Aaaah Overthinking, we all do it, but where does it come from and how do we stop it?
Those are the two questions that have been running through my head in the past few weeks, and I think I’ve found the answer within myself.

But first of all, it’s useful to define what it is.

What is overthinking?

It happens when we’re faced with a difficult task and we think about it over and over again, sometimes preventing us from doing the very thing we’re trying to do.

That’s what happened to me three weeks ago, I had two weeks to get prepared for an important exam, but for the first week and a half I was totally paralyzed.

This has happened before, and this time instead of just letting it go, I stopped and spent a week meditating over it.

Where does it come from?

After reflecting on all my past episodes and confronting it with what I saw from the people around me, all the clues point to our sense of Ego.

So what is the Ego?

Ego, in psychoanalytic theory, that portion of the human personality which is experienced as the “self” or “I” and is in contact with the external world through perception. It is said to be the part that remembers, evaluates, plans, and in other ways is responsive to and acts in the surrounding physical and social world.

Britannica

This brought me back way back to my distant high school days studying Sigmund Freud, Italo Svevo, and the psychological novel Zeno’s Conscience.

The Ego, simply put, is our unconscious picture of our current self, so whenever we do something difficult or out of character, we go against this entity of our making.

In my example, I dropped out of uni many years ago and only recently decided to go back and finish what I started. This meant that I would have to retake some exams that I’ve already passed once, and one of these was Economics.

Even though I’ve already passed it once and I knew for a fact that I had the capability to pass it, I’ve spent the first week and a half completely frozen.

I would get up every day to read but by the end of the day, I could even remember what I’ve just read.
All because my mind was in a totally different place, flooded by doubts and fear.

The reality was that I didn’t see myself as a student anymore, so unconsciously I thought I was trying to be someone I’m not.

Why bother? You’re never gonna pass! You’re too old for uni anyway! It’s too late, you’re never gonna remember all this!

Cortesy of my Brain

These were the kind of thoughts that were floating on my head and totally prevented me from focusing.

I swear, sometimes we are our own worst enemies.

So what can you do?

At this point, I was faced with a decision, either give up and postpone it to a future date as I did before or push through the mental pain and hope for the best.

I chose the latter.

I woke up every day and put in the work, even though I couldn’t recall all the material by the evening and something truly amazing happened.

Slowly but steadily the negative voice in my head started to quiet down, without me even realizing it.

In the last four days, I flew through hundred pages, and in the end against all odds I aced the exam.

This shocking event made me realize that we’re much stronger, it’s incredible what we can do when we don’t give ourselves a way out.

You’re NOT you’re Ego, you can change for the better.

When chasing our dream we’re all faced with this inner demon, and I hope that by throwing this in the ether of the internet, it will find its way to someone in the same situation that needs to hear this message.

Chasing our dreams requires showing up every day, put in the work, and continuously choosing to believe in ourselves even when no one else does.