Simple principles can hide big payoffs.

Here are some deceptively simple principles.

Q: What is the essence of the Torah?
A: “What’s hateful to you, do not do to others” —Hillel

Q: How do you make money in the stock market?
A: “Buy low, sell high”—Conventional wisdom.

Q: What is the essence of eating well?
A: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants” —Michael Pollan

When understood and consistently practiced, such simple principles can have a profound effect on our lives. We don’t pay much attention to simple principles because we don’t believe simple things can be effective.

The principles may be easy to understand, but just knowing them is not enough. It is like this. If you are in an unfamiliar country and you ask someone where Destination X is, they may say, “It is twenty miles in the southwest direction.” It may be true, but to get there, you may also need more information: Is there a road leading up to Destination X? If not, how can you get there? If there are many routes to get there, which one will get you there faster? Is there any route that I should avoid? So, while it is important for us to know that our destination is twenty miles away in the southwest direction, we also need a map and instructions that will let us get there easily and quickly.

So, knowing where we want to get to is not enough. We also need to know how to get there. The purpose of my new book, The Power to Change, is to identify a few simple principles that will create a successful life and provide a clear road map and directions to get there. It will also guide you in designing a life that flows well and how to deal with problems that arise in everyday living. The contents are based on my Prokopton letters, rearranged in alogical sequence with introductory materials added.

Where do these principles come from?

More than two thousand years ago, a group of philosophers known as the Stoics analyzed life’s predicaments and came up with simple solutions. The principles they identified were so profound that they formed the basis of many major modern psychotherapies, such as Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) and Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT). These principles are simple and powerful. They are compatible with modern psychology, psychotherapy, and neuroscience.

The principles are easy to understand. Practicing them is not difficult. But practicing consistently is where most of us fail. The big payoff will come to those who practice consistently and do not give up when they reach a plateau. No amount of knowledge can replace consistent practice.

Here, I want to share just one of the many principles in the book, overcoming overthinking.

HOW TO AVOID OVERTHINKING

“BE WATER, MY FRIEND.”

Throw a small pebble gently in a still pond. You will see the water forming ripples around the pebble, and soon, the pond will be still again. Throw a large rock with great force. This time, the water forms wider ripples and takes longer to settle. Depending on whether the stone is large or small, whether it hits the water with greater or lesser force, the ripples will form and then settle down. Water never reacts to force any more than necessary.

Most of us are not like water. We overthink and overreact. Someone throws a small pebble in our mental pond, and it creates wide ripples in our minds that never seem to settle. We use enormous mental energy to deal with a simple problem and don’t really solve it. All we do is hurt ourselves in the process. It is like using a sledgehammer to swat a fly. We miss the fly and drop the sledgehammer on our foot. Small inconveniences irritate us. Newspaper headlines make us worry too much. TikTok “influencers” may make us want things we didn’t even know existed the day before. We take a careless comment by someone as a major insult. We worry for hours about a “negative” comment made by our boss. We are depressed about the injustices that surround us.

Often, it seems there is no way out. Whatever we do results in overthinking. We give money to a homeless person. Immediately, we start thinking, “Maybe he is a drug addict. Or a conman. I shouldn’t have given the money to him.” The next time, we pass a homeless person without helping him. We start the overthinking cycle again: “I shouldn’t have passed him by without helping him. After all, it would have been easy for me to give him some money.” If we buy a dress, we wonder if it is really necessary. If we don’t buy it, we wonder if we should have. If we buy stuff on sale, we worry about having spent money on things we didn’t really need. We feel upset if we don’t buy because we passed up an opportunity.

In everything we do, there are endless opportunities to overthink. Most of us immediately take the opportunities and spend our time overthinking. We spend our time unproductively overthinking rather than living a vibrant life.

What can we do about it? Here are four Stoic strategies to overcome overthinking:

1. DRAW ON YOUR STRENGTHS

We overthink because we feel trapped and have no way out. We start to overthink. Our minds go through a stage of self-pity. “Why did this happen to me?” or “I should have handled the situation differently.” Essentially, we feel trapped by what happened, and there seems to be no way out. But this is seldom true. Instead of thinking such thoughts, if we turn our attention to what we can do now about it, we may find that we didn’t lack the strengths; we didn’t look for them.

Epictetus challenges our helplessness this way:

Have you not received the inner strength to cope with any difficulty that may arise? Have you not been given strength, courage, and patience? Why should you worry about what happens when you are armed with these virtues and have the power to endure? What could constrain, compel, or even annoy you? You don’t see all this. Instead, you moan, groan, shed tears, and complain. –Epictetus, Discourses, 1.6

Finding fault in something and blaming someone for it leads to overthinking. Finding resources to solve our problem makes it go away. If you think you have bought something overpriced, return it rather than overthinking it: “Why are the prices so high?” “I bought something that’s not worth the price I paid for it.”

