On Purpose with Jay Shetty - 3 Techniques to Switch from Overthinking to Thinking Effectively & 4 Ways to Turn That Into Action

Episode Date: September 23, 2022

Today, I’m going to talk about the difference between overthinking and thinking effectively, what leads us to overthink things instead of thinking through them to get clear answers, and why we tend to overthink and lose focus.I share three ways we can differentiate the two and the characteristics we should look out for so we don’t end up wasting our time overthinking. Additionally, I list down four ways we can pivot from being an overthinker to becoming an action-doer, a rational thinker who wouldn’t shy away from making mistakes and failing, and has the initiative to take risks and seize opportunities. If you want to pre-order the book, 8 Rules of Love, go to https://8rulesoflove.com/Key Takeaways:00:00 Intro02:03 The difference between thinking and overthinking07:32 Difference #1: Time12:04 Difference #2: Action14:53 Difference #3: Structure16:34 You’ll never feel ready18:48 Expect failures and mistakes20:01 Break down what you want to achieve to the smallest things22:33 Surround yourself with people who take actionLike this show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps! Post a screenshot of you listening on Instagram & tag us so we can thank you personally! Do you want to meditate daily with me? Go to go.calm.com/onpurpose to get 40% off a Calm Premium Membership. Experience the Daily Jay. Only on Calm Want to be a Jay Shetty Certified Life Coach? Get the Digital Guide and Workbook from Jay Shetty https://jayshettypurpose.com/fb-getting-started-as-a-life-coach-podcast/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hi, I'm Brendan Francis Neum, I'm a journalist, a wanderer, and a bit of a bond-vivant, but mostly a human just trying to figure out what it's all about. And not lost is my new podcast about all those things. It's a travel show where each week I go with a friend to a new place and to really understand it, I try to get invited to a local's house for dinner. Where kind of trying to get invited to a dinner party, it doesn't always work out. Ooh, I have to get back to you. Listen to not lost on the iHeart radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. The therapy for Black Girls podcast is your space to explore mental health,

personal development, and all of the small decisions we can make to become the best possible versions of ourselves. I'm your host, Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, a licensed psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia, and I can't wait for you to join the conversation every Wednesday. Listen to the therapy for Black Girls podcast on the iHart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Take good care. I'm Jay Shetty, and on my podcast on purpose,

I've had the honor to sit down with some of the most incredible hearts and minds on the planet. Oprah, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Hart, Louis Hamilton, and many, many more. On this podcast, you get to hear the raw, real-life stories behind their journeys and the tools they used, the books they read, and the people that made a difference in their lives so that they can make a difference in hours. Listen to on purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. Join the journey soon. You want to expect failure and to make mistakes and not

try and avoid them. If you're failing and making mistakes and learning for them, you're on the part. If you're failing and making mistakes and not learning from them, then that's obviously not useful. But I want you to expect failure. I want you to expect to make mistakes. So now you're not surprised. Now you don't judge yourself. Now you don't make yourself feel insecure inferior because of it. Hey everyone, welcome back to on purpose. The number one health podcast in the world. Thanks to each and every one of you that come back every week to listen, learn and grow. Now I know that if you're here, you're here because you want to be happy, healthy and healing. That's what I want for myself.

That's what I want for all of you. It's what I want for myself. That's what I want for all of you. It's what I want for everyone in the world. Imagine if the world was happier, healthier, and more healed. What a beautiful world we'd live in. We'd be better people. We'd be better parents. We'd be better professionals. It would be a truly phenomenal place to live. And on purpose is dedicated to that mission,

introducing you to incredible thinkers and minds, ideas, topics, takeaways, insights that can help you transform your life. So if you're here, take a moment to just acknowledge and express gratitude to yourself for showing up for yourself. Now, today's episode is something that was sparked by a conversation with one of my dear friends, humble the poet, if you haven't read his work or don't follow him, he's an incredible,

incredible thinker. And I've really enjoyed my conversations with him since we became friends around four years ago. And what we'll often do is we'll just find questions that we find fascinating and we'll think, we'll reflect, we'll try and come up with actionable items. And so this episode was inspired by that conversation because the question he asked me and some of the insights he shared with me, which I'll be sharing today, was what is the difference between thinking and overthinking? And we probably thought about this

ironically for like a couple of hours, but the conversation was so brilliant that I had to share it with you and some of the things he shared with me were so fascinating. He's going to be on the podcast soon too because here's a new book coming out. So we all look forward to that. Now when it comes to thinking and overthinking, I think the reason why we have to address this question is because I think we all experience overthinking. We experience over analyzing. I'm sure many of you experience brain fog or feeling cloudy because there's just so much to process.

