Thinking or Overthinking

I am very goal oriented. However, like many, I tend to make a quick judgment and then have to stop go back and think about my first thought or reaction. So when is thinking effective or does it become overthinking?

Take a crazy “health” goal of mine from the distant past. I got it in my head that I wanted to run a hundred mile race, not win, just finish. My first thought was that is crazy, “I can’t do that!” Well, that could have defeated me right there and I would not have gotten any further along to meeting the goal that I wanted to try to achieve.

So I thought and I read and read and tried to figure out how a person could actually do this thing – run a hundred miles. After all that reading and planning and practicing running, I approached my first race not knowing if I would be able to complete the goal.

While preparing to run a hundred miles was an okay time to overthink things without too much problem – running gives you time to think after all. Overthinking while in a hundred mile race is problematic. The runner must focus on very simple things: the overall plan of constant forward motion, eating, drinking, using some distraction techniques for pain, getting over the hill or mountain ahead of you.

Purposefully not overthinking is actually very satisfying. Make a simple goal, take steps to achieve that goal. Whoops, didn’t make it, try again a little differently this time.

Think about your thinking when trying to achieve a health goal.