How My Side Project Saves Me From Overthinking
One of the personal experiment I have been benefitting from for the last six months
Hi
Welcome to another email from Silver Lining Sundays.
You don’t know how much obsessed I am with lifestyle design.
If we look closely at our lives, we’ll know how much involvement others have in our lives. Instead of living life as we are supposed to, we live life as we’re asked to. Lifestyle design allows you to design a life that compliments your personality, helps you closer to your dream, and creates a rich and joyful life.
I keep running personal experiments to share the lessons with you and help you choose the best practices from them.
Last month, I tried another experiment that helped me cure my overthinking episodes.
Why am I still single?
What should I write next?
Why don’t I see any results?
Will I ever be able to start my business?
These are some of the many thoughts that I constantly find myself ruminating over. It depends on my mood, the day, and other triggering points to decide which mental loop will expand into a mammoth in a few minutes.
Overthinking is like quicksand; thinking about getting out of it will most likely get you thinking more. You’ll be lost in the meta world of thoughts.
It’s fatal, and many of you would know how difficult it is to shhhh your mind.
There are a lot of people selling courses about achieving mental peace and taming overthinking. I haven’t taken any of such courses as I don’t believe in the idea that my mind will stop thinking after listening to some coach.
It might work, but I have no more mental space to get new ideas into my head. However, I have recently found a solution to prevent my overthinking. It’s not reading books or journaling. It’s much practical and requires no money. It has a side project.
Negative Bias
There’s a saying in Indian culture, an idle mind is the devil’s workshop, which perfectly explains why this experiment works. When we don’t have anything significant to focus on, our thoughts get over all over the place.
When we leave it free, our mind likes to run towards the negative things.
It wants to know why our first love left us, why we sent that embarrassing email to our boss, or why we forgot to switch off our zoom video during the conference call. But when we give all our energy and give one particular topic for our mind to think about, it doesn’t get the liberty to travel to Neverland.
Psychologists Roy F. Baumeister, Ellen Bratslavsky, and Catrin Finkenauer, in their research, found that bad is more potent than good, it’s a psychological barrier which we tend to ignore, but it’s always at work.
The objective of negativity bias was infused hundreds and thousands of years ago by our ancestors to save us from pain and danger. But it doesn’t stop by registering the negative and bad experiences. As our minds have evolved, our ability to think has evolved too. We have learned to think more but have no idea how to cease that chain.
“Negativity bias evolved because it helped our human ancestors avoid threats to life, limb and social reputation,”
— Dr Barbara Fredrickson, UNC-Chapel Hill
To overcome this psychological phenomenon, I knew I had to do just the opposite of what this situation was making me do. I had to give myself a direction to think about things that mattered to me.
The Side Project Experiment
For years I have been getting lost in my mental threads, from one thought to another, and then the combination of all of them. Overthinking is daunting. However, this experience taught me how the pattern stops right after thinking of something I am passionate about.
I started doing this exercise at the beginning of this year when I had no other option to tame my mind. I knew how to get excited about my creative projects and decided to hold that thought for a longer time.
Unlike the usual case of overthinking episodes where you’re scrolling through the worst events from my life, in this case, I was more focused on my creative project, which was at that time “a journaling app.”
I decided to consciously think about my side project, understand the idea, and evolve it to benefit others.
Afterward, whenever I found myself stuck in a loop of meaningless thoughts and random ruminating, I tricked into thinking about the journaling app. I forced myself to think about what I can write about this very situation and help my readers save themselves from this pain by teaching them what I was going through.
The overthinking episode then acted as a positive trigger and allowed me to shift my focus. A recent study done by American psychology professors shows how positive activities create a habit loop that affects our well-being.
This practice allowed me to find a ground and direction to lead my thoughts and not led by them.
You can do it too
Over the last few months, I have tried to direct my mental energy towards my journaling app, and it’s saved me from multiple overthinking and anxiety episodes.
The energy and pain were transformed into productive and creative thinking. My sadness and solitude turned into happiness and excitement. These are steps I follow to reach this stage.
Whenever you find yourself thinking about bad experiences from your past or worrying about your future, try to navigate those thoughts into something you’re currently working you.
Thinking about what we love can save us from our fear-based thinking.
If you’re a musician, think about the music you can create or how you can include these overthinking patterns into your music. If you’re a writer, think about what you can write next or maybe hone the character you’re trying to build.
Lesson of the week
There’s no time management if you don’t value your time in the first place.
Book of the week
I am reading a poetry book called How to Cure a Ghost by Fariha Róisín
Video of the week
I watched the YC famous VC, Gary Tan, interviewing the founder of Coinbase on how he started with nothing and managed to build a company that had an IPO last month. What stood out in this video was how they talk about self-confidence and self believe that kept him going when nobody believed in his ideas.
Quote of the Week
"Listen to your instinct, grab the opportunity when it presents itself and then give it your all."
—Helen Mirren
Song of the Week
Levitating by Dua Lipa. I don’t listen to mainstream pop these days, but this NPR Tiny Desk version of the song was something else.
I wish you a beautiful day ahead.
Love and light
Shreya