The Biggest Cause For Unhappiness

You probably guessed it: the biggest cause for unhappiness is overthinking. Overthinking ruins friendships and relationships. Overthinking creates problems you never had. Being in your head too much prevents you from fully living.

In our complex world, we need to make things simpler. There is a deluge of information available to us, and some people are too smart for their own good and overthink, overanalyze and overexplain just about everything. We can allow our brains to be on all the time: running, spinning, obsessing, and getting caught up in analysis paralysis. This is what Buddhists call the “monkey mind,” the mind that races, is bored and anxious, and skips unhappily from feeling to feeling, trying to outrun those that are least pleasant. Overthinking and ruminating can become such a habit that you don’t even recognize when you’re doing.

The solution is we need to ramp up our self-awareness and mindfulness abilities. Ask yourself, “What am I saying to myself?” Notice it and start to break the pattern sooner than you have in the past.

To break the pattern and shift our focus, there are several options. A few deep breaths and exhaling longer than you inhale can do wonders. Or find a distraction. A mindless game, puzzle, sudoku, Zen tangle, etc. Take a nature pill by going for a walk. Practice ignoring the mental noise and keeping it in the background.

If all else fails, reducing the noise to writing is one of the best things you can do. Our head is not a great place to organize, adjudicate, get clear on, or challenge our thinking. Writing it out on paper, on a keyboard, dictating it, or keeping a journal are techniques that can work to defeat the negative thoughts with logical, fact and evidence-based rebuttals.

However you accomplish it, get it done and give yourself a break from overthinking. It’s okay to not know all the answers. They’ll come to you in time. You can’t control everything. Just let it be.