The Truth About Overthinking and Analysis Paralysis

Every multiple choice exam I ever took followed the same script. I would read the question, work the problem, and get myself down to two choices. Every single time, two. Then I would sit there, turning the two options over and over in my mind, looking for the detail that would tell me which one was right. More often than not, I picked the wrong one.

This wasn't a one-time fluke. It was a pattern that followed me through every exam in undergrad, and it followed me all the way to the Bar Exam. The stress of watching myself do this, exam after exam, compounded on itself. I would sit in a room full of people filling in their bubbles while my mind ran laps around two options, and the pressure of knowing I had done this before, and gotten it wrong before, made the whole thing worse. I was working my brain in overdrive, and it was working against me the entire time.

If this sounds familiar to you, even if your version of it has nothing to do with exams, I want you to know nothing is wrong or broken about you, in fact, you are not alone. Overthinking is one of the most common and least understood struggles people carry. Everyone seems to know they do it. Almost no one understands why.

What overthinking actually is

Overthinking isn't the same as thinking carefully. Thinking carefully has an endpoint. You gather what you need, you weigh it, and you land somewhere. Overthinking has no endpoint. It's the same information circling the same loop, without ever converting into a decision or a sense of resolution. Psychologist Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, who spent decades studying this exact pattern, found that nearly 73 percent of people between 25 and 35 experience it regularly, along with 52 percent of people between 45 and 55. That number drops to around 20 percent by the time people reach their late sixties and seventies, which tells you something important: overthinking isn't a fixed personality trait. It's a pattern, and patterns can be interrupted.

Researchers at the University of Chicago found that when people are given too many options, their short-term memory becomes overloaded and their performance on the decision actually gets worse, not better. A separate study out of Stanford put people through creative tasks while monitoring their brain activity, and found that the more they deliberated, the worse their output became. In both cases, more thinking didn't lead to a better outcome. It led to a worse one. That was exactly my experience with those two remaining exam choices. The extra time I spent deliberating wasn't sharpening my answer. It was drowning it.

Why we actually do this

Here's the part that doesn't get talked about enough. Overthinking and analysis paralysis aren't really about the decision in front of you. They're about what the decision represents.

For me, it was the need to make the perfect choice. I didn't want to mess up. I didn't want to make a mistake. I wanted to get it right, and that desire attached itself to every choice I made, from an exam bubble to a business decision years later. For other people, it isn't perfectionism driving the car. It's doubt. A steady undercurrent of fear about being wrong that shows up as freezing rather than obsessing, but comes from the same root.

Different flavor, same source: an old, deep belief that if we choose wrong, something bad will happen and we won't be able to handle it. That belief is what keeps us out of our body and stuck in our head. It's what keeps us from trusting that whatever we choose, we are going to be safe, and there will always be a way through. Perfectionism affects the vast majority of people to some degree, and researchers have found that most of those affected feel it shapes their work and their relationships in ways they don't love. This isn't a small side issue for a handful of people. It's close to universal, which is exactly why so many of us feel like we're the only ones dealing with it while everyone else seems to have it figured out.

What it cost me, and what I did about it

It took real, sustained work for me to see this pattern for what it was. Perfectionism had been running underneath so many of my decisions that I mistook it for a personality trait, something I just was, rather than something I was doing. It wasn't until I looked squarely at how exhausted I felt, how much energy I was spending trying to guarantee an outcome that no amount of deliberation could actually guarantee, that I understood how much it was costing me.

Perfectionism is exhausting. It held me back from the life I actually want, because I was too busy trying to bulletproof every decision to ever fully live in one. I did the work to break that pattern because I wanted to live from my heart instead of from fear, and because I understood, eventually, that a life spent avoiding mistakes is not the same thing as a life without regret. Often it's the opposite.

Noticing the pattern is the beginning

You don't interrupt a pattern you can't see. This is where an Akashic Records reading becomes such a valuable tool. The Akashic Records hold the story of your soul across every lifetime, and in a reading, we can look together at where this pattern of overthinking or analysis paralysis actually began. Not the general idea of it, but your specific version. Where the fear of getting it wrong first took root, what it was protecting you from, and what it's still trying to protect you from today, even though you don't need that protection anymore. When you can see the pattern clearly, you finally have something to work with instead of something that just keeps happening to you.

If you've been circling the same two choices your whole life, in exams or relationships or business decisions or what to order off a menu, a reading can help you understand the why behind it so you can actually begin to release it.

A daily practice that helps get you out of your head

Alongside that inner work, you need something practical for the moments when your mind is spinning and you need to get out of it right now. This is where I point people to the Bullet Journal® Method. It was never designed as just a productivity hack. It was designed as a way to get what's swirling in your head down onto paper, where you can actually look at it instead of just feeling the weight of it.

When a decision is stuck in your mind, it takes up space and multiplies. The same two options replay themselves in slightly different lighting each time, and it can feel like you're making progress when you're really just spinning. Putting it on paper does something your mind alone can't do. It gives the thought a boundary. You can see it, sit with it, cross it off, or set it aside for tomorrow. The page holds what your nervous system has been trying to hold on its own, and that alone is often enough to bring the noise down to a level where a real decision becomes possible again.

The way through

Overthinking and analysis paralysis aren't proof that something is wrong with you. They're proof that some part of you learned, a long time ago, that safety depended on getting it right. That part of you has been working incredibly hard ever since. It just picked a strategy that doesn't actually work, because no amount of mental looping can guarantee an outcome. What actually creates safety is trusting yourself enough to choose, and trusting life enough to know you'll find your footing even if the choice turns out to be the wrong one.

You get there by seeing the pattern and by giving your mind somewhere to put its weight besides your own shoulders. That's the invitation. Book an Akashic Records reading with me if you're ready to see where this pattern began, and start a bullet journal practice if you need a place to set your thoughts down so your mind can finally rest. 

Mimi 🔥

P.S. In case you’re interested in learning the Bullet Journal® Method, you’re in luck, I will be facilitating a training at the end of the month. Click here for more details.