Maybe you feel like you're just constantly bombarded by information. You're bombarded by data. You're bombarded by messages and notifications. And I find that, me included, I have to be really careful about what I let in to my mind and my space. Just as we're careful about who we lead into our home, we have to be careful about what we led into our mind. And as I was researching for this episode, I saw some incredible statistics that blew my mind that I want to share with you. And this study showed

that the average person today processes as much as 74 gigabytes of information per day. That's as much as watching 16 movies Can you imagine that 74 gigabytes? Right if you think about your phone your phone might have like 256 gigabytes Memory your processing 74 gigabytes per day which is a huge amount of information. And when we think about our search for information, we know that Google has about over 40,000 searches every second. How many of those are you responsible for, right? Think about how often we're searching for information.

And I'm not even getting into just how many YouTube views per second or minute, how many tweets per second or minute. I mean, the rate of information creation and consumption is going through the roof. And as we see this escalation in exposure to all of this information that our mind and our brain has to make sense of, it has to structure it, it has to organize it, it has to bring emotion in, take emotion out. I mean, when you think about the number of processes we're having to do now, it is not abnormal to recognize that so many of us are struggling, right? That's not abnormal at all.

So if you're one of those people who's going, oh, I don't feel smart enough, I don't feel fast enough, I feel like I'm too weak, I feel like I should be better at this. I just want you to cut yourself some slack. I want you to forgive yourself. I want you to give yourself a break and recognize that it's so natural that we're feeling overwhelmed because of the rate of overconsumption. Now, when you think about how much you're consuming

and how you're feeling, I'm sure that overthinking is something that happens a lot. and how you're feeling, I'm sure that overthinking is something that happens a lot. We're now exposed to poorer quality of information. So not only are you experienced to more, you're experienced to more with less quality, with less research, with less evidence, with less thought sometimes as well to be honest.

And so what ends up happening is that we're now having to make sense of stuff that may not even make sense in the first place or may not be valid enough to make sense of. And that creates a lot of stress, a lot of pressure, a lot of tension. I remember when I was living in New York, I lived there for two years, I would often feel tired in the evening after a busy day, but I would feel more tired in New York than anywhere before. And when I started looking into it, I came across this idea of cognitive load. The idea that when you're walking around New York City, there's so many sirens, there's so much road work going on, there's so much noise from the trash and whatever else there

may be that our brains are trying to make sense of insignificant, unuseful sound. And that takes up energy. So the reason why humble and I started having this conversation was because we were realizing that we think this is a challenge for a lot of people that we know, friends, family, people that we work with, people that we hear from, where overthinking, overanalyzing has become the norm. But it's not easy to just say to someone, we'll stop overthinking it, like stop overanalyzing it. And that's not useful advice. It's not helpful. If anyone's ever said that to you before before or you've ever said that to anyone before, you know how unimpactfully it truly is. So, let's talk about the differences between thinking and overthinking. And Humble brought up the first

when he said that his therapist told him it was the amount of time. The first difference between thinking and overthinking according to his therapist was time. Now, let's talk about time. I think time is one of the differences between thinking and overthinking because there's a difference whether you're thinking about something for a month or two months or two years. And I would say that this time applies to the extent of the task. So it depends on the scale of the task. For example, if I'm about to write a book, and for those of you who know, I've just finished writing my second book, Eight Rules of Love, and if I'm going to write a book, I may think about that book for a couple of years before I start to write it. I don't consider that to be overthinking because it's a book.

It's words on a page, it's set in stone. It's there as a thoughtful, curated, researched piece of work that I can't wait to share with you. Right? So the amount of thinking that it requires to create a 300 page book is very different. And so some people may say, well, that sounds like overthinking. You spend two years on it, but it's only overthinking if it's based on the task. Now, if I spend two years thinking about one, 13 minutes solo episode, that could be considered over thinking. I may have thought about this idea before, I may have reflected on it before, but if I'm consistently thinking every day for two to three

years, about a 13 minute podcast episode, that would be considered overthinking. So when you're making a plan, one of the things I'd recommend is that you first look at the scale of the task. And based on the scale of the task, you figure out the scope of the time. The larger the task, the more difficult the task, the more challenging the task, the more you give yourself a certain time.

