Dr. Vasudha Kapoor - High on Happiness: An Illustrated Guide to Breaking the Cycle of Overthinking and Negative Emotions

S he returned home that day with a skip in her step and a smile on her face. Around fifteen years ago, an eight-year-old had just put her name up for a solo dance competition being held in her school. A shy kid without a single dancers bone in her body went up on the stage and danced before a hall full of people without a care in her heart.

When I am reminded of this incident now after all these years, something feels off. I have a hard time believing that the little girl was me. I feel forced to ask myself, when did this fast-paced life of stress and overthinking overpower me so much that I lost touch with myself?

A few years back, I used to wake up each day and get on with my life, with a vague feeling of incompleteness lingering at the back of my head. And each day this busy life somehow overpowered me, leaving that feeling untended.

At some point in our lives, all of us are faced with the question of how to be genuinely happy in a life of constant stress. Overthinking, or worrying, has become our second nature, and one way or the other it masks our happiness. So how to get out of this worry trap and find true happiness? How to get past constant overthinking and worrying to live with joy, meaning and purpose?

I am Vasudha Kapoor, someone who suffered from overthinking for over two years, and then one day decided that she had had enough. Through trial and error, failure and triumph, I scaled the mountain of overthinking and got to the other side. In this book, I am going to take you through everything I have learned from my journey so that you, too, can break the cycle of overthinking and learn to be happy.

A few years ago, I hit rock bottom. Everything around me seemed to be collapsing and my life had hit a big pause. Waking up was hard, crying myself to sleep had become almost a ritual, and everything in between was hazy. I worried constantly and felt overpowered by my thoughts. I wanted to fight the negative emotions and the constant feeling of being judged, but somehow just couldnt. To get me out of this emotional trap, I started reading a lot of books, listening to podcasts, and doing anything that could help me better understand my thought process. It took me almost a year to realise that all the happiness that I was seeking in the outside world was already inside of me and it was infinite. I finally realised that the only reason for my persistent overthinking and self-doubt was a lack of self-love.

Over time, I developed the mindset and habits that helped me reconnect to that carefree eight-year-old I once was a girl who loved herself no matter what and never felt the need to prove her worth to herself or to the world.

As of today, I have become my happiest self. While I still consider myself a work in progress, I know that Ive come far from where I was two years ago. I wake up with a smile on my face, days feel lighter, work gets done better, and friendships have become stronger all because of defeating the habit of overthinking and worrying and unleashing the happiness within.

This book encapsulates my personal experiences and the lessons I have learned from them over the past few years, with the hope that it will help you:

Understand your overthinking habit, along with its origin and triggers, and overcome it for good.

Understand what true happiness means for you, and find the secret to unleashing your inner happiness once and for all.

Start falling in love with yourself and your life.

Achieve your goals while maintaining inner peace and happiness.

This book has three parts:

Part 1, The Problem: Everything you need to know about overthinking and how it affects you

Part 2, The Solution: Time-tested techniques and practices to help you reduce overthinking

Part 3, Looking Beyond: How to become your best self, attract nurturing relationships, and find lasting happiness

So gear up, its time to transform your life.

Dont rush

Before you begin, a few tips on how to get the most out of this book:

Read according to your comfort and speed, be it just a page or one chapter at a time.

Answer the questions in the Look inside section at the end of each chapter. It will help you understand how the concepts discussed in the chapter apply to your situation.

Apply the practical tips listed under Make a change to start changing your life one step at a time.

Use the Active space at the end of each section to jot down your notes, feelings, or anything you want to remember.

Once you have read all the chapters, make use of the Thought Journal given at the end of the book to process your negative thoughts and emotions.

Finally, use the Vision Board to draw what a happiness and worry-free life looks like to you, and manifest it through positive action.

What is overthinking?

Pausing to look into ones own heart is never a waste of time

Peter Buffet ,
American musician,
author and philanthropist

I t was a beautiful Friday evening in July of 2020, but all I wanted to do was cry myself out. With the Covid lockdown in place, my entire family were together upon the terrace, eating roasted chana, talking and laughing, and having the best time. Yet, here I was, having to force myself to even smile. Even though my life at that moment seemed perfect superficially, something was eating me up inside. What was wrong with me? Was I depressed? Lonely? Or was it just something minor that had become huge for me over time?

Oh, your life looks great, they said,

with everything you ever wished you had.

Petty problems? they come and go.

Dont ever let them make you feel low.

I wrote these lines one evening when I was feeling overwhelmed with negative emotions. At some level I was trying to find the reasons behind the misery in my seemingly perfect life.

This was a time when I had heard about overthinking here and there, but had never thought of it as a big problem. With the lockdown, our fast-paced lives had suddenly hit an unexpected pause, which made way for the voices inside our heads to become louder and our fears to become more real. When I look back on those days, I realise that, more than anything else, it was a lack of distractions that was making me hyper-aware of my negative thoughts emotions and causing me misery distractions that I usually masked as being busy or productive.