Overanalyzing: The Killer of Happiness

If you’re anything like me, you’re prone to over thinking every single action, text, phone call, or the lack of any of the aforementioned items. I have suffered an unmentionable amount of anxiety and unhappiness because of my ability to find something to overanalyze in every single situation in life, relationships, friendships, and everything in-between. And then I stopped and started to just live.

I used to sit there and ponder over every single little thing. What does this mean? But what if it means this instead? What if this text wasn’t meant to go to me? What if it’s a lie? What if he’s actually with his ex-girlfriend right now and not “stuck in traffic”? Sound familiar? Oh, okay.. so I’m not the only insecure girl that ever lived.

The truth that I’ve come to realize is that the habit to overanalyze every situation is really a form of insecurity. A pretty damaging form. If you live in a place where you doubt every single person’s intentions, actions, and words then you aren’t really living in the real world. You’re living in a bubble where every one is out to lie to you or manipulate you in some way, shape, or form. That’s not the right way to approach living, it’s the way we approach it when we live in fear of the unknown instead of accepting what is.

I also realized that when I do or say things, I want people to take me at face value and not try to read and analyze more into it…. so why shouldn’t I give people that same courtesy?

Fear, insecurity, overanalyzing – they all come from past experiences that may have hurt us. We’ve all been there. The problems come in when we try to project our past hurts onto our present and our future. Living in fear, in pain, in hurt is wasting the little time we have on Earth to be happy, to experience, and to smile.

Everyone Has A Breaking Point

I used to be a different person. Somewhat. I used to have hate in my heart. I was competitive, I was aggressive, I was mean. There was a point in my life where self gratification – of the immediate variety – was all I cared about.

Then I woke up.

I realized that every single person affects your life – one way or another – every single interaction has contributed to the character you have and the person you are. More so, you affect other people, the mistakes you make in your own life will in one way or another come back to you and to the people you care about. Maybe not immediately, but in the long run – consequences for your actions are abundant in their strength and their variety.

There are people I know who haven’t woken up.

These people continue to (seemingly) think that the mistakes they make are forever forgivable. That no matter how many times they mess up, the people around them will continue to forgive. I’ve said this to some people in the my life before – everyone has a breaking point. It just takes one time, one thing – maybe it’s small, maybe it’s life changing. But there will be one thing that will be irreversible and unforgivable.

Now, I say this having forgiven people for the most ridiculous things, for evil things, for (as my friend M.T. would say) non-human things. Mostly because I still naively believe that everyone is good. That even in the most evil of people – the people that have done deliberately hurtful things – there is a good side. There is a good heart screaming out to be discovered.

However, my naiveness (yes, that’s now a word) ends with forgiveness. It doesn’t extend to forgetting. It doesn’t extend to continued tolerance of disgusting behavior. Because forgetting it would be the same as encouraging it. I appreciate all the people that have forgiven me for the things I’ve done wrong, but MORE SO I am grateful that it was never encouraged.

I will end this post on a positive note – your life’s work should be to have a good and warm heart. You should do and say good things to good people and be surrounded by goodness. It makes it easier to be happy and at the end of the day, what’s a life without happiness?