The-Concise-Guide-To-Overthinking-And-Overcomplicating-Things

The Concise Guide To Overthinking And Overcomplicating Things

Noam LightstoneLife Lessons And Experiments 10 Comments

Have you ever wanted to be stuck in your head and mired in anxiety? Have you ever seen someone worry and feel down and wonder if you can learn how to as well? What about being paralyzed by fear?

Have you ever wanted to make life difficult and confusing whenever it doesn’t need to be?

Well, do I have the solution for you!

I’m going to teach you how to overthink and overcomplicate EVERY SINGLE MOMENT OF YOUR LIFE.

And hell because I’m such a nice guy, I’m going to tell you how to do it for free! Nope, I won’t make this into a book I can sell. I’m giving this information away free of charge so you can use it to make yourself go absolutely insane.

Awesome right? Let’s begin.

1. Never believe what people say or do and never take their actions at face value – Always look for a hidden or ulterior motive. Micro-analyze every single thing someone does

She texted me “I love you” but she did it at 11:10PM on a Friday, so that must mean she’s lonely and I should probably text her back “I love you”… But if I do I might look needy and then she might not like me anymore even though we are always honest and open with each other. Hmmm….

He bought me dinner but he might be doing it so he can ask me for a favour later or he’s trying to screw me over. And he took me out to sushi, which is like the cheapest thing he could have done. I mean couldn’t he have taken me out for steak instead? Unless… He’s inception-ing me to try and give out a lower price on the business deal we were talking about. Oooo I see behind his thinking.

You see instead of accepting that your girlfriend says “I love you” and enjoying the amazing intimacy and openness, you can assume she’s being manipulative and needy!

Instead of knowing that your friend thinks you’re awesome and wants to buy you dinner because you add a lot to his life, you can assume he’s doing it because he wants something in return and will screw you over at the next chance he gets… while calculating the equivalent sushi to steak ratio on your business partnership. Sweet!

2. Regret and analyze every decision you make and continuously repeat your mistakes

Not only should you micro-analyze what other people do, you should do it for yourself as well!

So that sandwich you ate, it was tuna. You think you heard something about tuna having mercury and it’s bad to eat to much of it. In fact, you’re probably going to die from it. But instead of limiting your tuna intake in the future, you just keep eating it and then you’re hard on yourself for repeating your tuna eating mistake… And you’re also analyzing eating a tuna sandwich.

And that girl you wanted to talk to, well you weren’t in the mood. But, you’ve done this before and you know it’s usually an excuse. OK, maybe not. I mean you will go out with your friends to events and you can meet girls there… but then you always regret not going after the girls you see during the day! So instead of learning how to talk to girls during the day, you should be grumpy and mope around. I mean, you shouldn’t just focus on setting a certain goal of girls you want to try to talk to during the week with a reward, and also on HAVING FUN. You should make it work and again chastise yourself when you mess up. You should focus on knowing you can meet girls in X and Y places, versus just freakin’ talking to some ladies.

Ah! Sounds sensible!

3. Believe every single thing your mind says and specifically work on disregarding anything positive

Sure, your mind spits out hundreds of thoughts a day… but why not believe all of them?

Even the ones that say “You suck” when you just finished your degree, own a business, date amazing people, and have great friends.

Even the one that says “You’re going to fail and you should play it safe”, when you know there’s no way anyone or anything can predict the future.

And sure, you can learn through training to disregard these negative ones and only focus on the positive ones that say “Great job”, “I’m so proud of myself”, and “Not many people can do this, I’m so brave”… but that’d take a lot of work. It’s far easier to believe everything your mind says. I mean that way, you can jump from every emotion possible in ten minutes flat: One minute you can be sad, then happy, then angry.

It sounds like a pretty good deal to me.

4. Never be present, always stay in your head

On that note, why ever bother being present? Might as well just stay trapped in the thoughts in your head. I mean, even during sex when you should be focusing on the person’s voice, skin, and feeling. Even during dinner with friends when you are trying to re-charge yourself for another day of work. Keep micro-analyzing everything instead of letting yourself go and enjoying what’s in front of you. Right on!