And this is also the difference between thinking and overthinking. When it comes to time, schedule time makes it thinking. yourself a certain time and this is also the difference between thinking and overthinking. When it comes to time, schedule time makes it thinking. Unscheduled time can make it overthinking. So if I say to myself, hey, I want to write a book about this subject. I'm going to spend a couple of years thinking about it before I really, you know, while I gather my thoughts, gather my research, gather my insights. And then those two years will give me these things that I need. Now you're using your time wisely. Now you are actually thinking and not overthinking, but

your time is accounted for. And so if you're someone who wants to do something big, something that's coming up, something significant, then I want you to think about how much time is that going to take for you to think about it, for you to reflect on it. The mistake we often make is we just try and dive in. And when you drive in, you could get discouraged. And this is where it really comes to self awareness. There are a lot of people who don't need to function this way. They would just dive in, then make mistakes, they'd figure it out, and everything would work out for them. And there are some people who need more thought, need more process, need more structure. So I want you to really think about yourself awareness to figure that

out. Have you ever had one bad moment spoil your entire day or felt overwhelmed for no reason? What about stressed or anxious over that big moment or difficult conversation? You should try meditation, and I know what you're thinking. Jay, you used to be a monk. I don't have time to sit in the woods for hours doing nothing. But really, all the time you need to start your own mindfulness practice is 7 minutes a day with the daily Jay, my daily guided meditations on the calm app.

You don't need to close your eyes or find a special seat, you can try it while you brush your teeth. Do the dishes or walk your dog. My goal in 7 minutes a day is to help you find calm and feel grounded in your busy world. Plant beautiful intentions for an abundant life and simple steps for positive actions to get you closer to the life of your dreams. He is one of the listeners of the Daily J had to say about their meditation. Wow, I just had a super hard day at work and couldn't get my bosses comments out of my head. Then I did the Daily J which related to my work issues, opened my eyes at the end of the session and felt renewed again. Previously today would have destroyed my whole weekend. Meditate with me by going to calm.com forward slash J to get

40% off a calm premium membership. That's only 42 dollars for the whole year for daily guided meditations. Experience the daily J only on calm. Not too long ago, in the heart of the Amazon Rainforest, this explorer stumbled upon something that would change his life. I saw it and I saw, oh wow, this is a very unusual situation. It was cacao. The tree that gives us chocolate. But this cacao was unlike anything experts had seen. Poor tasted. I've never wanted us to have a gun bite.

I mean, you saw this tax of cash in our office. Chocolate sort of forms this vortex. It sucks you in. It's like I can be the queen of wild chocolate. We're all lost. It was madness. It was of wild chocolate. We're all lost. It was madness. It was a game changer. People quit their jobs. They left their lives behind so they could search for more of this stuff.

I wanted to tell their stories, so I followed them deep into the jungle, and it wasn't always pretty. Basically this like disgruntled guy and his family surrounded the building arm with machetes. And we've heard all sorts of things that you know somebody got shot over this. Sometimes I think all these for a damn bar of chocolate. Listen to obsessions, wild chocolate, on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

Hi, I'm David Eagleman. I have a new podcast called Intercosmos on I Heart. I'm a neuroscientist and an author at Stanford University and I've spent my career exploring the three-pound universe in our heads. On my new podcast, I'm going to explore the relationship between our brains and our experiences by tackling unusual questions so we can better understand our lives and our realities. Like, does time really run in slow motion when you're in a car accident? Or can we create new senses for humans?

Or what does dreaming have to do with the rotation of the planet? So join me weekly to uncover how your brain steers your behavior, your perception, and your reality. Listen to Intercosmos with David Eagelman on the I Heart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Munga Shachikhler and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking.

You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention, because maybe there is magic in the stars stars if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, cancelled marriages, K-pop! But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crash down. Situation doesn't look good.

There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are gonna change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, wherever you get your podcasts.

Now, the second difference between thinking and overthinking, this was Humble's answer, is that he said it's about action. So he was saying that if you are thinking, then it will lead to action. And if you're overthinking, it will lead to inaction. I thought this was a brilliant, brilliant answer from him because I couldn't agree with him more.

When we're thinking strategically and effectively, it leads to action, it leads to change, it leads to transformation. But when we just overthink, and this is why things like gossip, why things like negativity, why things like comparison, complaining, and criticism are often not healthy thinking and are overthinking because they don't lead to positive action. So I think the question you have to ask yourself is,

hey, well, if I thought about this for a long time, but it led to action, then maybe I'm not an overthinker. I remember before launching my YouTube channel, I spent two years thinking, researching, looking. It took me two years before I even launched my first video. Now, some could say that was overthinking, some could say that was stalling, some would even call that a failure.

