Overthinking is real but many of your fears are not. How do you combat an enemy that lives in your head? Look no further than this book.
You come up with this great idea for a product, a project, or even just a new way to organize your files at work. You feel elated for all of two minutes before diving into a self-sabotaging spiral of panic and doubt.
Here are some other scenarios that might be familiar to you.
You’ve come up with the perfect barb for an insult delivered at a cocktail party… 20 years ago.
You’ve also lain awake at 3 a.m., rehashing some offhand comment made by your spouse. As a result, you find yourself barely able to function the next morning.
What’s happening here?
Chances are you’re overthinking and this habit is draining you of your vitality and your peace.
But it’s not a “habit.” This is who I am. I like to think things over.
This book will challenge that assumption.
It will show you that overthinking, far from being a benign personality quirk, robs you of productivity and paralyzes you from taking actions that will bring you greater life success.
More than one scientific paper shows the best way to find out what’s going on with other people is to interact with them directly.
One, written by Harvard University’s Bonnie Talbert in 2017, argues that overthinking is one of the worst ways to predict what others think or mean.
Published in Social Epistemology, “Overthinking and Other Minds” says you cannot apply the mental processes you use to learn about yourself to gain insight into other people.
That’s because other people are moving targets. They have an ever-changing reel of thoughts and external factors motivating the things they do and say. To overlay those with your own would be folly.
Yet, most of us have done this at some point or another in our lives when we overthink.
This book will show you how to stop that runaway train before it steamrolls over your relationships, your career, or any area of your life where overthinking dominates. Other things it will teach you are:
The three methods to identify debilitating overthinking and separate it from its more harmless cousinsHow overthinking stops you from being your best and what you can learn from kindergarteners to tackle it head-onWhat are ANTs, why are they crawling all over your brain, and six ways you can crush these bugsThe importance of social relationships and how you can use them to leverage overthinking up and out of your lifeHow to put distance and diffuse the ticking time bombs that overthinking plants in your lifeWhy a hobby is the last thing your overthinking wants you to developWhy it’s not enough to recognize your overthinking but to target its triggers as well… including this one that will creep up on you
And much, much more…
To be clear, overthinking itself is not a mental illness, but its presence as a symptom of more worrying mental health issues is concerning.
In fact, overthinking may be a predictor of those likely to face negative mental health outcomes in the future, according to one study done on international students in China during COVID-19.
The study, titled “Overthinking Hurts,” chronicled the level of rumination among 300 students sheltering in place during 2020. It found that mental health worsened among students who were more prone to overthinking.
That alone should make you want to get a handle on your overthinking.
Each chapter of this book presents you with an action plan you can activate immediately to begin conquering the fear and doubt that holds you back.
