It is recorded and agreed by various average human being thinks about 50000-70000 thoughts per day. That's a pretty large number!! Now you must be wondering what do they think and you also be thinking that it is no way you think so much. That's the beauty of this revelation about human mind. And what makes it more interesting that how ignorant we are about ourselves. These thoughts are the stories that our mind tells us about ourselves each day.
" You are happy"
"You are sad"
"Oh you loser!!"
"You shouldn't be happy after all this mess!"
These are the endless chatter going inside of us and we are so attached to them we can't detach our existence from it and we end up believing the story to be our life truth! If the story is pleasant we are happy and if it isn't we feel so trapped inside our own body! We attach meaning in the form of emotion to every such story. Sometimes we are so unaware that we just feel the emotion and don't even bother to single out the main culprit behind it.. the thought. So we can see how our thoughts shape our lives. Hence, it is the most valuable possession which can make or break our lives. Yet, we take it for granted and let the reins of our life to something so uncertain as FATE! We whine about our lives. We feel like we are victims! But that would end us up nowhere! But, as every problem has a solution, the right management of thoughts can be done only by managing its producer, the mind.
Albert Einstein said, " Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of mind to think."
Now training the mind may be easy for kids who are yet to get caught up with the world, but for us adults it might be a challenge. Sometimes this challenge gets so difficult that we give up on this and compromise a pretty mediocre and messy life. We deny to find our bliss and settle for less exciting states like feeling indifferent about life and momentary pleasures. No wonder such plagued people are leading this world to slow but steady destruction!!
So far I didn't say something you must not have read or experienced. But now I am going to suggest my personal endeavor to end this suffering. These tasks might not sound alien but it would be more of an experiential account.
Thought vigilance- The cheapest (free in fact) way to change your story is to observe what you are thinking 24x7!! Start with a minute, then and hour and then may be a day and extend them as you become more comfortable with each milestone. It does slow your mind and gives you the first hand experience of peace though for moments initially. If you catch yourself thinking negative just tell it a different story. Example, original thought- " I don't like my financial situation. " Better thought- " What can I do to the best of my abilities to solve the situation?" Remember to ask empowering questions like this. Your brain is infinitely intelligent and when you just ask good questions and not flood negativity, intuitions will hit you out of nowhere. And anyway you will be able to take much more better decisions when you cut yourself off the chaos. Try it and let me know.
Research about mind, brain and your identity- Mostly all religious texts if well read advocates the practice of being Conscious.After all, we should know who we are else our existence would be a joke. Even if you can't read through the lines of such texts there are various authors who have made the subject easy to be understood by us. Dr. Joe Dispenza, who has written various books on this subject that links our thoughts and it's effect with quantum physics. You may check the works of Eckhart Tolle, Neville Goddard, Deepak Chopra (there are many) who advocate the same thing, the power of mind. Once you go through such literature, you will get a hold of what is actually happening inside of you and how is it affecting your life.
Taking good self care mentally and physically is equally important. Nobody can stay depressed once they mediate daily and their circulations in body are working fine after a decent exercise.
Lastly I would say that you have to fight against a powerful addiction of thinking a certain way. To break it you need consistency and to make it happen I would like to mention about the 10,000 Hour rule, which Malcolm Gladwell mentioned in his bestseller of 2008, 'Outliers'. It was based on research of Anders Ericsson, and it was often cited in the book to be " the magic number of greatness". This means if you really want to achieve perfection in something you need to practice it for about 10,000 hours. Now there are various contradiction to this rule but let's not get into that. Let's say you start practicing thought vigilance and reframing which itself is an immensely powerful tool to achieve greatness and you practice that for around 8 hours a day. Now in a year you would end up practicing it for 8*365= 2920 days. So within four years time you can't imagine what a genius you will become. Now the chances are this would become a habit just like your current habit of overthinking so you would not even need to practice it diligently for years. After sometime it would run on auto-pilot and imagine what a wonderful beast you must have had become by then.
Hence, listen to every story your mind has to tell you, then make your own and change your life!!