Why Can’t I Just Figure it All Out?

“I just need to figure out what I want to do.” “I just don’t understand what they meant by that.” “I don’t know what I feel!” “I need time to find the answer.” “I am trying to understand what I need to do next.”

Have you ever said or thought any of the above phrases? If you’re anything like me, you might think them all, and think them all pretty often.

Life often seems like a puzzle to me. I have this old belief that if I can just find all the pieces and understand them all and then put them together in the right way, I’ll have everything I’ve ever wanted in life. If I can just understand the people around me, and the expectations of society, and the desires of my own heart, then I can find clarity and with that clarity I can shape my life exactly how I want to and experience all the joy, bliss, love, peace and contentment that I’ve always craved.

There is some truth to that belief. Clarity is important. Understanding my values and beliefs can help me focus on what truly matters in life, and help me decide my next step. I feel very fulfilled when my actions match my values. The problem comes when I get stuck in the never-ending loop of thoughts and find myself paralyzed by the incessant thoughts running through my brain.

Do we give our thoughts too much weight? In any given day, a human has 60,000 thoughts. Science shows that up to 95% of our thoughts are thoughts we thought the previous day, and about 80% of our thoughts at any given time are negative. If science proves that we have the same thoughts over and over, and many of them are negative, why do we continue to believe that thinking more will give us any sort of clarity or resolution?

Instead of thinking more, maybe we need to think better.

Why do we have so many negative thoughts? One overarching reason we have so many negative thoughts is because the survival of our species has literally depended on it. When we were cavepeople running from saber tooth tigers and foraging for oddly shaped mushrooms, we had to be vigilant about danger. Our brains are wired to look for potential hazards so that we can survive. It’s a useful skill, and not something we need to judge ourselves harshly for. Yet, we are no longer living in caves. We don’t have to climb trees to escape tigers. We can learn to put our brains to better use.

What can we do to stop the hamster wheel of negative thoughts and over-analyzing?

One great way to start is to meditate. Meditation is a huge buzzword right now, with gazillions of experts and celebrities weighing in on the benefit of the practice. It’s becoming hugely popular to read articles or hear people talk about how meditation has changed their lives. It can also be quite intimidating. I often hear people comment that they just can’t meditate –they simply can’t sit still, and besides, when they try to sit still and meditate they just have all these thoughts that keep running through their minds. They can’t get the thoughts to stop!

But maybe that’s the point! The point of meditating is not to stop thinking. One of the points of meditation is actually to observe our thoughts and to see them running through our heads. “Oh, look at that. I just worried about my son’s homework again. Isn’t that interesting?” When we can take a moment to observe the thoughts running through our brains from a neutral perspective, we can start to understand that we are not our thoughts. We have thoughts. We have 60,000 of them a day.

We have thoughts, but we are not our thoughts. We can separate ourselves from our thoughts. We can use our brains to determine what is true and what is not true, or at the very least we can choose what thoughts are helpful to think.

And we can also give our brains some time to rest.

The truth is that I don’t have to figure it all out right now. I can’t think my way into a new way of living. I have to actually live. I have to try things, and succeed or fail, and then try something else. I have to put one foot in front of another.

As the famous saying goes, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” What parts of life do I miss when I am consumed by my thoughts or overcome by the pressure to have everything figured out?

Overanalyzing keeps me from living my life. We each have 24 hours a day to experience life, not just to think about it. I may not have all the answers right now or have myself figured out, but maybe that’s okay.

The answers will come. In the meantime, I have some living to do.

#radiantsoul #goodenoughthinking #action