I Was a Chronic Overthinker: A Guest Post by Joseph Nguyen

If you’ve ever been plagued by anxious, never-ending overthinking, this is the book for you. Read on for an exclusive essay from author Joseph Nguyen on writing The Overthinker’s Guide to Making Decisions.

I wrote this book for myself because I was a chronic overthinker. And nothing makes an anxious person overthink more than having to make a decision, no matter the size. It ranged from not being able to choose one thing from a restaurant menu to choosing what book to read, what school to go to, what job to apply to, what friends to do on the weekends, where to eat. Every single decision created analysis paralysis. It was not just preventing me from living my life; it was destroying it from the inside out. I felt like I could never actually enjoy life because I was so busy thinking about it.

After hitting rock bottom, I decided I no longer wanted to live like that, constantly doubting my own decisions, polling the earth for everyone’s opinions, doing hours and hours of research only to end up unable to decide because I now had information overload. What’s ironic is that most of the time I already knew deep down what I wanted, but I was so afraid it could be the wrong choice. I was so fixated on not making a mistake that I ended up making the biggest one: not trusting myself. I no longer wanted to live a life where I didn’t trust my own heart.

So I wrote this book to solve that problem.

I researched and read as much as I possibly could on the subject: How can I reduce overthinking around decisions? How can I make better decisions, stop doubting them, stop feeling guilty about some of them, and know whether a choice is truly right for me? Almost everything out there is logical and rational. It walks you through scientific processes that remove emotion from the equation. The problem is, even when I made the most logical decision, it didn’t bring me peace because I was going against my heart.

We’re not logical beings. We’re emotional beings. If we exile emotion, we also lose the ability to feel happy about our decisions or our lives. I needed a way to harmonize head and heart, to integrate emotion into the process instead of rejecting it. This book was born because I couldn’t find that approach anywhere else: a practical way to make decisions that align with my values and the person I want to become while carrying the least guilt possible.

Today I can make decisions that feel fully aligned, expansive, and true to who I actually want to be. Even if others think it “isn’t the best decision,” it was the best one for me. That shift has let me live with far less regret and rumination, because I finally trust myself again.

In this book I share the few frameworks that worked for me and that I’ve watched help many others decide faster, regret less, and build lives aligned with who they want to be rather than who others expect them to be. Once you trust yourself, you can weather any storm life throws at you; that’s where our best decisions come from.

Know that this book is not the absolute truth. It’s simply an alternative perspective meant to help you find your own. Take what resonates, leave what doesn’t, experiment, and trust your experience, because information gives knowledge, but only experience brings wisdom.

I kept the book short (you can finish it in one evening) because the last thing an overthinker needs is another giant book to overthink. It’s packed with reflective prompts so you get the tools quickly and can start using them right away.

This will likely be the shortest book on decision-making you ever read, and I hope that it helps you as much as it has transformed me.

Thank you for the privilege of sharing this with you.

With gratitude,

Joseph