I am an overthinker by nature. Always have been. As a child, I would lay in bed and replay conversations in my head, thinking of what I should have said. As an adult running a business with my brothers, I can turn a small problem into a long mental movie before breakfast.
For many years I have regarded it as a fixed point of the personality. Just how I was wired. Some people are calm. I think too much. End of story.
It wasn’t me who changed, that’s for sure. These were three small habits that I started doing without planning. Each of these sounds too simple to make a difference. That’s partly why they work.
I started noticing the cycle before I even joined it
The first thing that helped was learning to recognize the feeling of overthinking before I got too deep into it.
Overthinking has a special texture. This is not true thinking. True thinking moves forward. He draws conclusions and stops. Advance circles. Same question, same imaginary conversation, same worst branch and fifteen minutes later you’re somewhere else and the loop is still running at the bottom.
I used to mistake a loop for a productive thought. I would tell myself that I am doing something. Most of the time I just rehearsed.
Now, when I feel that special attraction, the way my mind starts replaying or planning a conversation that hasn’t happened yet, I try to catch it earlier. Sometimes I tell myself quietly, it’s a loop. Not like an order to stop. Just a shortcut. A mark is often enough to break a spell. Once you see this, the loop loses its disguise. Don’t think about it anymore. It’s a habit your brain gets into when it doesn’t know what else to do.
A lot of overthinking goes on because we don’t notice it happening. By calling it, even silently, you create a small gap between you and the spinning.
I move before I let my thoughts get ahead of me
This is the most common of the three and the one I rely on the most.
I usually run in the mornings. Not far, not soon. It’s enough to just get tired in its pure form. When I started doing this consistently, I noticed something I didn’t expect. In the morning when I ran, my overthinking was quieter for the rest of the day. On mornings when I didn’t, my mind would find something to chew on until mid-afternoon.
I’m not sure what the mechanism is. I just know it’s real.
The body and mind are more closely connected than most of us realize. A restless body trying to outrun a busy mind is a losing battle. Move the body first and the mind follows.
If I can’t run, I walk. If I can’t walk, I get up from my desk and do something physical for a few minutes. Tidy up the kitchen. I carry my daughter around the apartment. Stretch on the floor.
The trick is to move before the mind has fully grasped what it wants to grasp. When it’s locked, movement still helps, but it’s much harder to start. You can be in bed at 6am knowing that a run will help and still spend forty minutes thinking. I know because I’ve done it more times than I can count.
The shorter the time between waking up and moving, the easier it is to get through the day.
I write this thought down so I can stop carrying it
The third habit is the slowest to be taken seriously, but it has changed the most over time.
If a thought keeps coming back, I write it down. Not in a journal, not as part of any practice. Only on what is nearby. The back of the receipt, the note, the note app on my phone.
Writing is not for every audience, including me. I rarely reread these notes. The point is that I didn’t put this thought in my head.
Holding a thought in your head is like holding a heavy bag while trying to do anything else. You can do it, but it gets more tiring. The thought keeps tugging at you, demanding your attention, coming back every time you put it down. Once it’s written, your brain seems to recognize that it’s been dealt with, even if nothing is actually resolved. The thought stops circulating because it no longer needs to be reminded of itself.
To make a decision, I sometimes write down the question and the two options, one line below each. Most solutions look smaller on paper than they do in my head. The catastrophic version that worked in a loop turns out to be one of four reasonable scenarios, not the most likely.
With worries, just writing them down often makes me realize that worries are older than today. This repeats itself for weeks. This is useful information in itself.
What do the three have in common
Looking at them together, what these habits have in common is that neither of them thinks better. None of these are about replacing bad thoughts with good ones, finding the right understanding, or learning a new foundation. They all aim to direct the thinking somewhere, not into a cycle.
Notice the loop and name it. Move your body so your mind has less room to spin. Get that thought out of your head so it stops running down the track.
I’m still changing my mind. It hasn’t gone away, and I’m not sure it ever will. But the gap between the start of the cycle and the moment I notice it has shortened significantly. And the moments when I’m completely inside it, not knowing I’m there, are rarer now.
For someone who lived in those moments, that was enough.
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