Human beings have a natural capability to think and plan their next move and we do it very well as well. We use it to solve problems, make progress in our lives, and sometimes even live out completely hypothetical scenarios in our mind to make critical decisions. It is a wonderful thing that our mid allows us to do that but it also has a drawback that is, we sometimes think too much. Upto the point where we become paralyzed to continue forward at all. This defeats the whole purpose of this wonderful ability and it then becomes a liability to your goal instead. Now you may be thinking that you are not affected by it that much and your thinking process is completely logical, but there is a possibility that you can be limiting yourself without even realizing it for now. There is no way to know the difference between thinking and overthinking if it is happening to you but the latter causes you to overwhelm yourself and make a mistake. It is always easier for someone around you to know this distinction but it is very hard to trust someone else in that state as the consequences will have to be borne by you. It helps here to have yourself surrounded with people you trust to have your best interests in their mind.
Focus on Things That You Can Control
We have a natural tendency to think about things in vivid details even when we have no authority to change them. There are two such things in particular that are stopping you in your tracks and you can easily stop overthinking about them should you be conscious of when that is happening.
First one is the past, more specifically your past mistakes. We often think that pondering over our past mistakes is a good thing so we do not repeat them but thinking about measures to avoid similar mistakes is different from wishing that they never occurred in the first place. If you ever find yourself thinking about scenarios where you ever made a mistake then you should immediately realize that you are now overthinking. What it makes you feel is not motivation about where you could have been had you not made that mistake but rather only sadness and anger that you made that mistake. Focus on not making the same mistakes in your present and nothing else. That is all you can control from your past and everything else is only going to add more weight on you to stay in the past.
Second one is thinking about the future. Yes, you read it correctly. Surprisingly enough, your future is also not something that you can control. You can only change your present and have it influence your future in the same way but even then there are no guarantees for you. Many people stop themselves in their track or panic by thinking about all the things that can go wrong in the future. Similarly, some people tend to think too much about the positive scenario and how it would feel if everything went according to their plan. You might be wondering here that both of them sound pretty reasonable as thinking about the negative scenarios can help you prepare for them in advance whilst thinking about the positive scenarios gives you motivation to turn them into a reality. And you are right, they are both very plausible even if they are not in our control except for the fact that focusing on them takes away your focus from something which is in your control i.e. your present. If you want to think about everything(every aspect of something) then you will never actually do anything because both of these things require time and you will always have limited amount of time for all things in your life. The best way is to find the middle-ground and work from there. That is, think about what can go wrong and how can you prevent it and what will happen if things go right today or in the near visible future only. Your main focus is always on your present and as long as you made progress today then you made headway towards reaching your goal, even if that goal is miles away for now.
Find An Optimal Comparison
We all know that having a competitor pushes you to perform your best and make more progress towards reaching your goal by keeping you more focused. That is why it is always recommended to surround yourself with good company i.e. people you respect and admire, so you can push yourself to reach the same level as them. However, it is not always true that you will have more success by comparing yourself to others. If you compare yourself with something that is too far ahead then you will only feel overwhelmed and maybe even dejected at your current state. Lets take an example of you learning to play Chess. If you are just starting out then you will have to accustom yourself o the rules of the game first and then figure out how to make the best moves. This is very challenging as it is and you will often lose more games than you win. In such instances, if you compare yourself with a Chess Grandmaster who has spent more than 10 years in learning this one game only and is now able to think multiple steps ahead of their opponent then you can easily lose hope in your current situation and think that you will never be able to reach that level. That is why you should find comparison among your peers so that it is challenging but not hopeless and keep moving forward from there.
Over the internet today, it is very easy for us to find people who are the best at just about anything that we are only just starting out with and what we may find impossible for us today can actually just be years and years of devotion by that person. Your comparison to this extreme is completely invalid and serves only to overwhelm yourself. Instead, we should find challenge within our peers who are not that far ahead but still better than us and if that is not possible then you should just compare yourself to your past version and keep repeating it and keep making success each day and every day.
Conclusion
All in all, you should focus on whatever it is that you are doing and keep making stead progress. Instead of spending time on thinking about your past or your future, just keep the grind going for the task at hand. Do not let yourself feel discouraged by someone else’s success. You should celebrate their success and focus only on working at yourself to improve every day. Whenever it is that feel too overwhelmed and want to give up, just remember that you are now at a better place then where you started from. Even if a person who tried to climb the stairs and fell to the same level as the person who did nothing, he is actually still at a better place than the second person because he has started already and at least knows what doesn’t work. The second person will never know whether he will be able to climb his stair or not unless he starts. Never stop in the middle and keep going without giving up. Good luck!
