Are you ready to get some pointers about this from a professional psychologist?
How to stop overthinking? I'll give you the easiest way I know.
First, notice that you are thinking. Do you notice it this is a
process I call metacognition. Cognition means thinking. Metacognition
is a higher level. It's thinking about thinking.
And hopefully as we have this conversation, you'll see
that you are thinking. Notice that. One of my colleagues recently said, "Hey,
Paul. Every problem that we have is a problem with thinking."
That's a bold statement. But as I've considered what this colleague shared
with me, I think he might be right.
Every problem I can think of comes down to a problem with thinking.
"What about cancer?" You might ask. Well, interesting. Okay. So, cancer isn't
obviously a thinking problem. But thinking
that it is a problem is the problem. I think i might be quoting Captain Jack
Sparrow from the Pirates of the Caribbean at this point.
Anything that occurs to us is technically a neutral event.
That's going to sound a little foreign to you unless you've already had a
chance to think about that. Everything that happens
is a neutral event. Meaning it just happens. It is what it is.
It takes on meaning through our own interpretation And as we assign
meaning to it with our thinking. That's why every problem that
we face is a problem with thinking. So, just notice that you're doing it. That
you're constantly thinking. I did a reaction video here on the channel
to an interview with Eckhart Tolle love this man in his philosophies.
His book The Power Of Now is really one of the most profound books that I've
read in the past decade. And in this interview,
he pointed out that thinking is actually
the most common and maybe one of the most ingrained addictions
that we have as people. That's kind of a weird thing to say. But think about it. An
addiction is something you can't stop doing even if it's hurting you.
You can see that that's true for drinking or drugs
or other kinds of addictions that can be so destructive in your life.
Thinking, I can't stop even if it's hurting me.
Interesting, well think about it as an addiction a little bit too maybe that'll
help. So, notice that you're doing this thinking and that it has
an impact. For the balance of this video, I'm going to give you
2 hacks, 2 strategies, 2 experiments that you can do right now while we're
doing the video. Stay with me and just try this on, okay? What we want
to do basically is become an observer of our own thinking. I mentioned Eckhart
Tolle earlier and he he suggests that we need to be fully
present and it's really awesome if you can just
stop thinking. Just not think. I'm afraid that unless you're a
guru like he is or some skilled yogi in India somewhere you're not going to be
able to do this very quickly. It's going to take some practice. So,
here's a couple of exercises that we can try.
Now, the first one just follow my lead here
and let's see what happens. I want you to pay attention to what your mind is doing
as I take you from now to now. What happened in between those
two nows? You noticing some interesting things?
Isn't that interesting? Do you want to try it again?
Let's do it again. Now, just watch what your mind is doing
between now and now. Did you notice?
This is so interesting. Most of the people I do this exercise with say,
"Nothing. I was just waiting. I was watching.
I was present in the moment. I wasn't thinking." And you weren't either. You
weren't thinking about all those problems that were bothering you. You
were watching. "Where's Dr. Paul going?" Between now
and now. We just demonstrated something that is so
powerful. In your mind, we can create a little
space of peace where there is no thinking. And it's our
thinking that bothers us. Usually, thinking about the past and
things that have happened or thinking about the future and what's
going to happen which we don't know. But we can predict
things. And because we try to predict things and
sometimes we predict that things are going to be worse,
we feel anxiety. Or if we get stuck in the past we feel
depression or guilt or shame. Right now, being
present and not thinking creates a space of peace.
It's actually quiet in there when we stop the thinking. Isn't that
interesting? So, try that. Just practice it a little
bit as you take yourself from now to now.
Notice what happens. Enjoy that feeling of peace. That's kind of fun, isn't it?
Let me give you one more. For this one, I'm thinking about
an old cartoon that I used to watch --Tom and Jerry.
Are you familiar with it? It's about a cat that's chasing a mouse around.
And the mouse holes in this cartoon are always very intricately designed
archways down in the base molding of the house. And there's furniture and
stuff in there. These are great mouse holes, right? But if
you can picture yourself as the cat and you're crouched in
front of that mouse hole you're just watching it. You're going to wait and see
what pops out. That's what i want you to do with this next exercise
as I invite you to a position where you can simply
watch your thoughts. Let's see what pops out.
Now, I'm going to give you a little prompt. When i give you the prompt,
don't try to think about anything. Don't steer it
in any particular direction. Simply watch like the cat, okay? You're watching that
mouse hole. See what's going to pop out. Watch your mind.
Okay, here's the prompt. I wonder what thought I'll have next?
Now watch.
I wish you could just interact with me live like you could if you were over at
Live On Purpose central. We have some live
groups that we do there. But because I can't hear your answer directly,
I'm going to share with you what some of the common responses are.
What happened in your mind? "Ah, nothing. For... For a minute. But and then I
thought, Oh, I need to go pick up the laundry."
Or "I need to remind the kids to get their homework done."
Whatever, okay? Whatever happened in your mind just notice
this: When i gave you the prompt: "I wonder what thought i'll have next?"
There was a space. Did you notice? Let's try it again. If you
didn't notice, just try it again. Now, remember, you don't
have to think about anything. Don't steer it in any particular direction.
You might have exactly the same experience. It might be totally different.
Either way, it's fine. Let's try it again. Ready? "I wonder
what thought I'll have next?"
Did you notice it that time? There's a little space.
That little space is when your mind is not cluttered up with all of the
thoughts. You know how usually it's really noisy in there.
Thinking about this, you're thinking about that. You can't turn your mind off,
you can't get to sleep because you're thinking about this and thinking about
that. Thinking gets really noisy. In this
experiment that we just did, notice that there was a brief little
space of peace. The natural state of your mind
is peace. This is good news.
That means to get to the peace that we crave,
we got to get past the noise of our own thinking. And we tend to overthink things.
And we don't even do a very good job of it.
Because while we're overthinking, we're busy predicting what's coming.
I did a video last year here on the channel. I'd have to go look it up which
one it actually is. But you might remember this if you follow
the channel where i was rolling dice. Does anybody remember this? I was rolling
dice and i was trying to predict on camera what the dice would say.
And guess what? I missed it every stinking time. I can't predict what
the dice are going to roll. I roll the dice I'm like, "It's going to
be 2 fives." Nope. Okay. Try it again. "It's going to be a 6
and a 3." 2 and a 4. And I'm really bad at
predicting what's going to come. So, are you.
They don't build those big luxurious casinos in Las Vegas based
on winners. No. Because people are enormously bad at
predicting the outcomes when it's based on chance. You don't know
what's coming. You can't predict what's going to happen
tomorrow but you do it all the time. I mean, predict. Even though we're not
accurate. We think that we're right. Oh, things are
going to be so bad tomorrow. You don't know. Notice that you're doing
that thinking. And that's the danger of overthinking
things. Because not only are we inaccurate most of the time.
We're doing it in a way that causes us misery.
The natural state of our mind is peace. Let's see if we can calm some of the
noise and connect to that space that I hopefully demonstrated to you
with that exercise. So, I gave you 2 of them. Maybe you can
use that, practice it. Find a way to calm some of the noise in
your head so that you stop overthinking everything. I am so
honored to be on your team, that you're here and that you
actually watched clear through the video to this point.
If you're still here with me, it means that you're serious
about your personal development. Will you let me help you to upgrade that?
Come over to Live On Purpose Central. I built it for people like you.
The link is in the description.
go.liveonpurposecentral.com. I think you're going to be really
pleased with what you find.