“They muddy the water, to make it seem deep.”
These were the words of the great German Philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche. It happens to every human being; this statement simply means to overthink and complicate something. Most of the time it is unnecessary, but we do it anyway.
Overthinking is the art of creating problems that never existed. Why do we overthink things? Why do we feel the need to second-guess what is really going on with what we think is going on? We are dying from overthinking. We are slowly killing ourselves by thinking about everything. When we’re faced with a crisis, or if we have an important decision to make, many of us fall into the trap of overthinking. You get stuck on a thought wheel that goes repeatedly with no break and no insight whatsoever. It’s the kind of thinking that does nothing but perpetuate its own existence.
Sometimes what a person says is exactly what they mean; there is nothing up for discussion. Unfortunately, most times we come up with a lot of explanations that does no good to anyone. Overthinking is what creates problems from nothing and is probably the leading cause of disagreements and future troubles. Many people falsely believe that by overthinking certain things, they can come up with a better solution, but it goes to waste most times. There are little to no benefits to overanalysing any given situation. The only thing that will do is cause unnecessary stress and anxiety. The more time a person analyses a decision, the more time this person makes themselves vulnerable to negative thinking. Rational decisions can become clouded when a person lingers on them for too long. The motivation and drive behind the initial idea can and will start to obscure. If we always overthink about negative outcomes, you can never do anything that you truly want to do and can’t have fun.
“Fear doesn’t go away,” said Steven Pressfield in The War of Art. “The warrior and the artist live by the same code of necessity, which dictates that the battle must be fought anew every day.”
It’s easy to believe that it’s an external battle of removing distractions and trying to control our environment, but what champions and successful artists understand is that the internal battle is where the war is won. The battle inside is many times lost because of the extra work we do on our thinking factors. Happy people don’t overthink things. They decide to stick with something and go with it, for better or for worse. The people that we aspire to become, the people that are ahead of us, they never got there by endlessly worrying about things and going nowhere. You cannot reach your goal and find happiness until we stop overthinking and start living.
The head thinks the heart knows!