Happiness Activity No. 3: Avoiding Overthinking and Social Comparison
Overthinking is thinking too much, needlessly, passively, endlessly, and excessively pondering the meanings, causes, and consequences of your character, your feelings, and your problems: “Why am I so unhappy?,” “What will happen to me if I continue to procrastinate at work?,” so on. Becoming happier means learning how to disengage from overthinking about both major and minor negative experiences.
We cannot run away from the social comparisons. In our daily lives we can’t help noticing whether our friends, coworkers, family members, and even fictional characters in the movies are brighter, richer, healthier or more attractive than we are. Social comparisons are particularly tricky because no matter how successful, wealthy, or fortunate we become, there’s always someone who can best us.
You can practice this strategy in multiple ways: distract yourself from persistent thoughts, try to solve the problem, cut overthinking triggers, see the big picture. Decide what works best for you and do it.
Learn more here.
Exercise
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During the next 5 days, when you catch yourself thinking “I’ll never get a promotion if my boss doesn’t give me more responsibilities,” or “S/he has so much more free time than I do”, redirect your full attention somewhere else: read or watch something that’s funny or suspenseful; listen to a song that makes you feel good; meet a friend; do a physical activity that gets your heart rate up. Use the “Stop!” technique, in which you think, say, or even shout to yourself, “Stop!” or “No!” when you find yourself resuming overthinking.
Exercise
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Write down your ruminations – this will help you organize and make sense of them, and observe patterns that you haven’t perceived before.
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Write a list of every possible solution to a particular problem—for example, ways to improve your relationship with your boss, to help your kid’s sleeping problems, etc.
Write a list of situations (places, times, and people) that appear to trigger your overthinking and avoid or modify those situations.
Exercise
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Whenever a rumination or social comparison prevails upon you (e.g., “How will I ever get through this week?,” “My boss has been so short-tempered lately”, etc.), ask yourself “Will this matter in a year?
It’s remarkable how quickly things that seem so momentous and pressing this very moment emerge as fairly trivial and insignificant.
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Of you decide that the trouble you’re enduring now is indeed significant and will matter in a year, then consider what the experience can teach you or how to solve the problem.