Master Your Mind : 3 Steps to Control Your Thoughts

So I'm having one of those days where everything is a distraction. My phone is ringing all the time, I have 100 emails to respond to, and everybody is just getting hold of my attention from all directions. My thoughts are racing. Now, I want to know how to control my thoughts. How do I do it?

That's what I'm going to talk about in today's blog. 

Every thought that you get comes from your brain spotting a problem somewhere.

If you remember, life has evolved in this world in the middle of a lot of dangers. So, our brain is evolved to constantly spot threats everywhere. It always looks for danger.

Every time you get a thought, your brain is trying to solve a problem that it has spotted. Now, that problem could be on the outside, like an Instagram notification, or your phone ringing, or an email popup, or that problem could be inside, like a memory, an emotion, or another thought. 

Now, this is where it gets tricky, because thoughts can lead to more thoughts, and that is how you can spiral into overthinking.

Thinking in itself is not a bad thing. After all, thinking deeply about something is exactly how so many brilliant people around the world have solved so many problems.

So, what is the difference between deep thinking and overthinking?

I'm sure Einstein must have thought very deeply to solve the relativity equations, and Thomas Edison famously required hundreds of attempts before he could perfect the light bulb design.

Now, from these two examples of deep thinking, a pattern emerges: Whenever somebody is thinking deeply about a problem, they are looking at a problem until some solution emerges.

They try out the solution, and if it fails, they go back to the drawing board and start thinking again. 

This is the pattern of deep thinking, which is actually a thought-action loop.

Anyone who's thinking deeply always integrates action into their thought pattern. Compare this with overthinking, which is only thought followed by more thought, with no action.

In other words, people don't want to try out if their thought is correct or not; they don't want to check if their hypothesis will work. All they want to do is keep thinking about what will happen and what won't, and so they get stuck in a thought loop that does not lead to any action.

Now, what is the main drawback of overthinking?

Our brain requires time to solve a problem. So, let's say we pick up a problem like a Rubik's Cube. The second you spot the problem, you will not be able to solve it immediately. Our brain requires some time to observe the patterns, to see where each piece will go, and then, and only then, will the solution emerge. In between finding the problem and solving it, there will be many wrong twists and turns. 

But if you do not give your brain time to solve that problem, and instead keep adding more and more different problems for your brain to solve, none of those problems will get solved because of a matter of time. And this is why overthinking leads to such a negative loop: not only do you fail to solve one problem, but you are also adding on more problems that the brain cannot solve, which leads to a state of stress in the brain.

In the limbic system, there is an area called the amygdala, which is responsible for spotting stress. The more problems you give your brain to solve, the more anxious the brain becomes. Now, ironically, the more anxious your brain becomes, the more problems it spots. So, you can see how overthinking is such a negative spiral: more thoughts lead to anxiety, and anxiety leads to more thoughts.

 

 

So, how do you control your thoughts?

There are three easy steps.

The most important thing that you have to remember is that there is a thought-action loop. In order to control your thoughts, there are three things for you to do:

1. Decrease stimulation: Now, if there is flooding in your room, the first thing you would do is find out where the leak is coming from and stop it, right? Just like that, if you are having a problem with too many thoughts, the first thing you need to do is stop the stimulation from coming in. Detach from social media, disconnect from unwanted stimulation for a while until you figure out what to do with all the thoughts you already have.

2. Reduce sympathetic activity: Sympathetic activity is what your body goes through when it's in a fight-or-flight situation. Now, the way to do this is through two important steps: 

• First, deep breathing. Just by deep breathing, which involves inhaling and exhaling for around 5 seconds each, you can push your body from a sympathetic to a parasympathetic state. This will allow your thoughts to calm down and slow down. 

• The other thing that puts your body into a parasympathetic state is muscle movement. So, both muscle stretching and light walking or exercise are good ways to move your body out of a sympathetic state. 

3. Increase action: Whatever thoughts you're having, if you write them down and come up with an action you can take for each one, and then carry out those actions, that will inherently reduce the number of active thoughts you have. Now, those thoughts will fit into the thought-action loop.

Try out these three steps and let me know how they work for you.

Cheers,

Sid

PS: If you are looking to learn more about Neuroscience: https://sidwarrier.com/courses