In this article on how to stop overthinking and take action faster, I am going to share with you some useful tips based on my personal experience and on my coaching practice as a coach.
By applying the tips I will present to you, you will be able to take back control of your thoughts, your emotions, your actions, and your professional and personal life.
This will enable you to stop procrastinating and take the necessary actions for your personal and professional success.
Without further ado, check out my tips on how to use thinking to your advantage.
7 tips on how to stop thinking too much and take action
1 – Use the 3-second rule
Do you know the 3-second rule?
If you don’t know it, it’s completely normal because this is a rule that I created after a number of personal and professional experiences.
Let’s imagine that you have been thinking for several hours, days, weeks, or years about an action you want to take.
Now, imagine that you are in front of the person or the situation you have been thinking about for a long time and for which you would like to take action.
Let’s also imagine that you are unable to implement this action despite all your motivation because of your fear of taking action.
Do you know why you didn’t act? Because you have been thinking too much, you might say. Well yes, but also because you have been thinking about the negative consequences of your actions.
Next time, apply the 3-second rule. You can give yourself 3 seconds or less before taking an action to get closer to your goal.
If the 3-second rule doesn’t work for you, combine it with my next tip.
2 – Feel pain and pleasure
You can reinforce the effectiveness of the 3-second rule by attaching pain to your choice to stay inactive and pleasure to your decision to take immediate action.
You’ve probably read this advice before and have either not implemented it or you believe you have implemented it correctly.
To do this correctly, it is not enough to just think about pleasure and pain.
You have to feel that pain and pleasure physically inside your body.
You have to live the experience because just imagining it is not enough to motivate you to action.
Do not imagine the negative consequences of doing anything, but instead physically experience this failure as if it was real.
Only then will you be able to stop overthinking and finally take action to achieve your goals.
3 – Create better habits
Until now, you have developed the poor habit of thinking too much and not acting enough.
If you want to take back control of your thoughts by bypassing your rational mind and your fears, you need to rely on routines that will make your life easier.
I share with you two extremely powerful tools for facilitating any type of behavioral change.
These tools are implementation intentions and mental contrast.
An implementation intention that might be helpful to you in stopping overthinking could be:
If I think for more than 5 minutes then I immediately take an action to get closer to my goal.
On the other hand, don’t immediately over challenge yourself to avoid losing your motivation.
Start with something simple to do.
The mental contrast is a complementary approach that consists in identifying all the factors that could make your life more challenging, in other words, the elements that could prevent you from thinking less and acting more.
Then, once you’ve identified all of these obstacles, you’ll need to find at least one solution in advance that allows you to overcome each of these potential challenges.
4 – Identify your priorities
Some people can’t stop thinking because they don’t know their priorities.
For example, they don’t know their values and which values are the most important in their life.
Other people know their values, but find themselves unable to act because of a values conflict.
This means that they are pursuing two conflicting values of almost equal importance.
In the latter case, the person will need to make a choice in order to decide which value to keep and which value to put aside.
Having a clear vision of your values will also allow you to set goals that enable you to grow and feel truly satisfied in life.
But this clarity also ensures that you don’t waste time on unimportant goals.
5 – Put your thoughts on paper
Some people find it so difficult to stop thinking that not only do they procrastinate and fail to take important actions, but they are also so stressed that they can’t relax and get a good night’s sleep.
If you’ve ever experienced not being able to sleep because your brain can’t stop working on you, then I’m about to give you a very simple tip to avoid becoming addicted to drugs.
As you go about your day or at night before you go to bed, write down on a piece of paper the thoughts that have been a source of stress during your day.
Just jot them down without judging them and without trying to find solutions.
Continue to write down your thoughts once a day.
If certain thoughts come up, limit yourself to writing them down again.
You will find that the next day or so, your brain will begin to find effective solutions to some or all of your challenges.
6 – Practice meditation
Practicing meditation has many health benefits, especially in terms of stress reduction.
But this is also very effective in controlling your mind and the flow of thoughts.
When you meditate, you reduce the flow of your rational mind and you can focus your attention to your body.
If you are a beginner, you can follow a guided meditation, each time different depending on the purpose of your meditation.
In the beginning, it will take a lot of effort to stay focused on the process of meditation because your thoughts will constantly distract you.
However, with time you will be able to fully enjoy the benefits of meditation and you will become capable of taking back control of your thoughts.
7 – Experience more positive emotions
According to Petric (2022) people who have a tendency to overthink have an imbalance between their negative and positive emotions.
According to this author, if these people feel more positive emotions, they will have less need to overthink.
At this stage, I suggest you write down all the positive emotions you feel during the week.
Then, try to be proactive and think of all the positive emotions you would like to experience more often.
Then, plan a series of activities that allow you to enjoy these feelings more regularly.
Finally, try to make these activities a top priority and no longer find excuses to put them off or put them aside.
If you turn them into habits, the quality of your life will be greatly improved and you will become capable to avoid overthinking and taking action more often.
Conclusion on how to stop overthinking and take action
In this article, I have shared with you 7 tips on how to stop overthinking and take action.
If you want to take advantage of the expertise of a life coach from our coaching firm, write to us now using our contact form, call us at +33 6 69 46 03 79 or contact us on WhatsApp at +33 6 69 46 03 79.
Are you ready to take action?
Here are the rates for our coaching packages for individual clients:
This article is also available in other languages
Français : Comment arrêter de trop penser et passer à l’action plus rapidement
Italiano: Come smettere di pensare troppo e agire più velocemente