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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Nick Trenton
Many of us have become habitual overthinkers because it gives us the illusion that we’re doing something about the problem we’re overthinking about.
It’s like scratching an itch that just won’t go away. You can scratch it to feel some momentary relief, but it won’t make the itching stop despite how good scratching might feel.
This just goes to show that to flourish, we don’t need a stress-free environment, we need one that’s optimally suited to our needs. Stress and anxiety are not the same thing. Psychologist Dr. Sarah Edelman explains that stress is something in the environment, an external pressure on us, whereas anxiety is our internal experience of this pressure.
Your perceptions, perspectives, sense of self, worldview, and cognitive models all go toward your interpretation of neutral events. We respond not to stress but to our perception of stress. And these perceptions are then made real in the world through action, which can ultimately reinforce those attitudes and worldviews.
All you need to remember is four techniques: avoid, alter, accept, and adapt.
Communicate your needs and feelings directly, rather than suffering in silence.
We can’t avoid every stress in life, but we often have a say in how these events unfold. Talk to people, negotiate, and use “I” statements to share your needs and ask for what you want.
Acceptance doesn’t mean pretending you don’t feel how you feel; it’s an acknowledgment that it’s okay to feel that way. Validate your own emotions and own them.
Remember that forgiveness is something you do for yourself, not the other person. When you forgive, you are releasing yourself from the stress and energy of resenting and blaming the other person.
Acceptance doesn’t mean we agree with what happened or that we like it and shouldn’t try to change it. It only means we gracefully come to terms with what we
can’t realistically change, so we can focus on what we can.
Adapting to stress means we change ourselves to better cope with life.
When we adapt to stress, we find ways to make ourselves stronger. We build a worldview for ourselves that empowers us.
If we have an arsenal of powerful attitudes, ideas, philosophies, and inspiration, we can go into the world knowing that we can handle stress—and maybe even be better people for it!
If we can pull our conscious awareness back into the present, we can halt some of this overthinking. And we can do this by checking in with the five senses. To put it another way, the brain can carry you all over the place, but the body—and its senses—is only ever one place: the present.
