How can you think too much? You may find the answers to this question interesting,
I don’t think you can think too much. Thinking is about analyzing the world and seeking to understand it. I’ve been told I think too much on numerous occasions. I never really understood what that meant, but after a number of years I began to see it either as people saying that they don’t want to think any more about something. or people thinking that I’m thinking more than I need to in order to make a decision.
For some of us, the joy is in understanding. That is the action we are taking. We don’t have to make some choice about doing this or that. Our choice is to continue to think about it. Others see this as dithering and indecisiveness. They see it as a weakness. We see it as fun. Perhaps even a strength. In any case, we are pretty much powerless to stop it.
I don’t want to stop it. Yeah, I have all kinds of problems—debilitating insecurities, doubts and the like. On good days, I can be like this: sure of myself and my thinking and my beliefs. On bad days…. well, let’s just say that I’ve considered suicide as a viable option far too often.
Feeling like an outsider is tough. It is lonely. Fortunately there is the internet, and it is possible to find more people of a similar nature than it was a decade or more ago. Also places of higher education house a lot of intelligent weirdos.
I believe that the best solution is to become comfortable with who you are. This takes years. I think the way to do it is to gradually give yourself more and more permission to stop trying to be what you think others think you should be (which may actually a case of thinking too much, but isn’t really something people like us can control), and to start doing and thinking what you really think. In other words, you want to relax on trying to please others, and be your natural self as much as you can manage it.
Paradoxically, it seems that when you are fully yourself, doing and thinking what you really want to do and think, you get better and better at it, until people start appreciating it. Not always does this happen, but often enough.
In my own case, I think I’m a bit offbeat and that I don’t share the same moral views as most of society. There are a number of people, it turns out, who think similarly to the way I do. A lot of them are here, which is why I stay here. The other thing is that I have been practicing saying what I think for years now, and I find that I’m not getting as much opposition as I used to. I hope that means I’m getting more persuasive and not that people have just gotten tired of seeing me.
The weirdest thing, however, is that people actually seem to like me and/or appreciate what I have to say. I never thought it was actually possible, although I wanted it all my life. Of course, it’s nice in this community. My next challenge is to see if I could be heard in a larger community—one that includes a more diverse set of opinions.
What I’ve been doing here is practicing honesty and practicing non-defensiveness. I want to show myself, warts and all (but especially the warts), and I want to learn to listen as well as I can. I find that I have to suspend defensive reactions and learn how to ask questions to find out not just what people think, but more importantly, where they have come from; what has lead them to think what they think. I find that with this knowledge I can be more sympathetic to people who hold views I despise. Often times, they have concerns similar to mine. They just think we should have a policy that I think won’t work.
As I said, I really don’t believe that people mean the surface meaning when they say you think to much. I think they mean they aren’t interested in what you are thinking. It’s too convoluted and unnecessary.
It’s your life, and if you find thinking to be necessary, then do it. If you find that you are being marginalized because of this, it can’t be helped. Stick to it. You have a good chance that after many hard years, the easy years will come where people finally accept your thinking to be worthwhile. And if they don’t, you have still been happier than you would have been pretending to be someone else.
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