11 Mental Tricks to Stop Overthinking Everything

This is a formula, a ratio, for how you should calculate how you value yourself, based on 90 percent self-worth, 10 percent assigned worth.

Ninety percent should come from your self-acceptance and self-appreciation, and just 10 percent from that occasional sliver of external validation we all need.

Overthinkers distort the formula, even reversing it by acting like 90 percent of their worth comes from what others think or say. So they worry, which takes the form of--you guessed it--overthinking.

Overthinkers read too much into things. Why? They’re assuming something bad lies underneath, something like a bad perception, someone wishing them ill, or an unfavorable outcome.

When you catch yourself doing this, switch your assumption to what you're reading into was well-intended, or at least neutral. The vast majority of the time, it really is, so why not act like it?

News flash: You can’t read the future, you can’t read minds, and you can’t know everything. So don’t try. Thinking harder doesn’t activate the crystal ball.

A Buddhist chaplain once taught me how to handle uncertainty. I remember his teachings as an acronym: OAR. Observe uncertainty, don’t overreact to it. Acknowledge the presence of uncertainty and accept that impermanence is inevitable. Realize that uncertainty brings benefits, like unleashing creativity and resilience.

Overthinkers keep asking themselves “what if,” which is an impossible question to answer. If you catch yourself asking “what if,” quickly switch it to “we’ll see,” which is a way of moving past analysis paralysis to acceptance.

By this I mean stop spending so much time in your head. Get outside it and switch gears to connect with what's going on around you so you can take joy in it. It can be dark and foreboding inside that head of yours, no?

Overthinking also comes from overworrying about the worse-case scenario, which of course no one wants to experience.

But ask yourself, “What is the probability the undesirable outcome will actually occur?” Odds are, not very high.

Related to the above, this means stop taking small details and turning them into questionable conclusions. Stop making a mountain out of a molehill. Unlike at the mall, this kind of escalator lifts nobody up.

We often feel the need to overthink because we simply fear being wrong.

Ask yourself in such moments what the realistic cost of being wrong is. When you can lower the stakes, you raise your ability to get mentally unstuck.

So don’t overthink it. Take the inspiration here and run with it. Without looking back.