Contrary to what you may want to believe, our day doesn’t begin by checking emails and texts or planning the day from morning to night. It begins with racing thoughts of not what you want to do today, but what you should be doing today. And what you should have done yesterday. And how impactful your actions today will be towards your future.
You may be tricked into believing you are logically planning for the future or assessing the past so you can learn from it. But more often than not, your mind has conjured scenes from the past and potential future, then compiled them into a movie that plays in a loop.
The movie isn’t even that good. It requires a lot of editing. A dozen retakes because the dialogue wasn’t delivered properly. Or there had to be a rewrite midscene. The costumes were from last season. The people in this fantasy are just staring and not reacting.
If you were a critic and watched that movie, it would have tanked and gotten 0 stars.
But your mind is stuck on that one cable channel, replaying the same episode until you want to scream at it to stop. The screaming happens only in your mind, though. The actual scream gets buried inside of you, festering and threatening to exit at the worst possible moment.
Within a few minutes, you’re already exhausted. You may have given up on exercise, but your brain has run a marathon already. This, in turn, leads to a reminder about getting out of your seat and exercising. Remember what happened to your great-great-grandmother who didn’t run enough? Or that distant uncle who never ate healthy foods and then spent the entire family picnic sitting and scrolling on his phone instead of playing sack races?
You begin to wonder if he is doing okay now? There was a rumor he went to a doctor, and that could only mean…
Stop! You don’t know what actually happened, but your brain is helping you solve a case with limited information. It’s a terrible detective.
Half a day has gone. You have managed some tasks on automatic mode, but mostly your brain has been working overtime. Somehow that feels productive. You are being lied to. Thinking about random things makes you feel you have made good use of your time.
The arguments you had with your family and coworkers feel satisfying. In your mind, you have processed those issues with them and can move forward.
But wait. In reality, you haven’t spoken a word, and your relationships are still strained.
This is why your mind keeps bringing up the same episode: How You Talked To The People In Your Life Who Now Love You.
Since you never got real closure, you overthink different scenarios where you do.
But your mind doesn’t only dwell on relationships. There are other worries in your environment that need looking into. Your past memories. That one incident in another country that you didn’t live in, but how it can impact your life.
Onion prices are high! See, you were right. That random incident in the country has caused grocery prices to surge. Will you be able to afford groceries in the coming month? What if you get fired?
Then you start on a different trail where you anticipate getting fired from your job just because you came in 5 minutes late. Or submitted a report earlier. Or maybe that coworker who was looking in your direction hates you, saw you digging your nose, and complained to HR.
The mind is vast and can come up with endless possibilities of how your life can go down the drain in seconds.
Sometimes it's not even being difficult. You talk to someone new, nod and move away, then realize that you should have said something else to end the conversation. Or maybe gotten their contact details. Instead, you said bye and left? They probably hate you now.
By this time, your brain is already doing a retake, where you manage to end the conversation well. Or if you haven’t eaten yet and are lacking fuel, it is ending in a far more embarrassing way, where you have something stuck between your teeth, and someone saw it, or you slip on a banana peel in front of a crowd.
The brain never lets you down. It can come up with the most catastrophic version of any incident.
So…what is the point of overthinking?
It’s not that the brain is idle. It has a lot of thinking to do and wants to feel good.
It’s you who avoids difficult conversations. It is you who seeks perfection in everything… your idea of perfection anyway.
You aren’t able to accept that life is sometimes a compilation of happy and sad moments, and also increasingly embarrassing moments. It’s not a perfectly edited movie, even though we are highly influenced by them.
So we overthink. Yes, it’s not only you who gives the brain a mental cardio every day. We all are guilty of it, but we end up telling others, “Hey, quit worrying or overthinking. You need to relax.”
But we are definitely not relaxing, are we?
We desire control over every aspect of your life, but life isn’t rewarding you because you ran those scenarios a dozen times in your head. You may be convinced that you have come up with every possible outcome, but Life is like, “Hey, bet you didn’t see this twist coming.”
And of course, you didn’t. All that overthinking, and you couldn’t even predict the most surprising twist life has given you.
Have you learned your lesson? Have you realized that overthinking doesn’t lead to anything?
Not really. The next day, you wake up as the same old you who wants things to be easy. Who wants conversations to be lighter? Who wants to get through the day without a scratch?
Your mind doesn’t approve of your resolution to do so and churns the residues of past memories and current memories into a disgusting slop that replays in your head.
At the end of our daily overthinking exercise, we don’t get medals or trophies. We do get tension headaches and less sleep.
And if you’re lucky, a nightmare of the exact thing you were overthinking about.
So yes, we overthink. We spiral. We catastrophize. We rehearse conversations that will never happen.
And life still shows up unscripted.
Maybe the point isn’t to stop overthinking. Maybe it’s just to stop believing every ridiculous plot twist our brain throws at us.
Because honestly? If our minds were actual filmmakers, they’d be out of business.
Comments
Post a Comment