But for me, I just saw that as part of the process and guess what? It led to action and that action has led to all these incredible things in my life. I'll give you another example. Before I launched on purpose, this podcast, I thought about launching a podcast for another two years. I found that some of the biggest projects, biggest ideas that I've created in my life, whether it's my books, my podcast, the content I'm creating, I'll often spend a couple of years learning, growing, researching, experimenting to truly understand,

right, to really think about what I want to do and why I want to do it. And I find that to be extremely helpful because by the time I get going, I'm already really clear on what I'm trying to achieve and why I'm trying to achieve it. Diving in sometimes I find actually takes me three steps back because I don't give myself the time to really knows why it's important to me, why it's relevant to me, and how I want it to flow. So try this, ask yourself the next time you're thinking about something, how quickly can I get to action? What is the right action to follow this thought? All of a sudden you won't be overthinking. Overthinking means you

keep repeating the same thought, you keep repeating the same emotion, the same feeling, and you never ask yourself, what do I change? What can I do about this? How can I shift from this position? And that simple question can make all the difference. Now, the third difference between thinking and overthinking, which came from my insight, was how structured your processes. So when I'm thinking about something, I'll have a structure. I'll break it down, I'll have steps, I'll have points that I'm following, I'll have principles or values that I use as a guide. But when you're overthinking, you just keep repeating the same thought. You keep going round and round in circles. There's no structure, there's no process, there's no system.

So I want you to focus on having a system for how you think. Every time you have a thought, try and create an if this, then that system with that idea. If I feel this, then I do this. As soon as you start implementing that and practicing that, that will now become the thought pattern you carve for your mind. What we have to realize is that every thought you're having is simply a thought, a pathway in your mind that has been carved because you've walked on it so many times.

It's like if you take the same root to work, or to school every day, that becomes your norm. And now anything that's different to that feels random, it feels awkward, it may feel uncomfortable. All you have to do is start taking another root and as you take that root every day, if this and that, if it rains, then I take this root, now you start to have a different approach.

So the three differences between thinking and overthinking are time, action, and structure. Now that we know that, how do we shift into taking action? The first thing you have to remember is that you'll never ever feel ready. I don't know anyone who started something who ever felt ready. If you asked me when I launched my YouTube channel, did I feel ready? I would have said no. If you asked me before we launched on purpose, if I felt ready, I would have said no. If you asked me that, but I booked, you asked me that about genius, you asked me that about anything we've ever done, we never felt ready. I never felt ready. If anything, it was always like,

well, if we had six more months, we could do this, if we had 12 more months, we could do this. But I realized that the growth I'd make in six to 12 months of not doing something would never outweigh the growth that I would make if I did launch it. When you launch something, when you create something, when you think about something, you learn so much more than when you wait till you more than when you wait till you're ready, you wait till the perfect time, you wait till everything's calmed down, right?

We always say like, I'm just going to wait till things settle down a bit. By then you could lose inspiration, lose motivation, you could get busier, you could get distracted, something else comes along. I find that I've learned that my ability accelerates and expands every year as I add more to my plate and create better practices to deal with it. So you'll never feel ready, start anyway. Right? Please remember that. If you're worrying about starting something right now, I want you to know that don't wait till you're ready. Don't wait till you know everything. Don't wait because you'll never know everything. You'll never be ready.

That's the point. There isn't a point where you go, okay, I'm completely healed now. Okay, I'm completely here now. This is a Western ideology of beginning and completion. Have you ever completed anything? Like, what do you, have we completed our education?

No, it was just an arbitrary mark of saying, you've now graduated. So recognizing that things are more cyclical, organic, in nature, has a tree ever finished growing. No, it's not fully grown, even as humans. There are parts of us that may stop growing, but they don't stop changing. And so I just want you to recognize that.

The second thing I'm gonna say can be counterintuitive, but you want to expect failure and to make mistakes and not try and avoid them. One of the reasons why we don't take action and where we sit and overthinking is because we're trying to plot and plan how to avoid every mistake and failure. I can honestly tell you that with every venture I've started,

I have failed and made so many mistakes. Honestly, I've made so many mistakes. I've failed at so many things. And I've realized that that's just the path. When I think about things like Steve Jobs getting kicked out of Apple, can you imagine getting kicked out of your own company? What kind of failure that is? What kind of challenge that is?

