We recently had the hugely inspiring Gita Trevorrow-Seymour, founder of High Definition You, lead a great virtual #ialso100 breakfast session for us talking about how to lead a stress-free life.
It was a fantastic session, so much to think about and how we can look after ourselves. Gita talked about over-thinking and we are pleased to share here with you a fantastic guest post, Are You An Overthinker? from her on this very topic. Please find the original here.
Thank you so much Gita!
Are you an over thinker? Do you leave a meeting or conversation and analyse everything that was said, or everything you could have said or everything they didn’t say or what you could have responded with etc etc etc…?
Maybe, just maybe…you’re an over thinker, like I used to be and you may even be delving in to the realms of chronic rumination.
In fact, in my corporate career one of the things that I often heard people say was “calm down, you are going to give yourself a heart attack.”
Today, I give you an insight in to the science of how over-thinking stress can cause health issues, including heart attacks, and also importantly two tips to break that cycle of rumination!
So, briefly, what happens in that moment of rumination is that you activate something called your sympathetic nervous system, otherwise known as ‘fight or flight mode’. It is clearly designed for our good, to protect us, but only for short periods of time. But we humans tend to extend our ‘fight or flight’ response out for unhealthily long periods of time, like when you are constantly thinking about a situation. Watch this weeks video to find out what happens to your body!
As always, if your brain doesn’t have a compelling reason to transform from a cycle of over thinking to one of inner calm it will never create the change you need. So, ask yourself why you want to stop overthinking?!
Who or what do you have in your life that you want to be healthy for?
If you can’t do it for yourself, can you do it for them?! Watch this week’s video (4mins 35secs) to learn how over thinking affects your health and how to start doing things differently – for the benefit of your sanity (and those around you!)
