Overcome Overthinking with One Simple Journaling Technique
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When Nothing Else Works, Try This.
I don’t want to stress you out, dear reader, with the details of the pit of overthinking that I fell into today.
Barely able to speak, and definitely not capable of full sentences, I could not focus on one. single. thing.
My mind was a wild beast, ferociously trying to go off in at least five different directions at the same time. I could not keep up, and I couldn’t keep track of all of the thoughts.
If overthinking burned calories, I’d be dead.
Send help.
You see, I’ve set myself a goal of writing every day this month. Today I chose the mother of all topics to write on. Or rather — and this is the issue — it chose me.
This wasn’t a bash-it-out-in-half-an-hour kind of post.
It felt more like a book.
It required research, and arguments, and copious amounts of Post It Notes. It definitely needed more than 24 hours.
Why on a Sunday, inspiration? Why did you choose today?
My daily writing challenge is basic. It’s not about writing eloquent, earth-shattering, life-changing pieces. It’s just about the process. It’s about getting shit done.
These meaty, chunky, motherforkers of ideas — this challenge is not for them.
I don’t have the focus for it. And I definitely don’t have the time for it. And that’s exactly the kind of thing that triggers overthinking and dials up my anxiety levels.
So having placed an arbitrary and unrealistic deadline on myself to get a piece written, and for some crazy reason having accepted the challenge presented by this particular idea — over the course of the day, I began to seriously stress myself out.
It was not coming together.
Rome was not completed in a day — and nor was this particular idea meant to be.
My anxiety had reached somewhere in the stratosphere, and I — no shit — began to panic.
