The Overthinking Cure

brittle things break before they bend.

My heart is beating fast > I must be nervous > I shouldn’t be nervous, I’ve done this a thousand times before

Take the time to imagine that your problem is actually happening to a close friend of yours and not you. Pull out all your ego and assumptions and resistances and excuses and just look at the plain facts of the story.

Actively notice what causes you to feel anxious or out of control. Pause and write these down somewhere.

emporal distance is distance in time. When we’re feeling reactive, anxious, or overwhelmed by strong emotion, time seems to stop and we lose the ability to clearly think about the future clearly. But if you can slow down and remind yourself of the future consequences, or remember that the present moment is not going to last forever, you give yourself some breathing room in time. In our example, you could actively tell yourself, “I’m upset right now, but I’ll sleep on it and I know I’ll be thinking more clearly tomorrow morning.”

Panic and fear shrink our perspective and rob us of the ability to choose the best for ourselves, whereas conscious awareness opens our field of view and lets us make healthier choices.

You are curious about the new, not fearful of it

Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you deal with it.
– John Maxwell

We accept what we cannot control.
We commit to taking action with the things we can in order to better our lives.

Find your values
Awareness in itself is extremely valuable. But the power of ACT is that we can become aware, and then put that awareness into a bigger context.

What actually matters to us?

What do we care about most?

What kind of people do we want to be?