if I asked you what was the most addictive substance in the world, what would you say? If you ask me, the most addictive substance known to mankind is something that you and me get high on every single day, thinking it's the biggest addiction in the world. [Music] Now, you might not be used to seeing overthinking as an addiction, but if you're here watching this video, at the very least, you recognize that it's a serious problem in your life. Now, overthinking causes emotional pain, low self-esteem, lack of self-belief, lack of self-love. It's a huge blocker in terms of achieving your true potential in life, living peacefully, contentedly, joyfully, and just living life the way you would really want to. Now, in this video, we're going to cover three things. One, why overthinking is a problem. Two, we're going to take a closer look at what's really going on when we're thinking. And three, we're going to look at how we can stop overthinking. What can we do in our lives?

to reduce the burden of overthinking. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope you find it useful. Without further ado, let's go into number one: why overthinking is a problem. Now, if I ask you what's wrong with thinking, you might tell me, Well, there's nothing really wrong with thinking, and you're right. There's nothing wrong with thinking in and of itself. Honestly, it's a magical gift—our ability to visualize abstract things, to conceptualize things, to be able to label objects in reality with words in our mind. It allows us to come up with things like maths, literature, culture, philosophy. All the biggest changes that have radically improved the quality of life for human beings over the past, well, thousands of years really, have all come from thought. So, it's really tempting to take a stance where we glorify thinking, and to an extent, we already do this. We glorify academics, we glorify geniuses like Einstein and Newton, and don't get me wrong, they are geniuses and they should be respected for their contributions to humanity, but

the real question is: what role does thinking play in your life right now? What role do we want it to play in our lives at the moment? For most of us, and myself included, don't get me wrong, thinking is like a constant companion. You wake up in the morning, you're thinking. You're brushing your teeth, you're thinking. You're taking a shower, you're thinking. And maybe you're not thinking. Maybe you're distracting yourself instead with some sort of mindless activity. Maybe you're scrolling on your phone, spending all your free time watching Netflix. I mean, you're watching a YouTube video right now. So why do we do all these things? Why do we distract ourselves, whether it's with drugs, with technology, with entertainment, with people even? We're distracting ourselves because we are tired of this voice that is constantly talking in our heads, and we don't like what it's saying. I mean, just take an average day. Look at the things that you're actually saying to yourself. How many of these things are useful, true, or even positive? I mean

if I'm being honest with myself, I'm constantly being critical about what I'm doing, what I could be doing better, what I should be doing instead, worrying about the next thing that I should be doing, mulling over what I should have done in the past. So much negative chatter that we feel is going to bring us some kind of value. We feel that our thinking is useful, but you need to take a step back and look at it and ask how much is it really serving me, how much is it really moving me forward, or how much is it just tearing me down. Your mind can become your own personal prison of anxiety, doubt, depression, self-hatred, low self-esteem. Literally, every single mental health problem, I think, is a result of overthinking and an inability to separate yourself from your thoughts. Picture this: if you could just press pause and have no more thoughts until you wanted to think again, really just serene silence. That's peace. That's what inner peace is. It's not being constantly bugged by this annoying little in

your head. I would even go as far as to say that what we're really all looking for is that kind of peace, that relief. I mean, you're constantly hounding after whatever goal it is that you have, whether it's to get a better job, whether it's to get into college, whether it's to ask out that girl you've been meaning to ask out. Every time we have a sort of goal, we're trying to get towards it. What we really are seeking is not achieving that goal, but it's the feeling that that goal will give us. It's that state or that sensation that we can finally relax and go. It's a state of serenity, of calm, where you don't have to be thinking or striving for the next thing. We all want, whether we realize it or not, is to not be a slave to our thinking anymore. Now, this brings us on to point number two, which I think is really neglected, and that is looking carefully at what is thinking. Any problem in life, once you understand the problem

the solution becomes obvious in our culture. We're so used to looking for those hacks, those simple, easy, quick fixes. We're very solution-focused. You might see a lot of videos about how to stop overthinking, three simple steps to reduce thinking, to reduce anxiety, to reduce worry, to feel better about yourself. But ultimately, all these solutions will never really bring us to where we want to go because we haven't taken the time to understand what the problem is. So, what is overthinking? What causes overthinking? There's many ways to look at this problem, but I think one of the most useful ways is to start from our own first-person subjective point of view. We all experience life through the lens of our own consciousness. Look out onto the world. I mean, right now, you're holding a phone. You might be looking at your computer. You see a screen. You see colors. You see light. Look around you. You see your surroundings, your room. Maybe you're outside. You hear the sounds, the birds, whatever it is. We all experience these sensations through our sensory

perceptions, but there's another dimension to experience that we're all very intimately familiar with beyond just sense, sight, smell, hearing. There's also thinking. We experience our thoughts, but we feel these thoughts as objects in our experience. We also experience emotions: sadness, anger, jealousy, shame, guilt. These are all things that we feel, and we generally tend to feel these in our body. Now, I think it's very important to bring this sort of spatial mapping of thinking and feeling into your awareness to understand where you feel and experience these things because it helps you take a step back and observe what's going on. Now suppose you're having a really anxious moment. You're really worrying about something that's coming up, maybe a decision that you have to make that you don't know what to choose, and it's has you and not. We've all been in this kind of situation where we feel like our head is a washing machine. We can't stop thinking or worrying or analyzing about a problem, even though we desperately want to. It's like we just keep getting sucked back

