“Overthinking is when what you think gets in the way of what you want.”

That’s how Jon Acuff defines overthinking in the opening pages of his latest book, Soundtracks, and it couldn’t be more spot on. Yes, I’m a chronic overthinker. Almost every illustration, case study, and example Jon uses in the book could have been pulled out of the scrapbook of my life.

You know how many passing conversations I’ve replayed in my head about a thousand times over the last 20 or so years? I’ve probably replayed a dozen conversations with people who don’t even remember that I exist. And that’s just the tip of the nauseating iceberg of anxiety-fueled overthinking.

I remember moments as high schooler (and like most of us, I wish I didn’t remember anything as a high schooler) where my mom would find me awake late into the night and ask me what I was doing awake. I would confess that I couldn’t stop replaying my day top to bottom over and over again to figure out what I could’ve done better. That’s overthinking.

When this spiral of overthinking keeps spinning around and around like a broken record, that’s a soundtrack.

How Soundtracks Should Work

I’m a huge movie soundtrack guy—one of the first things I do after I see a great movie is go download the soundtrack and listen for the subtleties and nuances that reinforce great parts of the movie. That’s an example of a soundtrack doing what it should do—make something better.

Unfortunately, when we are spiraling and overthinking has us trapped in its crusty, unforgiving claws, the soundtrack becomes a stumbling block. Rather than Howard Shore’s epic score for The Lord of the Rings, you get Vanilla Ice’s “Ninja Rap” from the second Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie.

A soundtrack should inspire and motivate, not cripple and paralyze. So why do we find ways to torture ourselves with internal battles that hurt us? One of the most fascinating parts of Soundtracks for me was in the first chapter when Jon describes some studies about how the brain works and why it’s so easy to stay in a negative soundtrack spiral.

Your Brain Is Great at Sabotage

Do you think you have a pretty good memory? Do you have a positive outlook on life? Statistically, neither of those things are true for almost everyone, but we are terrible at recognizing and admitting that.

Study after study has illustrated how our memory shifts subtly over time. We start to miss small details, and then small details turn into big details, and then before you know it, you’re telling a completely different story than what actually happened. It’s totally a thing.

Here’s a fascinating result of some of these studies though: our confidence in memories doesn’t fade. People have looked at their own handwriting where they recounted a story from years before and essentially called themselves liars because their current memory doesn’t line up, and they refuse to believe their memory is a little different.

This is a perfect storm for overthinking, because our masochistic little brains like to tend toward the negative. So we’re really good at coming up with negative thoughts and memories, overthinking the snot out of them, and then convincing ourselves that they’re the truth.

Yikes.

How Do We Get Over Overthinking?

I won’t spoil the book entirely, but Jon essentially sums it up this way: to get rid of the negative thoughts, you have to replace them with positive thoughts, and play them on repeat until they’re automatic.

The rest of his book has must-read examples of how do to that and testimonies of others who have changed their lives by putting his principles into practice. If you’ve ever been told to stop overthinking or if you’ve ever felt stuck in your own head, you have to read this.

I’ll level with you: I’m not typically a motivational speaker kind of guy. I don’t often need to be inspired, or fluffed up, or told that I’m special and can be amazing. I know that’s an oversimplification of what motivational speakers do, and I’m sorry if you’re a big Zig Ziglar fan or a motivational speaker yourself. I see the need for it, but it’s not for me.

This was something different though. For one, it hit me right between the eyes. But it felt real and practical and necessary. Especially after the crap-storm of 2020.

The Jesus Juke

It’s hard to write about Jon Acuff and not have a Jesus Juke in here somewhere. So here it is.

Throughout the book, Jon mentions the importance of repeating positive soundtracks to yourself often. He talks about the research and biology behind rewiring your brain to think and believe a certain way.

The more you eliminate the bad thoughts from your internal movie score and replace them with good things, the more your brain begins to accept and crave the positive. There’s some sciency stuff about neuroplasticity and other words that show red-squiggly lines in my pedestrian spell-checker, but the point is that what we keep in our minds matters on a cellular level.

Isn’t this what we’ve heard in sermons for years? What we put into our minds matters. The things that we allow ourselves to entertain and think and repeat make a difference in our wiring.

This is why the Bible is filled with passages like Philippians 4:8, “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” There are entire chapters devoted to keeping the Word playing on repeat in your mind, like Psalm 119.

While some of the specific data points in Soundtracks were absolutely interesting, it wasn’t particularly surprising to find out that the things we let swim around our little brains have a great effect on how we perceive the world, ourselves, and our role in it.

When you keep good things in your brain, your brain does good things with it.

What better soundtrack to play on repeat than the truths of Scripture?

I highly recommend Soundtracks. It’s a super easy read, but it’s filled with practical advice that will help you set a better tone for your life in ways you may not even know you need the help for. Plus, it’s naturally filled with Jon’s trademark humor, and that alone is worth the price of admission.

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