“Over thinking kidnaps and kills dreams, only leaving us with regrets.“ No truer words were spoken, especially where I’m concerned.

I have always considered myself an over thinker. I always thought this was a trait that was ingrained in my DNA, as unescapable as my eye color, but after reading this book I am seeing my over thinking as an illness to which I might have found a cure.

The subject matter isn’t too heavy, though ironically I did catch myself overthinking, even when trying to read! The overall layout is pleasing, and it was very easy to go back and reference parts that speak to you. There are two sections at the end of each chapter: Key Takeaways and How to, that really help drive the main points of each chapter home, while also giving the reader applicable questions to ask themselves, helping to dig deeper, and find out more about their over thinking.

For a nonfiction I found the writing quite engaging, the use of relatable examples helping me to further engage, while also helping with my understanding of more complex topics and critical thinking. I am in the overthinking camp, and I found my self stopping and pondering myself, and a current situation I have been overthinking lately, and it has really helped me out off of the overthinking rollercoaster.

I was surprised how helpful this book was for me and what an enjoyable read it was! ( )

Overthinking is always mistaken as good for us. The more you think the better decision you could make. This book by lison mage tells us it’s wrong. In fact overthinking greatly impact out mental health. Thus causing big damage to out mindset.
This book clearly point out there’s three big misunderstanding about over thinking. they’re explained as three big myths. The first one is overthinking enhancing my thinking, the second one is overthinking is inconsequential. The third one is overthinking is inevitable to decision-making. In each of these myths, there’re examples to describe this and also there’re solution on how to solve those kind of problems.
In the first myth, generally we think we build a triad “control –competence-connection”. But when we are overthinking we shift this triad to a different triad “perfection-completion-validation”. Overthinking misunderstood three rules about value of information. Also create blindfold for us. Overthinking is good at time travelling. Tine travelling grant us the ability to think the past and prepare for the future. But over thinker make it one step further they can modify the past event and even create one that never happens. That are solutions for this kind of myth. Like taking a break and having a hobby for the blindfold, cognitive technique to fight fearing of lose control, also breath and grounding technique for challenging anxiety.
In the second myth, over thinker always thought their situation are bearable. They’re not major critical or emergent. In this way, we misunderstood overthinking is easy to cope with, but in fact they could be toxic, damaging our mental health. Creating chronic stress. Brought negative emotion. In order to handle those issue, we need to have acknowledgement, assessment and adjustment to deal with our negative emotion. Also using affect labeling to leverage our thoughts. Correct judgment for assessment, and active meditation for proper adjustment. Over thinker can be very misleading. They create three self-scheme for themselves. Being attentive, being patient and being realistic. In fact, they mistook avoidance as attentive, procrastination as patience. Resignation as realism. For each misunderstand, there’s corresponding solution for it. Like three column exercise for attentiveness, the difference between patience and procrastination can give you a clear picture how to make a good decision. Using the inversion principle for any frustrated feeling. Staginess is not good, progression is what we want. How to leave out comfort zone and enter into a growth zone. There’re steps we can take. Try to be open about choices and opportunity in life, learn to be self-compassion when encountering with difficulty.
In third myth. Over thinking is inevitable in decision making. That’s not true. In order to conquer it, there’s a decision making prism called freedom filter which is explained clearly. There’re three steps for it, process invisibility and value. For process we need shift from binary thinking to probabilistic thinking. the new thinking validate that a poor outcome doesn’t mean an inefficient process. By focusing on procession rather than outcome we can be engaged and motivated thus doing better. For invisibility, we know some decision can be alterable or permanent, consequential or trivial. When we face those different decision making what we could do. What methods we could use to achieve the result we want. For the last part of the filter value. We need to make decision in consistent with our value. Hard decision is given because there’s option on the par. Nothing outstanding turns out. In this situation we need to focus our own self-awareness to find our true value thus making a good decision.
This book is very detailed persuasive and educational. it include a lot examples and clear explanation it has so much fun. ( )

This book is aimed at helping people overcome the tendency to overthink when making decisions. The author, Lison Mage, is a therapist and has conducted interviews with a number of people plagued by the effects of overthinking. In the book she discusses some strategies that might be helpful in overcoming it. What is overthinking? That’s a commonly used term but hard to define precisely. I tend to think of it as ruminating, obsessing, worrying, or delaying decisions. In one place Mage says it’s “maladaptive thinking,” which I take to mean thinking in an ineffective way. She also says overthinking is an excess of thinking - in other words, thinking about the wrong things when trying to make a decision, or thinking too long about the right things, i.e. beyond the amount needed.

The book is organized around 3 common beliefs about overthinking that Mage tries to show are false. They are that overthinking helps with decision-making, that overthinking doesn’t hurt in the end, and that overthinking is unavoidable. Part of Mage’s approach is to discredit these beliefs as false and help readers take a more rational perspective on decision-making. Each of the chapters about each of these false beliefs include illustrative stories and also her explanations of why the common beliefs aren’t true.

This is a good topic for a book and it kept me interested as I read through it. The writing in places becomes elliptical though. It’s a little hard at times to see where the discussion is going. Organization within the chapters is not clear. And even at the sentence level Mage, at times, states her points more weakly and indirectly than she might. Fortunately, helpful bulleted summaries are included at the end of each chapter. I had to rely on those to figure out what I’d been reading after I’d finished a chapter and will return to those to review the book when I go back to it.

The most helpful part of the book for me was Mage’s final discussion about using personal values to help with decision making and short cut the process of overthinking. Here I was able to see how prioritizing outcomes in relation to values could certainly be helpful. I suspect overthinking itself is a sign of confusion about the priority of one’s values.

As I went through the book I highlighted some interesting statements in the text that struck me as insightful, and in the end it’s these statements, and the bulleted chapter summary points, that I want to refer to again.

Mage markets follow-up counseling with her through links in the text. ( )

1. The subject is worthwhile to spend some time to think over.

2. The structure of the book helps to see 'the elephant in the room' from many sides.

3. But as so many books, it was better not to create a book of 200 pages. An paper of 10 pages could have the same content and could help those overthinkers to change more effectively their way of thinking and acting. Now the book is almost an example of overthinking, not deciding and getting active.

Summary: read the book quickly and spend your time on the three summary-elements. After all, the book is not expensive and return on investments is rather high (if you go quickly). ( )

Reading the book was a great reminder to stop overthinking. Perhaps the book reflects its ethos in that the goal felt like: the sooner it's published the better. Part of me wishes it was more refined and organized and the other part of me appreciates that it got the job done while sticking to the message.
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