Original subtitles

why do smart people overthink so much

so often times the smartest people have the hardest time making decisions

and they tend to overthink and overthink and overthink

and why does this happen there's actually a good reason for this psychologically

so when we are considering someone as smart

this typically means that they have the type of intelligence

that we value currently in our society

which is that like

cognitive intelligence

and that means that they typically have a left

left brain dominance which means that they're very verbal

they're very logical and this is the part of the brain that they use the most

and what happens with this is that they typically overuse this part of the mind

and then they are completely out of touch with the emotional part of the brain

and so we don't have that kind of right brain utilization

that's needed to actually make decisions

because we actually need emotions to make decisions

there's a famous case in psychology

of an individual that actually had the emotional part of the brain injured

and everybody thought every single scientist involved in this case thought

oh my goodness

this person will wake up and he will be the most logical person

he will just go out into the world

he will get things done it will be amazing

because he won't be hindered by emotion like the rest of us

what actually happened is that this individual woke up

the individual that had the emotional centers in the brain

um essentially injured to the point where they were non functional

he woke up he was healed

he's completely healthy

and all he did was he just sat there in a chair

he's just sat there because he didn't even have the emotions to drive him

to motivate him to get out of the chair

and once you know the story

you realize that emotions are what drive our decision making

because without emotions we don't have values

and we could think in endless loops forever

like literally forever

and probably that's what this individual was doing

he was probably sitting there

weighing the options of sitting in the chair versus getting out of the chair

and unless you have some type of emotional value system

you could argue that forever

there's equal benefits to sitting in the chair

and there's equal benefits to getting out of the chair

if you don't have emotions

and so this is why often times

extremely intelligent people

they overthink to the point where that they can't make any decisions

because they're completely out of touch in uh

from the emotional aspect of the mind

and they have this kind of lateralization in the brain

in which they're completely overusing the left part of the brain

and they often have this experience where it's like

I just don't know like

I have no idea because I could argue it forever

and it's a very difficult way to live

because you just are missing out on essentially half of the human experience

and if this is you then um

this is something that can be retrained

I encourage you to book an intro session

we can chat a little bit more about your particular case

but this is not this is not necessarily like

a normal thing and I think we have normalized it in our society

in which people have become more and more left brained

in which they're extremely logical

and they're rewarded for this

but um

it typically results in a very kind of dissatisfactory experience of life and um

it could be better like

it could be better you could make decisions faster

and emotions are actually extremely important data points in making decisions

whoops

and if you're missing out on those data points

you're not making the most accurate decisions