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Overthinking Destroys Happiness — Take Back Control
Happiness is not the absence of obstacles
Think back to the happiest moments of your life. Maybe they were spent with a loved one, or you were simply caught up in blissful moments. At that moment, you felt happy. You didn’t analyse why you were happy or how long it would last; you simply felt happiness.
And then think about all the times in your life when you weren’t happy — those days when you overanalysed and couldn’t find any silver linings, let alone gold ones.
Those days when the smallest things seemed like big problems and a sentence as simple as “How was your day?” became an extensive monologue inside your head. Think about those overthinking days and ask how they make you feel. Is this how you want to spend the rest of your life?
“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature,” says Marcus Aurelius, a Roman emperor from 161 to 180 and a Stoic philosopher.
Unless you actively intercept your overthinking brain and take back control, you will keep doing it for the rest of your life.
