Why Overthinkers Struggle to Move Forward

Do you ever find it disheartening? Being eager to press forward, while your own mind seems to beg you to halt? You know you must make a decision, know that something has to change, and that you've spent enough time in this particular place in your life to move onto another chapter. Maybe it's a job or relationship, or the way you do things or the way you've done things that you no longer want to do, or perhaps it's just a place you've stayed that you feel you've outgrown. You know where it is you're going to be able to find something that's better. But somehow, your mind seems to take on this familiar pattern of asking you what if. ..what if that is bad, what if I regret it, what if I missed something else, what if there was a better decision, what if I'm completely wrong for reasons I haven't even thought of yet. And so on and so forth, until it's no longer about taking forward steps, but walking into a room where every single possible mistake is waiting for you with open arms.

Perhaps this is how it comes to overthinkers who struggle to move onward and upward and simply make decisions already. They can see too many options in their head for what could be next. To be aware of a situation yet clouded by their own judgement. Instead of simply thinking through what they want to do, they think about the possible outcomes of what they could do, and what the possible outcomes of those outcomes could be. One decision becomes five, five becomes twenty, and on and on it goes, until you are no longer deciding what you want, but trying to predict the future well enough that nothing can surprise you.
But life never works out quite that way. Something a lot of us are aware of by this point of our life. 

You can think to yourself of all the possible angles it could take, but ultimately find yourself standing in the wrong place. You can prepare for every outcome you may have thought of, only to find that you've been blindsided by what you didn't. You can ask different people for their opinion, and somehow find yourself with a plethora of new questions by the end of it. And the irony of it all?

You know.

Know that you're doing this, that going over that conversation for the fifteenth time is not going to change what has already been said, or that you can re-watch the decision you made six months ago as many times as you'd like but it won't give you a different ending. But knowing doesn't make your mind stop, does it?

Because sometimes, you don’t want explanations, you want, need. Certainty. Knowing what you're supposed to do is one thing, but knowing that nothing bad will happen for you after you do it is something else. The first is occasionally possible, though rarely guaranteed. The latter is almost never possible, but is what many overthinkers seem to spend their lives running toward. One of the many reasons why overthinkers can spend so much time running in circles. Not because they don't want to make the choice or are afraid to, but the mere wait for that strange moment when everything will click together and they will know they've prepared well enough that nothing could possibly hurt them for the decision they're about to make.
(How often does that moment really come?)
What if the information you need isn't available to you yet because it's on the other side of the choice you are too scared to make?

This is the cruel reality of your attempts to get yourself enough information to feel certain about the decisions you make, and why sometimes you need to take a step forward in order to see what happens next. You don't know if the new job will make you happier until you take it, you don't know if leaving something was the right decision until you had enough time to see how it affected you, you don't know if you'll succeed until you get the chance to fail, and you don't know if the person you want to stay in your life is going to be in your life if you allow yourself to get attached to them. And that can be such a horrifying thought for someone who has basically built their life around trying to avoid making mistakes. 
Because mistakes are not what they're used to dealing with.

A normal mistake is something that happened, but to an overthinker, it can become evidence that they should have known better. Evidence that they should have waited, that their instincts were useless to them, and that in the next decision, they should be even more careful. So the next time the decision arose, they remembered the last one and were more careful. Then even more careful after that. Until it reaches that point where caution is no longer something that protects you, but stops you from moving at all.

I find this to be one of the many reasons why people sometimes look back at their lives and realize they've spent an uncomfortable amount of time planning to live instead of living. Planning the conversation before it's had, waiting for the right opportunity instead of taking the one that's there, thinking about what to say instead of saying it, and imagining the various ways something could end before you've even allowed yourself to enjoy that it's even begun. 

There's nothing wrong with thinking through your decisions, and there is something extremely valuable in doing so honestly. Deep thinkers are often aware of things that other people aren't. They think about consequences, and don't fall victim easily to the simple answers that other people would take without thinking. They can see the contradictions that others are blind to, and are often aware enough to know that the easy answer is rarely the correct one.

The problem comes when every decision is a courtroom. Your intentions are brought up on trial, and you think through every possible outcome and possibility. You bring up details from years ago, question what other people would think, what the decision would be like from a future standpoint, whether it makes sense emotionally, logically, financially, morally, practically, and so on and so forth. And by the time you're done with your presentation and sentencing, the opportunity has already skipped away. Yes, you were just trying to make the right decision, perhaps you were just trying to make a choice you would never regret. 

But those are not the same things. Because you will regret things. You're going to make choices that while; looked the best at first, turned out to be honey traps laid to keep you stuck. You may end up saying things that shouldn’t have been said, and there's nothing you can do about it but perhaps apologize at most. 

That's what is meant by living in this world, and having its choices. Making the wrong one, and not making it. Making one that you wouldn't have regretted living through. Because you will regret things. But you can't be held back by that, and
you cannot be bound by the fear that you'll regret this or that. You can know why you made a choice, but wish that it was something else. Understanding doesn't always bring peace, Sometimes it just gives you another explanation for the wound in your heart.

If you allow every fear the ability to cast a vote in your decisions, eventually the decisions aren't yours anymore. They belong to the fears you live with. Perhaps that is the problem that overthinkers often struggle with, is that the only way they feel like they've prepared well enough to take that step forward is with the certainty that they won't regret it and they won't be hurt, that everything will turn out fine.  Quoted by Arthur Morgan from Red Dead Redemption 2, created by Rockstar Games;

“We can’t change what’s done, we can only move on.”