Let Go Of Your 'What Ifs': Why Overthinking Is The Biggest Relationship Killer
The guy you’re talking to said he would call you later. You really like him, so you wait all night and by the next morning, he still hasn’t called.
How many stories have you created in your head about him by now? How many absurd “truths” did you fabricate and force yourself to believe? How did you feel when you finally realized that nothing in your head was remotely close to the truth?
You can take the above situation and apply it to more than just a relationship. You can overthink tests, school papers, jobs, friendships — really any situation in life. Any bit of strength you have to simply let things be likely becomes yet another victim of this overthinking.
What forces us to create the worst possible scenarios in our heads, rather than allowing life to just run its course? I’m beginning to think it’s the constant need to know.
We need to know something when we want to know it and if we aren’t able to do so, we create our own versions that aren’t at all comprised of the truth. Yet, our versions are the only ones we allow ourselves to believe during the interim between wondering and knowing.
I’ve seen plenty of relationships end due to constant overanalyzing:
“She went out with these people and didn’t tell me until I asked her. She likes one of them; something is going down.” “He went on Instagram and liked a picture but didn’t text me. I’m being ignored.”
Well, maybe she didn’t tell you because it wasn’t a big deal and nothing was going on, and maybe he was just too busy to text you in that moment. There are a million possibilities regarding these situations, yet we always choose to believe the worst ones.
I used to do it, too. I could invent great, absurd stories and I always believed them. I would ignore everything in front of me and instead chose to believe the things my mind created.
I used this as a defense mechanism for years. It continuously reminded me that everyone sucks, no one is truthful and I would always get hurt. I made a mistake, though.
I wasn’t right because people suck and everyone lies; I was right because I made sure I always would be. This kind of negative thinking can only really lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy.
No one really hurt me; I hurt myself by creating problems in my head that never actually existed. Maybe we do this purposely, to shield ourselves from false hope and to retain control.
But, things are in our control! We simply choose to steer everything to sh*t before we figure out how to think positively and successfully.
Henry Ford once said, “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, either way, you are right.”
I couldn’t agree more.
Thoughts have proven to be the result of everything, which is why they’re so dangerous. I mean, there are countless books out there that warn us to stop fabricating and clinging to negative thoughts. Yet still, we choose to infest our minds with nothing but the bad.
We waste so much of our energy when we overanalyze and think about things too much. I’ve learned that expecting the worst only allows for the worst to happen. You lose nothing by removing the worst as a possibility.
Yes, life will hand you sh*t, but you hold the power to stop being the sh*t’s victim. Points of uncertainty in life need not be detrimental — they all offer at least two options: One is to steer ourselves directly into the ground and the other is to let life take us wherever it can.
Our biggest failure is failing to realize that we lay out our own choices. So stop trying to control the world and know the answers to everything in life, because each time you think you’re closer, you’re really only further from making something great happen.
We have control over nothing in life. It’s impossible to make someone stay or force someone to choose you. Not everyone will like you, what you do or how you speak, and you’ll never know more than what someone is willing to give you. This, I believe, is the only truth worth accepting as a fact.
You will gain nothing by draining yourself and by trying to decode what you can’t possibly understand. You gain nothing from believing unfounded manifestations of your mind’s deductions.
The answers don’t exist exactly because ultimately, everything is constantly in flux. Let go of your “what ifs.” Let go of the worst and trust what life gives you. Be patient and let the answers present themselves.
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