Over thinking has been a problem for long. Any advice?

SovereignWings · 2016-10-08T19:21:55+00:00

The trick is to stop thinking about something when additional analysis ceases to provide value.

A good analogy for this is the pottery class.

A class of students is instructed to make clay pots. Half of the class is told to spend the period making just one pot, but to make it as perfectly as possible. The other half of the class is told to make as many pots as they can, regardless if they are perfect or not.

By the end of the class, the students who created multiple pots also ended up creating the highest quality pots. Practice makes perfect.

Applied in life, what this really means is that you let go of responsibility for "controlling" things. All you can do is make the best decision possible with the information you have available. Sometimes it will fail. That's fine. Fail fast, fail cheap, fail often. Learn to fail and not give up and it will become a feeling you can trust as you climb the ladder towards skill and mastery.

Other times you will succeed, but generally you will learn more from your failures. The point is, don't waste all of your time trying to be perfect. Instead, acknowledge that you are imperfect, but keep on doing the best you can and teach yourself to have fun with it.

The goal is to reach a state where you are constantly learning, constantly experiencing 1st time experiences, confident, having fun, innovating, failing, existing.

You also have to internalize your validation system, meaning you need to trust yourself and keep doing what you think is right even if other people approve/disapprove of it. Another big trick is to externalize rejection - realizing that just because someone rejects you, doesn't mean there is something wrong with YOU. Maybe it's them, maybe it's timing, maybe it's because mars is in retrograde, whatever.

Good luck. There is alot to learn here, but if you pay close attention and develop discipline, you can learn to control your mind and prevent it from just grinding gears and getting nowhere.

Title	Over thinking has been a problem for long. Any advice?
Author	CopperTop_To_Neo
Upvotes	0
Comments	2
Date	October 8, 2016 6:38 PM UTC (9 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/askTRP
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/asktrp/comments/56ibka/over_thinking_has_been_a_problem_for_long_any/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/askTRP/over-thinking-has-been-a-problem-for-long-any.75746 https://theredarchive.com/post/75746

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