into it into a spiral that goes deeper and deeper, has us feeling worse and worse. And so sometimes all you want to do is just curl up in a ball and give up. Now, what's happening here? What is this spiral? If you look at it carefully, what's going on is actually this feedback loop between your emotions and your thoughts. You might feel that feeling of anxiety come up, and before you even know it, your mind will go, Oh, there's that feeling again. Why am I anxious again? God damn it. It must be about that decision that I have to make. And then you start revisiting, and you have the same conversations with yourself again and again. These anxious feelings lead to anxious thoughts, and those anxious thoughts feed back into the feelings that you feel and amplify them until you're stuck in this loop that you can't get out of. It's very important to understand the mechanics of overthinking because the root cause of overthinking, the spark that sends you on the spiral, is not your thoughts in and of themselves. It's that emotional

pain that starts it and how you respond to that emotional pain. What the mind is ultimately trying to do, it's not trying to you up, it's trying to fix your emotional discomfort. There's the desire to get rid of the discomfort and then what you're used to using as a tool to solve that is thinking, and that's the problem because your thinking is actually unable to heal you of that pain. You need to resort to other methods. So, what are these methods? Let's get into them. Let's move on to point number three. How do we actually stop this overthinking? There's three things that I found have helped me personally, and I really sincerely hope that you find them helpful too. So, for me, number one was increasing my awareness of my body. You can't fix overthinking by thinking. It took me a long time to accept this. I've always been someone who's been able to solve problems with my mind. It was really difficult for me to swallow the fact that my mind, which had served me so much in my life

was not going to get me out of this situation. I had to shift my awareness, my attention down into my body, because that's where emotions are felt. Resolving this emotional pain is the ultimate cure to overthinking. Two things that have helped me out super much are yoga and Brazilian jiu-jitsu. Practices really force you to put your attention into all parts of your body and form a much more healthy relationship with it, and a much better intuitive understanding of what your body is capable of and how your body is feeling. Now, I can recommend this channel. It's called Breathing Flow. It's this couple that travel the world and make amazing, super clear, no-nonsense yoga videos for men and women, for athletes, for regular people. And one of the best things that I've found on YouTube has been their introductory course on yoga. It's like a 28-day course that you follow every day, and it really helps you build a habit of connecting with your body. I'll link it down below. I really

recommend you check it out. Solution number two to overthinking. Now, there's no surprise that this has made it to the list, and this is meditation. What is meditation? It's a difficult question to answer, but effectively, it's when you sit with yourself and do nothing. Doing nothing is actually really difficult because we're so entrenched in this habit of always trying to do something, whether it's thinking about something or getting distracted by all the things that are going on around us. To actually just let your awareness sit in a relaxed fashion and not focus on any one thing in particular, it takes a lot of practice and a lot of patience. And this is something that only you can really do for yourself. You can listen to me talk on this video, and maybe that's helpful, but ultimately, all I can do is point you to look at the right places within your own experience, within your own consciousness, to understand what really is true about life. Now, there's many different ways or approaches to training yourself to the point where you can actually

do this kind of free-flowing meditation where you're not focused on anything. A lot of traditions will have you focus on the breath or to use some sort of repeated chant or phrase called a mantra. Now, you gotta explore and find what works for you. In future videos, I will talk about different kinds of meditation techniques, what works for me, and what works for different kinds of people, but that's for another time. All I'll say right now is if you've not tried meditating, try meditating, and if you have tried meditating, try meditating some more. Now we move on to number three. This is a personal favorite of mine and has really catalyzed my spiritual growth or awakening process, and this is actually reading. There's a lot of books out there that fall into their own class of books. I would call these books spiritual literature. These authors who are genuinely spiritually realized beings, they communicate from a level deeper than the mind. It's as if their soul is speaking directly to your soul.

and when you read these things, if it's the right moment for you to take in that lesson, it shakes you to your core. I've never experienced anything like this before reading these kinds of books. It's a kind of truth where you don't have to convince yourself that it's true. You don't have to follow any kind of argument. You hear it, and on a deep level, in your core, you just know it's true. And I feel these are honestly the most powerful truths that are available to us today, especially in an age where so many things are confusing, of so many different sources of information flowing into our lives. These kinds of deep spiritual truths that have been true forever, that are accessible to all of us if we look within ourselves. These are ultimately the keys to unlocking our happiness and fulfillment. Now, two spiritual books that have really touched my soul and I recommend to everyone who asks me are The Power of Now and The Untethered Soul. I'll link them both below. I really recommend you check them out.

and let me know how you found them. Now, I also take this chance to plug my own writing. Before I started this YouTube channel, I started a little blog where I try to basically talk myself through some of these understandings that I've been coming to that have helped me progress in my life. I'll link that below as well. If you visit my website, you'll see that I also offer free one-to-one coaching. Ultimately, it's a sort of spiritual counseling or guidance, or just really what it is, is just one human being helping another human being. I've had many points along my journey so far where I felt lost and confused, and I really just wish I had somebody who had experienced similar things that I could at least just discuss my experiences with. If what I'm talking about resonates with you and you think that you might be in need of some kind of guidance, some reassurance, or even just an ear to listen to your problems, I'd be really happy to try and see if I can help you. So, head on over to the website, and you

can book a quick 15-minute chat with me because ultimately I don't know you, you don't know me, so let's have a chat and let's see if we think I can help you out. Thanks for watching. I really hope you found it helpful. Now, this was my first YouTube video, so comment below with your feedback. Let me know if you found it helpful, if you find it useful, what other kind of things you'd like to see. And as always, before you hop on straight to the next video, just take a second to connect with yourself and understand if that's what you really want to do. Don't be a slave to any algorithm. Just take a moment. Three breaths is all it takes. Your attention is the only thing you really have in this life, and one day you won't have it anymore. So what I'm trying to say is don't waste it. All right, bless up. Oh, I almost forgot. If you enjoyed this video, don't forget to like and subscribe. More content coming soon. Bless up for real this time.

How to Stop Overthinking in 2021

How to Stop Overthinking in 2021