5. Ask a billion people what to do instead of just a few trusted sources and listening to your intuition

Instead of accepting that you need to make some mistakes to learn and can’t have all the answers at once, you should stall and not do anything. So, why not go ask a billion people what to do? I mean, even if you think you know the answer inside and you feel it down in your gut, ask people what they think.

OK OK, let’s say it’s something that requires a HUGE investment and could be life altering. Let’s say it’s starting your own business or moving to a different country, maybe it warrants talking to different people.

In that case, don’t just ask your closest friends… ask any person you ever e-mailed once, your parents who have COMPLETELY different life views, and post on every single sub-Reddit out there.

Yep! Having a billion different answers sure will help you find the best one, and it’s going to be easy to pick from all of them.

6. Make a decision… then change your mind AT LEAST 3 or 4 times

After you’ve finally made a decision, go back in on yourself a few times just for the fun of it… even after conferring with your trusted friends, your spiritual guide, your intuition, and the HypnoToad.

hypnotoad

The Hypnotoad will be able to guide you. All hail the Hypnotoad.

7. Catastrophize everything

This is why you need to micro-analyze things and you change your mind a lot – You should assume that every decision results in either life or death, and that there is no grey area. If you miss out now, you’re screwed forever…. especially with tuna sandwiches.

8. Filter yourself

Constantly worry about saying the wrong thing because people might run away from you. Constantly question how you are positioned in terms of your arms and body. Don’t express your opinion, or, only express it after thinking if someone might like it.

It’s like chess – think about how your move will lead them to react so you can predict things and therefore, can choose your words accordingly. This is far better then just being yourself so that you don’t have to put on a face in front of people and can spend more time enjoying things!

9. Try to control everything

That’s the ticket.

See, if you can control what everyone does and says, and you can control life, then you don’t need to overcomplicate anymore! If you know exactly what will happen every step of your life no matter what you do, you don’t have to be anxious or worry because you’ve already seen the future!

I mean you should completely disregard the fact that everyone has free will, that people HATE being controlled and all that… And also that it’s impossible to predict the future… And also that knowing exactly what will happen in life robs it of the amazing POSSIBILITIES and the exciting unknown. But nope, knowing how everything will turn out will be far more exciting.

 

So you see my friend – you too can be anxious, depressed, robbed of joy, and completely drive yourself insane with just a few simple tweaks in your life. These are the benefits of overthinking and overcomplicating things!

I hope you’ve learned a lot from this article and if you need some help, feel free to contact me…

Or not…

Or ask some people if it’s a good idea first.

Image Credit: Cover picture courtesy of Jenny Kaczorowski under a Creative Commons license.
“Hypnotoad” picture from Futurama. All rights reserved to Matt Groening and 20th Century Fox Television.

Comments 10

  1. Thank you Noam, I’m so glad to have found your post. It will really help fine tune my overcomplication routine. 😉 keep up the good work. Nadine

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      1. Hi Noam, I have something to ask you I know is late on this article, but I don’t know how else to get a hold of you. I am having a lot of problems with overthinking to the point where is literally hindering my life and goals. The best example for me right now is I have played guitar for many years and when I started I had no problem practicing and learning new things and just getting better. Now I am in a mind set where I don’t know what to do, so i try to find ways to set up a practice routine and in the process my mind is overthinking and complicating just that process in general. Its like what do I practice specifically, how do i set these goals ? I have a million questions in my head and nobody to answer them, it frustrates me and just makes me not want to do it.

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          Totally know what you mean, Chad. Sometimes it’s information overload, or call it turning mountains to molehills…

          It’s basically your brain saying “I don’t wanna mess up, and I wanna do this perfectly… So let me delay the decision.”

          The obvious, but a bit counter-intuitive approach is just to set ANY plan. Give yourself 30 minutes, and by the end, you must do something. Tell a friend you’ll pay them $100 if you don’t.

          In one month, you promise yourself you’ll come back and re-evaluate. Here, you can change if necessary, incorporate new information, etc.

          In terms of what plan to follow, I’m not a guitar player (I’m a drummer), but I go for modelling the masters/what works. Try finding a guitar thing on YouTube online of someone good (that teaches), follow that first, and then start adding your own spin on things if necessary.

          Hope that helps – but again, just START. TAKE ACTION. Something is better than nothing.

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  2. This article is just plain gold! Thank you so much for writing it! This will be on my wall for the next couple of months!

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