Anxiety
How Overthinkers Can Take Action With Less Anxiety
Purpose is a powerful antidote to anxiety.
Posted June 8, 2025 Reviewed by Kaja Perina
Imagine this scenario:
Andrea is a child therapist in a large group practice. She recently took over some clients from a colleague who went on parental leave. Her boss calls her in and says that one of the client families has expressed they don't find her as helpful as her colleague. At the family's request, her boss has reassigned the family to another clinician.
Andrea starts to ruminate about what she did wrong, and worry it's going to happen frequently, even though this type of event has been rare in her decade-long career.
We know from research that a sense of purpose is a powerful antidote to anxiety.
The antidote to anxiety is doing things that feel more important to you than avoiding anxiety. Your sense of purpose needs to be stronger than your desire to avoid difficult emotions.
Andrea knows this principle. Let's see how she might put it into practice, even though she is feeling awful.
Andrea can create the sense of purpose she needs by scaling her impact—focusing on helping others rather than just improving herself.
How To Scale Your Impact
Overthinkers tend to try to improve situations by improving themselves, but you can relieve your anxiety by thinking beyond yourself.
Here's the paradox: thinking bigger results in less anxiety than thinking smaller. We feel less anxious when our sense of purpose feels bigger.
Many of us feel we can never work hard enough. Scaling your impact is a way to improve without trying to squeeze more effort and performance out of yourself.
If you're an overthinker (like Andrea), you may need encouragement to go from noticing what could be improved to taking initiative. Even if you don't currently have confidence you can scale your impact, it's within your grasp.
There are many ways to do it, without needing permission, and even if you're not in a formal leadership role.
Let's look at three examples, starting with Andrea.
1. Take A Simple Action To Improve A Pain Point That Affects Many People
Instead of stewing, Andrea decides to use action and purpose as an antidote for anxiety. She has noticed that families often arrive at their appointments rushed and flustered, coming straight from school, work, or other activities.
She starts putting a bowl of apples in the waiting room each day, in case anyone arrives hungry. Each day, the bowl of apples is gobbled up. This confirms her hunch that people were arriving hangry.
Common pain points you might target include: physical discomfort, waiting, and emotional discomfort.
For example, you might take initiative to either reduce waiting or reduce the pain of waiting (make it more pleasant or less unpleasant). You might reduce emotional discomfort by addressing moments of confusion or nervousness that occur when processes are unclear or daunting.
2. Make Other People More Efficient
Imagine this: everyone in your organization has to submit an expense claim for meals and other small miscellaneous items after work trips. The process is manual and clunky. You ask your administrator if you can see the numbers for what's been claimed over the past few years. You see that there is a narrow range for typical claims. Eighty percent fall within a small band.
You run a few calculations. It's clear that giving people the option to check a box to claim the average amount, without submitting documentation or specifics, would be beneficial. You spend an hour using AI to create an automated tool for this process.
You present the tool to your boss and get the green light to implement it. People love it. The collective time saved in the first year adds up to more than a full work week.
3. Increase Uptake Of A Valuable Resource That People Aren't Using
Let's walk through one last scenario.
You're a college professor who is demoralized that few students come to your office hours. They're paying big bucks in tuition, yet they don't come.
When you're not doing deep work and you're in your office, you're happy for students to come in with questions anytime they want.
You ask an AI bot to code a tool that enables students to send a text message to a phone number and receive an auto reply about whether you're in your office and free right now. Students now have the option to come when they're stuck and it's convenient for them. They don't have to trek to your office to see if you're there.
The tool automatically checks your location and calendar, so it runs without any effort from you.
Moments You Feel Vulnerable Are a Great Time to Take Initiative
Scaling your impact is a path that eager self-improvers don't always consider, but it's well within your grasp. Counterintuitively, moments of anxiety and vulnerability are often perfect for taking initiative.
When we're anxious, we often feel driven to fix something. We feel a strong sense of motivation and urgency but need to direct it somewhere.
If you're an overthinker, you likely notice many broken systems and pain points that need fixing. Try giving yourself the encouragement and permission you need to go from noticing to initiative. Give yourself grace to experiment with solutions, rather than expecting yourself to come up with perfect plans before trying anything. Start small. Andrea might try a bowl of apples this week, and a jug of iced water and cups, the next. The pain point you address doesn't need to be the exact source of your anxiety.
Especially if you're mid-career, you may be reaching the limit of how much impact you can have at your work through improving your own performance or making yourself more efficient. Scaling your impact opens new pathways for growth and reinforces a positive self-view, particularly when you need it most.
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