming out of thinking into feeling.

Now when we have emotions,

Intense emotions,

Fueling our thoughts,

Our overthinking,

Our possibly apocalyptic thinking,

Then these emotions are a fuel,

They're a force inside us that are manifesting through thoughts.

But the challenge is we get caught in the stories and the dramas of the emotion instead of feeling the emotion itself.

So if instead we can bring our awareness to the feeling of the emotion,

To the sensation of the emotion in our body,

It can help quiet the noise in our mind,

The overthinking.

We get out of the stories and the dramas and we come into our body.

It slows the mind.

Now,

The other benefit to this,

Working with the emotions,

Is that it starts to build more emotional intelligence,

This ability to recognize emotions,

Feel them,

And to be present with them.

Now,

That doesn't mean it's necessarily going to be easy.

It can be challenging to be with our emotions and feelings because there are some emotions and feelings that we may not want to feel.

But through this process,

Just be with it to the degree that you can be,

Not judging how much you feel,

But just feeling.

That feeling will bring us back into our body.

Now,

What I've shared with you here are three examples,

Three practices,

But they all rest on the same principle,

Becoming present in the moment.

And it's the feeling that makes us present.

And I always like to encourage an attitude of curiosity because there needs to be this willingness to understand,

Understand what's happening inside us.

And that's especially true and challenging when there's more emotions being stirred up inside us.

The curiosity brings this spark,

A spark of enthusiasm to know,

To want to know and understand.

So I encourage you to engage your curiosity into this process.

All right,

That's it for this one.

Thank you for being here and I appreciate your presence.

And until the next time,

Quiet your mind and live from your heart.