Why overthink something when you have the strength to reverse your decision?

2. LOOK FOR THE SOLUTION

Sometimes, we don’t even have to look for resources to deal with a situation. The solution is obvious. Yet, we start overthinking by diverting our attention to the problem instead of the solution. Instead of accepting the solution right before us, we go in different directions with an agitated mind.

Is the cucumber bitter? Throw it out. Are their briars in your path? Go around them. That’s enough. Don’t add, “Why are such things in the world?” –Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 8.50

If the restaurant is noisy, go to a quieter one. If things are too pricey, buy them on sale or go to a discount store. There are no satisfactory answers to questions like why a restaurant is noisy or why things are pricey. We can overthink questions like these forever or simply find an alternative and get on with our lives.

Why overthink about something when you can make it go away quickly?

3. LET GO OF UNSOLVABLE PROBLEMS

You did something, but it went wrong. Now, you can’t stop thinking about it. Your job interview did not go well, and now you are going over in your mind the various ways you should have handled your interview. You unintentionally insulted someone, and now you are trying to correct yourself mentally over and over again. A stranger was rude to you, and you can’t stop thinking about it. What is common in all such situations? You are overthinking and making yourself miserable without solving any problem because there is no way to solve it.

If you think you can control things over which you have no control, then you will be hindered and disturbed. You will start complaining and become a fault-finding person. —Epictetus, Encheiridion, 1

If you are overthinking a situation about which you can do nothing, the only thing this will lead to is more overthinking. You can’t get rid of overthinking by overthinking. Anytime you find yourself overthinking about an unsolvable problem, realize that you can’t solve the problem by overthinking because you are only feeding it.

Why feed overthinking by overthinking?

4. DON’T REPLAY SOLVED PROBLEMS IN YOUR MIND

A peculiar tendency of humans is to overthink problems that are no longer present. You were about to get into an accident but didn’t. Yet you go through this scene over and over in your mind days after the incident. You even replay your fright at that time. You had a bad childhood. Now you are an adult, and yet you can’t stop replaying your childhood long after it’s over. You indulge your overthinking. Even animals don’t do that.

Wild animals run from the dangers they actually see, and once they have escaped, they worry no more. We, however, are tormented alike by what is past and what is to come. A number of our blessings do us harm, for memory brings back the agony of fear while foresight brings it on prematurely. No one confines his unhappiness to the present. —Seneca, Moral Letters, 13

Whenever your mind wanders into watching movies of the past—whether it happened twenty seconds or twenty years ago—and starts overthinking, ask yourself, “It’s over. Why am I overthinking instead of being happy that it is over?

Why overthink a problem that doesn’t exist anymore?

A RETURN TO STILLNESS

Once you look at your overthinking and see that you have the resources to solve it, or the solution is obvious, not solvable, or already solved, you will see that overthinking is a useless activity and serves no purpose. So, as soon as possible, return to stillness—just like the pond water that returns to stillness after being disturbed.

Be water, my friend. —Bruce Lee

By all means, let’s think. But not overthink.

TAKEAWAYS

When we overthink we spend more energy trying to solve a problem that doesn’t deserve it. It leads to mental conflict. To avoid overthinking:

1. Draw on your resources to solve the problem quickly.
2. Don’t spend time thinking about the problem. Look for quick solutions.
3. Let go of unsolvable problems.
4. Don’t replay the problem in your head over and over again.
5. Find a quick solution, solve the problem and move on.

TRY THIS SIMPLE EXERCISE

Next time when you catch yourself overthinking about a problem, ask yourself the following questions:

Do I want to spend so much energy to solve this problem?

What is the quickest way to solve the problem? (If you have more than one solution, don’t spend time going back and forth between the two. Just decide on one, even if it is not the optimal solution.)

If you find the problem has no real solution, don’t turn the problem over and over in your mind. Move on.

My wish is that principles like these, which were discovered more than two thousand years ago, will make your life richer and make it flow well. I hope you are not fooled by the simplicity of these principles into thinking that the key to the good life cannot be that simple or that obvious. It is.

 

©2025 John Murray Business. Reprinted with permission. This article may not be reproduced for any other use without permission.

 

About the Author

From the boardroom to the classroom, Dr. Chuck Chakrapani has consistently sought to understand and improve how we live and work. His career has spanned the highest levels of business leadership as well as pursuing a distinguished academic career. Dr. Chakrapani’s expertise is grounded in rigorous analysis and a deep understanding of human behaviour. He offers a modern and practical lens through which to explore Stoicism’s enduring wisdom. He publishes the monthly digital magazine THE STOIC and has authored a growing library of books on the subject. He also founded the Prokopton community, a program designed to guide individuals in developing a Stoic practice that cultivates resilience, purpose, and a life of meaning and flow. Explore Dr. Chakrapani’s work on Stoicism at thestoicgym.substack.com.