It’s incredibly easy to get stuck in your head as a creative — you have so many things going on around you, so many different elements of your craft you need to process in order to remain inspired and come off authentic. Actors have a tendency to be hypercritical of themselves as it is, but the key is to zero in on that inner voice and use it to your advantage. Take the opportunity to calibrate and set yourself straight so you can move forward and grow as a creative.

Our friends at Backstage wrote a fantastic think-piece on overthinking; how the creative spirit can tame that loud, critical voice within and use it constructively! Here’s our favorite excerpt from 3 Ways to Calm the Overthinking Actor:

Go back to one. Stop, breathe, and place yourself back in neutral. Have you ever had a car stuck in mud or slush? If you keep pressing on the gas you will spin your wheels further into the ground. Stop the spinning. Stop the pushing. Go back to one, take a breath, and let everything go to neutral for a minute. At that point, the next action should occur to you. Give yourself a minute to let the next step come to you. Allowing a breather to let something occur to you instead of pushing yourself for an answer or forcing the current action to work will relieve your head of some of the work it’s doing.

Remember there is a problem to be solved in every scene. Your character is not there to lament the problem or discuss the problem. They are there to fix the problem—which means you need to be engaged in the act of doing something towards that end. Imagine any relationship in your life where you felt you were always in the same argument or repeating the difficult moments that got you nowhere. You were likely always stuck in a discussion of the problem and not in active resolution of it. Look for the thing to do.

Just remember – it’s okay to overthink things so long as you take the time to process and compartmentalize. Put your over-analytical nature to good use and recalibrate. Criticism is useless unless it’s applied and makes you a more evolved, refined actor!