This One is for the Queens of Overthinking

How to Stop Hesitating and Go for What You Want in 5 (Uncomplicated) Steps

One of the things that gets in our way, as in yours in mine, and all of the rest of the Queens of Overthinking, is overthinking. Groan. Who’s surprised?

Overthinking can be caused by fear, insecurity, trauma, or perfectionism. It can also be a symptom of anxiety or depression. Catastrophizing, personalization, and black-and-white thinking contribute to overthinking. It’s not great.

Overthinking can affect how you experience and engage with the world around you?—?preventing you from making important decisions, keeping you from enjoying the present moment, and draining you of the energy it takes to get through life. There are so many ways it holds us back.

So today, please join me in walking through a short exercise?—?5 simple steps?—?to break this unfortunate habit, stop procrastinating, postponing, and hesitating, and accelerate your progress, change something in your life, or create a really big result in a really short time without over-strategizing, over-researching, over-planning, or overthinking. And without totally having to address what lies at the root.

The key to this exercise is to go with your gut. Answer quickly and decisively and move forward without looking back. Deliberation, doubt, and second-guessing are forms of overthinking and to be avoided.

You don’t need additional information to consider all possible options or be overly thoughtful about your choices in this exercise. Right now, prioritize doing even if you’re a planner, strategizer, or overthinker by default.

Step One: Choose One?Thing

Step 1 is to decide which area of your life to address. Where do you want to focus to build traction, gain momentum, or dramatically improve? Or, maybe it’s not a focus to fix but a place you want to move forward, scratch an itch, or do something you’ve been postponing, denying, or stuck.

Now, if we were sitting in person and I was coaching you, I could instantly see it flicker across your face. However, Queens of Overthinking often dismiss their first thought as too easy or too obvious and look for something deeper, more profound, or something that touches more areas of their life. Don’t do that for this exercise. What comes to mind is often a great starting point?—?go with it.

Step Two: Seize the?Moment

Step 2 is to move straight into doing mode as soon as that thought comes to mind. Capture your idea on paper (or send yourself a voice memo): Write down at least three positive things that would happen for you, your family, your life, your well-being, or your finances if you successfully address the topic that came to mind.

Step Three: Simple Little?Plan

Step 3 is to ask yourself this question (and it may turn out to be the most important one in the exercise): If I had to do something about this idea/challenge/topic every day for the next 30 days and I had no more than than 10 minutes a day to give, what could I do?

Step Four: Automate the?Process

Step 4 is to set a daily reminder, preferably at the same time each day, and block ten minutes for the next thirty days to improve/address/resolve Situation X via the method you identified above.

Step Five: Make it?Happen

Step 5 is just do it!

Some common resistance happens at this point. One common block for Queens of Overthinking is overcomplicating the problem and the solution.

So, anything that could be done in 10 minutes a day probably feels too good to be true. Any significant progress in just 30 days seems highly unlikely, particularly if you’ve held on to this idea/topic/challenge for years, and the alarm bells ring…?

“I can’t possibly solve this in 30 days. It’s too big of a challenge. Ten minutes daily is ridiculous. It’s barely worth it. I’ll start later when I can give it more attention. Why bother devoting a few minutes if I have to switch gears as soon as I start? Maybe I should refocus to address something more meaningful, more complex with bigger implications.”

…on and on and on and on?—?Overthinking.

But it’s not necessarily true that the problem or the solution must be big, significant, complex, complicated, or major.

NBD = No Big?Deal

Try to resist the urge to come up with a better, more sophisticated solution. Try to resist the urge to dedicate more than 10 minutes per day. And try to resist the urge to warn yourself not to be disappointed because you secretly think it won’t work or be so easy.

We often wildly overestimate how long it takes to change and wildly underestimate the value of giving something a small fraction of our attention daily. You’ve probably heard me talk about this regarding my favorite apps?—?Duolingo, Grammarly, and the Calm app. Building a streak literally changes you. The result is almost secondary to the practice of consistency. Learning another language, becoming a better writer, sleeping, and meditating better are significant undertakings. They are hard.

Hard things can quickly overtake your life if you make it your mission to do those things. But if you start and keep going, the results outpace the effort.

That’s one dramatic advantage of going for it vs. hesitating. When we expand the problem or the solution, the situation balloons to an impossible size?—?of course, it’s too big to face.

But when we start and keep going, our enthusiasm and optimism can carry us farther than we imagine. Then, when we see ourselves showing up for ourselves or changing how we think about things, we learn new skills and find new tools, and it gets easier.?

Life gets easier when we stop overthinking everything and go after what we want. After a while, you’ll look back, Queen, and see how far you’ve come. You’ll be motivated, stunned, and excited by your progress and want to continue.

Let me explain it one more way. When we’re overthinking, everything’s at the forefront, right? Your brain is always on, constantly sorting through and processing all possible complications, angles, solutions, variables, and stakeholders.?

A million tabs are open; there’s so much math, and you’re endlessly looping through all of it, theorizing, mitigating, modeling, seeking patterns and contingency plans and answers with too much information; it’s a convoluted, exhausting, overwhelming mess.

But when we distill it to 10 minutes of daily action, we set limits that keep us from spiraling out of control. Putting the blinders on and creating conditions eliminates possibilities because we already know that only so much can happen in 10 minutes. These constraints help us move forward.

As a result, instead of looking for the best possible solution that considers all the variables, complications, solutions, angles, and stakeholders, we can move forward with a simplified, streamlined plan that works. And it works, not because it’s the best, but because it’s implementable. It works because it works.

And you don’t hear me say this very often, but when we break the bad habit of overthinking, the most important thing isn’t identifying the most direct path to the best outcome (which, in most cases, I love). The most important thing is to get out of your own way and do something and see what happens!

Going for it frees your mind to engage more because you are in your body or nature, out in the world. Your subconscious gets involved at a higher level. Your gut instincts kick in. Your intuition shows up. You are interacting with tangible things.

When you aren’t using your “Straight A Story Problem Brain” to get the “right answer,” your inner knowing and deep wisdom remind you of your innate strengths, values, experiences, and perspective, and you do what you know how to do.

So it becomes mind-blowing quickly; You can probably already see the possibilities.

Homework

Start today, and follow up with me in 30 days.