Block 30 Minutes as Overthinking Hour (OH) on Your Calendar & Stop the Habit in Its Track.
Plus 8 More Tried & Tested Hacks to Get You to Start Enjoying Life All Over Again.
Once a rocket crosses the threshold of escape velocity, it takes off. A negative spiral of emotions works much the same way. When the momentum of repetitive negative thoughts has crossed a certain threshold, it acquires a massive velocity of its own. Then it becomes nearly impossible to get out of the loop. Overthinking is a self-perpetuating negative spiral of anxiety and fear. Fear about imaginary irrational situations in the future, being auto triggered by the mind due to some stimulus in the present.
If you are an overthinking wart (you constantly overthink to the point of mental fatigue), then you are obviously not able to enjoy the day to day activities of life. Overthinking has become a part of your habituated routine much like breathing. How do you interrupt such a pervasive mental thought pattern and start to live life all over again.
Two years ago, some situation in my family had triggered an overthinking loop in my mind. I decided to seek the help of a therapist to rescue me out of the self-perpetuating cycle.
I present to you a suggestion she gave and some of my own super effective hacks that I have used to help me get out of the overthinking loop and start re-living life all over again.
1.) Change your external environment
My therapist suggested I should keep changing my environment. It can be something as simple as changing the room that you normally sit in to another room. It is called, ‘change station.’ When we change the environment or the room that we are constantly in, we change our mood and hence change our thoughts.
I not just changed my room, I started going to different coffee shops. It certainly proved to pierce through the veil of dark thoughts that had gripped my life. But it didn’t happen in a day.
Proved to be a mood lifter — going to a coffee shop and getting myself a hot cuppa cappuccino and enjoying the ambience. The stimulating aroma of cappuccino and coffee beans being churned, the interesting sounds of people chit-chatting and busy on their laptops did me a world of good. The smells, sights and sounds are a sure way to get out of your own head and into the now, at least temporarily. People watching is a great stress buster. You see new faces, new activities — some are enjoying coffee, some are devouring croissants, some are working on their laptops, some are having conversations in an animated way. So fun to observe. It entertains your mind without the need to overthink.
Another thing I tried was that I would go window shopping. Or go to the flea markets. But I would refrain from buying anything. I did not want a burn a hole in my pocket. The sheer variety of products and services being sold added some colour in my mind’s eye and helped break the monotony of the mind numbing overthinking loop.
Now what I’m going to discuss below is a practice I did which was not recommended by any therapist. But it worked like a charm. You must try it out.
2.) Wear a women’s ponytail rubber-band on your wrist. Each time you catch yourself overthinking, snap the rubber-band onto your wrist.
That should serve as a reminder that you need to disengage from your overthinking instantaneously. If you do it a couple of times, you are breaking the loop of the continuous overthinking stream and catching it off guard.
When something is interrupted often enough, the vicious cycle begins to break.
To break the monotony, use a different coloured band on each day. Supposing you start with a hot pink coloured band on Monday, use a striped or multicoloured band on Tuesday. Probably a forest green one on Wednesday and so on. Repeat the hot pink one on next Monday. It will help you monitor progress.
Note that in the subsequent week with the hot pink colour, did you snap the rubber-band a fewer number of times than the previous week. That means you are making progress.
Something else that I did to break the pattern that was again, not recommended by my therapist but worked out well. Give this one a go:
3.) Ruthlessly block time on your calendar for overthinking.
Schedule time in a fixed block, especially for overthinking. What does this mean?
Let’s say you allot a half hour slot for overthinking post lunch. Have it chalked out on your calendar as overthinking hour (OH).
What this will do:
When you wake up and catch yourself overthinking, tell yourself that you cannot overthink now. Tell yourself that you will get dedicated time to overthink for a complete 30 minutes. And that during that slot you can overthink to your heart’s content. It may be challenging at first, since you are operating from an autopilot overthinking loop and cannot disengage your mind from it, at will.
But the firmer you are at telling yourself that you can overthink only during Overthinking Hour (OH), the easier it gets. The more benefits you are accruing towards your mental health.
Spare the rod and spoil the child. Your overthinking mind is the mischievous child that has gotten out of hand. You have to be firm rather strict with it, especially in the beginning. Overthink only in your OH.
