GOT: Game Of (over) Thinking

By Anaya Pawar

“Should I crop this image to 4:5 aspect ratio or keep it as it is? But landscape will look better than a square one, won’t it? Contrast is satisfactory I reckon, should I adjust the saturation and shadows? I’d used Snapseed for editing last time but that Youtuber I checked out had used Lightroom and her photo looked flawless! Would it be sensible to upload 10 photos, do people really swipe till the end? Since I’ve a witty caption this time, I’ll play safe and upload 5 photos in a post, don’t want the photos to enjoy all the attention. Whoopee! Finally, the right balance between photo and caption has been struck!” This is how overthinking usually looks like.

Pertaining to the aforementioned example, the amount of time an individual spends overthinking about the minuscule details of a post is going to be significantly greater than the time people spend on deciding whether the post deserves their like (acknowledgement) or not. This is just phase 1. A perpetual overthinker will enter phase 2 the minute he uploads the post. Phase 2 involves overthinking about the amount of likes and comments received on the post and comparing it to others’ or sometimes older posts of that individual itself. One can’t help but think is this really needed? To ruminate about something that is not going to have a considerable change in your life, be it negative or positive. Likes and comments will surely bring instant gratification and validation but they will never be able to bring about a sustainable positive change in one’s life. Therefore, one should always be able to identify the amount of time to be spent on a task taking it’s nature into consideration. Investing more time than needed is wasting time.

Overthinking could hold different meanings for different individuals based on their personalities. If you’re an overthinker reading this, getting past every sentence of this piece trying to overcome the compulsion of thinking about it too much would come be an exhausting task. Empaths often overthink about others’ welfare in an attempt to respect their opinions totally forgetting that it is absolutely fine to not always be in alignment with someone else’s opinions. It is not the opinion that needs to be respected, rather the fact that different people can have different perspectives or truths. It is this difference that needs to be acknowledged, not the opinion itself. For perfectionists, overthinking is an intruder for all the tasks at hand. The urge to complete everything with no flaws whatsoever involves thinking things over zillion times. The scenario is a bit different for pessimists and cynics. Any positive occurrence is a subject of overthinking due to their lack of trust in society or certain individuals, tragic past experiences, or absence of a positive outlook in general. This doesn’t necessarily mean optimists are not prone to dwelling on trivial thoughts for an unacceptable time span. No matter how pragmatic one’s approach is, the will to sustain it often pushes him into the web of overthinking.

For Generation Z (aka Genz) overthinking has taken a very peculiar form, possibly due to its romanticization. In an effort to stand out of the crowd and make a mark, people focus more on “thinking outside the box” and often fail to utilize the things present inside to their maximum potential. Thinking is a process that is supposed to highlight the unique element of one’s personality, doing excess of that becomes the major cause of destruction of originality. Most of us have come across the example of leaking tap. Placing a container underneath proves to be a temporary solution and the only way to permanently fix the leakage is to understand the cause and repair the tap in accordance to that. Unfortunately, exceptions are everywhere and overthinking is an exception to this example.

An average human goes through all kinds of experiences in a lifetime; good, bad, introspective, tragic etc. To find what encouraged an individual to ponder over things continually would not only be a time-consuming task, it would lack authenticity too since one can never tell what exactly influenced him to start worrying about various aspects of life. Thousands of thoughts race through a human mind (loads of them getting in serious accidents!) hence pinpointing the troublemaker one would be a futile attempt.

Therefore, the focus should be on the course of action to get ourselves out of this addictive exercise that disguises itself as something that is productive and healthy for our mind, body and soul. There are a lot of ways to do that, asking someone to not think much and be easy going is definitely not one of them. The most effective way has been in front of us all along. Yes, it is writing things down!

To go from “learning to live” to “living to learn more”, to embrace and breathe for that vulnerability and dichotomy of emotions, to keep the individuality intact whilst getting inspired by someone, as cheesy as it sounds, to be mindful and grateful during challenging times, and to instil acceptance, writing works wonder for all of them. The ability to convert thoughts into words and put them down helps one to compartmentalize and analyse them better. It is easier to look for something in a tidy place than a messy out of order one. Once you have your thoughts on paper, it is easier to put them across too. This frees a human from most of the thoughts that claim a permanent residence in the head. Thinking things over to arrive at a reasonable conclusion and take the right decision is not a matter of concern but when the balance is lost and a person starts over-thinking things over, a substantial amount of time is wasted in predicting something that is out of control and in doing so the process of becoming happy is delayed.

By Anaya Pawar