Overthinking things is something we are often guilty of. When you own your own business, every decision can feel so important that sometimes you find yourself overthinking the smallest things. Regularly, it’s the perfectionist in us that kicks in and doesn’t want to move forward unless everything is 100% right. Striving for the best and thinking things through can be great, but overthinking can sometimes leave you feeling paralysed and stuck.
Here are a few thing we find helpful when we catch ourselves overthinking.
1. Keep it simple…Less is more
This has become a bit of a motto of ours and it can really help. When we find ourselves overcomplicating things and over analysing, we try to bring it back to the bare essentials. ‘Keeping it simple’ has been our approach to our packaging, design and our ingredients – less is more, keep it simple.
2. Is this really what you want?
Sometimes we find something isn’t becoming clear because we are forcing it, and it just isn’t the right move. If something isn’t working, don’t be afraid to take a pause, step back and ask yourself if this is really what you want. When you are making choices and decisions that are right for you, and in line with where you want to go, things usually move smoothly and easily.
3. Trust your gut instinct
A slightly obvious one, but there are times when in the rush to get things done & please others, we can often ignore our instincts and gut response. Sometimes we try to rationalise this away. We bypass our gut reaction in favour of compelling arguments or persuasion. There is no harm in gathering all the information before making very rash gut decisions, especially when it comes to bigger important ones, but, we’ve regularly found our initial gut instinct to be correct. If you’re struggling to work out what your gut is saying? Taking some time to be quiet can do wonders. A short meditation or relaxation can help reconnect heart with head.
4. Just do something.
Sometimes it doesn’t matter what the ‘something’ is, you need to take action. When we feel stuck and overwhelmed it often helps to just start with something, anything. Pick one project, make a decision and move on. Getting things moving again and taking action is really important when you are stuck on something. Sometimes any decision (right or wrong) is better than no decision at all, because it frees you up an allows you keep moving. We like to remind ourselves that most things aren’t as serious, big or important as we may feel they are, so take a chance and just do it. The road often isn’t straight but if you keep going, at least you are always moving and with movement comes growth.
5. Nothing is under control so you might as well relax!
Lastly, remember that nothing is really under control, as much as we like to convince ourselves it is! Life is unpredictable and unexpected things can happen at any moment. So don’t stress too much and enjoy the journey. We can often find ourselves agonising over little things because we want them to be perfect, or want to control the outcome, in reality we have control over very little of what happens so why not loosen up, let go of the fear and enjoy the journey wherever it takes you!