Figuring it out - Overthinking

I’ve always been someone that overthinks things. Did I say the right thing? Was that the right move? Do I even deserve to be in this position in the first place?

I once read a quote which said, “worrying doesn’t take away tomorrow’s troubles, it takes away today’s peace”. As a university student I would constantly have thoughts that started with“what if”. Not the positive kind such as what if everything goes to plan but more like what if I haven’t met the brief? What if I failed the module?”. At the time, to me these fears were real. I had managed to convince myself that these were all very probable outcomes and as a result, I developed a lot of negative thoughts about myself, my ability and ultimately, I allowed this to impact my day-to-day life. These thoughts shared one thing in common: they weren’t grounded in reality. All of these thoughts were worries about what future Aryan did or didn’t do. 99% of these fears were made up in my head and were not a reflection of anything that was actually happening in the real world. The issue was my perspective. I chose to see the problem through a negative lens, picking out the smallest issues and snowballing them into one massive ball of anxiety.

I ran into the same problem when I decided to pursue an interest of mine which is content creation. What will my friends think? What if someone from work sees this? Will people find it cringey?

Truthfully, no-one cares about the content I make. Similarly, no-one really cares about this newsletter. I’m just writing this because I want to and if someone finds it cringey, boring or just straight rubbish then maybe the post wasn’t for them. Even if there is truth to what they’re saying, everyone starts somewhere right? I’m still a complete rookie and I accept criticism with open arms. I’ve made some bad reels in my short time making content. This newsletter probably lacks structure and you may even spot some grammar mistakes. All I know is each time I will get better and I don’t want to go through life regretting not creating (topic of the next post), in whatever form that may be.

Let me circle back to what I was saying before (see what I mean about lack of structure). It turned out that these fears were in-fact irrational. I did hit the brief and my late nights in my room did pay off (even the essays that were completed the night before the deadline). No-one cared about my random posts, silly reels or this newsletter. Looking back, these worries were nothing but a thought that I allowed to fester for too long. In reality, these small issues we create for ourselves mean nothing in the grand scheme of things. Will it matter that username7123953 said my reels are trash? No. Will it matter if I make a small mistake at work? No. Will overthinking about these things change anything? No.

Finally, I’d like to say that I’m still an over thinker and the point of this post is not to pretend like this is an easy problem to solve. To solve a problem, you must understand the cause, and I think I’m slowly unravelling it. For me, I feared failure and part of me still does, but I’m learning that its important to embrace it. As we all know, failing at something is a great way to learn and hidden within every mistake is a lesson.

I hope you enjoyed my first post! If you did, please let me know what you liked about it. Equally, if you didn’t, please let me know what I could improve for next time via dm (@arycreatedit).

As always, like everyone my age, I’m still figuring it out :)