You will find that when there you actually come into OH, the mind will not want to overthink. That is so because the mind hates being watched. You are watching your overthinking thoughts and telling them to be operative at a fixed time, for a fixed duration of time. Your mind enjoys running on autopilot. Being told to overthink at a specific time is too much authority for your mind to deal with. It will retaliate. The thoughts have gained so much momentum that they like to run on auto pilot, and do not like to take orders from you.
Something else that you will have to deal with at first:
You must ensure that after the overthinking hour (OH), your over active thoughts do not spill over into your rest of the day. This routine will take a little bit of getting used to. But if you can follow through with this practice, you will be able to outperform the overthinking habit for good in three weeks to seven weeks time. Stick with it. Do not abandon it midway. All good things take time.
4.) What we consume affects our habits, behaviours and mental thought patterns. Grab a book like ‘The Power of Now,’ by Eckhart Tolle.
He talks about how the only thing you ever have is the present moment. Highlight passages in the book that talk about the strength of the present moment.
He says that every problem you have is in the past of the future.There is no person who has a problem in the present moment.
I present to you a quote from the book:
“Realise deeply that the present moment is all you have. Make the NOW the primary focus of your life.”
— Eckhart Tolle, ‘The Power of Now’
5.) Engage with nature. Go for a walk on the beach. Soak in the beauty of nature. Immerse yourself in the sounds of the waves crashing on the shore, the smell and taste of salt in the air.
Immerse your senses in the invigorating brush of the crisp sea breeze tingling against your skin. If there is no beach, go to the local park and walk barefoot on the grass. Walking barefoot on the grass will have an earthing effect as well. Walking on the grass is so therapeutic. It calms the mind and is a break from the endless loop of overthinking.
6.) Make a practice of jotting down 5 good things that occurred during the day in your Gratitude Journal.
It could be a call from a friend, waking up to a beautiful sunrise, enjoying your favourite meal with a loved one. It could be a pleasant surprise from the Universe like going to a store on a hunch, and finding a gorgeous dress in your favourite colour and your size at a discount, lying on the rack. Deliberately find excuses to be grateful for, in life.
Whatever we put our emotional energy towards, is what expands.
For all this time, your emotional energy was invested in overthinking.
To break out of the loop, start a gratitude journal.
Begin with listing 5 things you are grateful for in the day.
Slowly and gradually expand the practice to include 10 things you are grateful for during the week.
Then every fortnight, you should have a practice of writing 15 surprise elements that occurred that brightened up your mood and gladdened your heart.
Attach an emotional component each time you express gratitude. Feel the emotion.
The more you feed into your gratitude journal, the easier you will shift the energy from overthinking mode to a grateful mindset.
7.) You have to start to look for a community to engage with.
Oft times it has been observed that when we are overthinking and in a spell of anxiety , we isolate ourselves socially. We need to find people who spark joy in us. Participate in ‘a paint and sip’ event. Go for a book club meeting. Go for city walks. Participate in cooking or photography workshops. Join a hobby class. Engaging with new faces and unleashing a novelty of experiences will release dopamine and serotonin in the brain. That will help break your habit loop of overthinking. When repeated often, these simple pleasures and choices of life will expand your joy quotient in life. It will help you overcome your learned helplessness.
8.) Try hypnosis. Try scripted hypnosis audios to help you snap out of the overthinking loop.
There is a plethora of options available online across thousands if not millions of sites. A hypnosis script helps to relax your mind and gets your conscious mind out of the way. It speaks directly to your subconscious mind. Many times it has a metaphor planted in the script. The metaphor when communicated to your subconscious mind in a state of deep trance is so powerful that it instantaneously makes the mindset shift. You will go from overthinking mode to being mentally present in the now. If the hypnosis tracks are heard often enough, you may be able to get out of the overthinking loop sooner than you had anticipated.
9.) Of course, a meditation and a mindfulness practice will do wonders for you.
But these practices are difficult to initiate during an overthinking loop, if one is not already into the practice of meditating. Meditation should be done at the same time and the same place everyday. You can light candles, use a diffuser with your favourite essential oil to create an ambience of tranquillity. You enter your meditation space as that sacred hour, where you will quieten the mental chatter by chanting a mantra or focusing on your breath. When your mind goes astray, remind yourself of your ‘why’- Why are you doing it in the first place?
It is because you are craving clarity of thought.
You want to be mentally present in the now.
If practiced regularly, the benefits are manifold and nip overthinking in the bud.
