Eleven exercises you can use to stop overthinking and return to the present

Controlling your thoughts can help you prevent high levels of stress or developing anxiety. Know what exercises you can use, put them into practice and discover how they work for you.

“Thought always has the last word. We are slaves to our thoughts and we are at their command. They can help us expand our lives or they can limit it. This is the difference between animals and us, who have the most developed brain and where thought is generated.“, he explained to the psychologist Tomás Navarro.

In that sense, Navarro considers that We need a thought that heals us, that does not make us sick, and that does not prevent us from being happy on a daily basis.: “Our body is all one and stress is related to the immune system, for example. So if we interpret things that are not, we generate unnecessary stress, which can ultimately lead to us getting sick,” he adds.

Do you want to know if you have stress? Do this and discover tools to manage it.

But do we really apply it? Maybe not so much and that’s why we end up overthinking, feeling guilty, frustrated and tired. The check ‘‘ explain what: “Overthinking comes from being everywhere except in the present and that anxiety seeks to create scenarios, on many occasions, to make us feel that it is ‘protecting’ us from what may happen.“.

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That is why we may think about a situation so many times and reach a conclusion and receive, as consequently, high levels of stress, reduced creativity and impediment in decision making.

Can you work on this and change it?

Yes, in fact there are several exercises to do. Put them into practice and see if they all suit you.

  1. Accept the thought, if you resist you will think about it even more.
  2. Ask yourself what is in your control and what is not.
  3. Focus on your five senses. Find 5 things you can see, 4 that you can touch, 3 that you can hear, 2 that you can smell, and 1 that you can taste.
  4. Accept that you don’t have to control everything.
  5. Accept the thought and focus on solutions. If they do not exist, empathize with your emotion.
  6. Take deep breaths, inhale for 4 seconds, hold for 7, and release for 8.
  7. Remember that you are not your thoughts.
  8. Use 3-word statements: “I am safe.”
  9. Identify objects of a specific color around you.
  10. Pay attention to all the sounds around you.
  11. Touch any object that is near you and pay attention to how it feels in your hands.