The Ruination of Rumination. Can you relate? A recent graduate from Pure Coaching Academy described herself as a “recovering overthinker”. How brave, we all thought, how honest.
Would you fess-up to such a condition? The ability to devote countless lost hours, days of dimmed joy and the sleepless nights that follow because you’re hooked on the ruination of rumination.
We have all done it. We could get a bumper sticker saying Overthinkers Do It In Our Sleep such is our commitment to the cause.
Let’s break it down and then look at how to stop rumination. What is really going on behind the scenes of a fully paid-up member of Overthinkers Anon:
- A need for certainty
- A desire to control the outcome
- Insecurity
- Distrust of self/others/life
- Fear of failure
- Inability to commit
- A need for perfection
- Risk aversion
- Doubt
- Distrust
- Fear
Big life changes do indeed need consideration and choosing important new directions does take time. But slip streaming into anxiety and catastrophizing every possible outcome can collapse your world into one of regret.
If you are an academic or a poet in residence this can legitimately be strung out for some time and is totally acceptable behaviour for the dissertation or thought piece that it will produce.
For most of us, however, it is a halting mechanism, a rather sophisticated styling out of the concept of avoidance. It’s procrastination with a PhD.
I may set a client homework and check on progress and if the response is “I’ve been reflecting” I know this is an excuse dressed as a scholarly side-step.
Rarely is overthinking a great investment.
It is like throwing a stone in a washing machine, pressing fast spin and jamming it so it goes around in perpetuity. Like a hamster in a wheel our thoughts go spinning, gaining momentum, rarely coming up with a novel solution other than the ones you have initially considered but can’t face.
You will lose sleep, opportunities and life passes you by as you strike your best Rodin’s The Thinker pose, scratch imaginary goatees and look studiously intense.
But what does it give you? Usually analysis paralysis.
Invest in Hope Not Doubt
If you can put your hands up and admit to being part of Overthinking Anon here are a few tips to help you get out of that rut and into life’s groove:
- Park all your thoughts and options on a big piece of paper – draw arrows from one thought to another and write out what the real solutions are even if you are scared looking at them.
- Get a download doula. Ask a good friend to sit with you as you allow your thoughts a free fall unload and accept the feedback they offer.
- Ask yourself “what is the best that can happen?” and adjust your mindset to the positive. Stop catastrophising. Get perspective. Take a risk. It makes for a life well lived.
- What will happen if you do nothing? Wind the clock forward and play out that scenario. Now run the same story of you taking the risk – how does that look?
- Understand that being uncomfortable is all part of change and the good stuff lies on the other side of the comfort zone.
- And the most important point of all – take a step. Even the smallest one.
- Get out of your thoughts, commit, sign up, take action and in the spirit of curiosity step forward knowing that whatever happens you will deal with it.
Want to start living on purpose? Learn more about how to stop remuneration? Book that free chat with me now.