When you think about any of the people you admire, they've all failed and made mistakes that is the path. If you're failing and making mistakes and learning for them, you're on the path. If you're failing and making mistakes and learning for them, you're on the path. If you're failing and making mistakes and not learning from them, then that's obviously not useful. But I want you to expect failure. I want you to expect to make mistakes.

So now you're not surprised. Now you don't judge yourself. Now you don't make yourself feel insecure or inferior because of it. Step number three, I want you to break down what you want to achieve to the smallest thing. I'll give an example. One of my friends wanted to be a movie director and he said to me, I really want to be a movie director. I want to make Hollywood movies, right? Like big budget feature films. So I was like, okay, that's, that's a big goal, right? And that could lead to a lot of overthinking

because it's hard, it's far away, it takes time. Let's break it down. What do you need to do in order to do that? And he was like, well, I would need to be able to get that kind of a budget. I was like, okay, well, what do you need to do in order to get that budget? He said, well, I would have to make movies

that were impressive with less of a budget. And I was like, well, what do you need to do that? And he said, well, I need have to make movies that were impressive with less of a budget. And I was like, well, what do you need to do that? And he said, well, I need to learn how to make movies. I need to learn directing and scripting. I was like, okay, how do you do that? He said, well, I need to get into film school or I need to make short movies. And I said, well, which one do you want to try?

He said, well, maybe I'll start with short movies. So he started making short movies. And then he went to film school because he realized there were certain skills he didn't have. Now he's on the path. But notice how if his goal was to make feature films, he would over think about that for maybe a few decades. But when his first step was start making short movies

or apply for film school, that's something you could do today. And I think people forget this, that the goal is the same, but the current move looks different. It's like when you're climbing Mount Everest, that's the goal. The goal is to get to the top of Mount Everest, but every step doesn't take you to the top of Mount Everest. And so we have to recognize't take you to the top amount Everest. And so we have to recognize that the step and the goal are different and we have to know the goal, but focus on the step.

And your step may lead you in directions that you don't want. You might have to learn skills you don't care about. You might have to build qualities and character traits that you didn't even realize. I've had to develop so many more leadership qualities than I ever thought, because of the team we lead. I've had to learn so much more about investments and finances than I ever thought I would need to, because that's getting me to my ultimate goal,

which is impacting one billion lives and making a difference in the world. So the path, the steps look very different from the goal, and we can't keep fixating, saying, no, but I just wanna feel this way. I just wanna feel like I'm having an impact. It's like, well, no, if you really wanna have an impact, you have to be ready to learn this.

And the fourth and final step to start taking action, is you have to be surrounded by people who are taking action. You will not move forward if you're around people who are taking action, you will not move forward if you're around people who are going backwards. You will not move forward if you're around people who are happy being behind. If you're surrounded by go getters, people who are making a difference, making a shift, making an impact, that will make the difference. Your circle will define your impact. Your circle will define how fast, how effectively you move forward. And so make sure you find that tribe. I'm not telling you to change all your friends. I'm saying, I have a few people around you that are also in a mission

because those are the people that will help you reach your vision that you so deeply care about. I hope that this episode accelerates you in a growth. I hope that it inspires you in the motion. And I hope that it helps you remember how to switch from overthinking to thinking. Thank you for listening. Thank you for choosing happiness, health, and healing only on non purpose.

Our 20s are often seen as this golden decade. Our time to be carefree, make mistakes, and figure out our lives. But what can psychology teach us about this time? I'm Jermis Spig, the host of the Psychology of your 20s. Each week, we take a deep dive into a unique aspect of our 20s, from career anxiety, mental health, heartbreak, money, and much more to explore the science behind our experiences. The Psychology of your 20s, hosted by me, Gemma Speg. Listen now on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The one you feed explores how to build a fulfilling life admits the challenges we face. We share manageable steps to living with more joy and less fear through guidance on emotional resilience, transformational habits and personal growth. I'm your host, Eric Zimmer, and I speak with experts ranging from psychologists to spiritual teachers, offering powerful lessons to apply daily. Create the life you want now. Listen to the one you feed on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I am Yom Le Van Zant, and I'll be your host for The R Spot. Each week listeners will call me live

to discuss their relationship issues. Nothing will tear a relationship down faster than two people with no vision. Does y'all are just floppin' around like fish out of water? Mommy, daddy, your ex, I'll be talking about those things and so much more. Check out The R Spot on the iHeart video app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to

podcasts.