I have been prone to overthinking my entire life, but I think that it’s gotten worse over the course of my college years.
Once you’re in college, you face an overwhelming amount of assignments, as well as the pressure to figure out your career path. On top of that, you may also encounter friendship and boy drama, a perpetual lack of sleep, and an intense caffeine addiction.
When you add up all those factors, you may feel anxious like me, which inevitably leads to stressing out over everything. If you also find yourself stressing over small and big things alike, I have a simple quote for you to live by.
The quote comes from Andy Warhol, the artist who you probably know for his iconic Campbell’s Soup Cans or his pop art portrayal of Marilyn Monroe:
“Sometimes people let the same problem make them miserable for years when they could just say, ‘So what.’ That’s one of my favorite things to say. ‘So what.’”
While I have heard of that expression before, I never thought of it as a remedy to my overthinking. My cousin introduced me to this quote about a month ago, and now I find it echoing in my head all the time.
Whenever I feel myself starting to freak out over something, whatever it may be, I just tell myself, “So what.”
The guy I have a crush on doesn’t like me back? So what, it’s not meant to be. I got a C on that essay, when I was really hoping for a B? So what, I did my best. That girl obviously dislikes me for reasons I don’t really know? So what, not everyone is meant to be my friend.
Has my lifetime of overthinking been resolved by one Andy Warhol quote? No, but it has helped. I can already feel myself being a bit calmer, and I’m more willing to just go with life’s crazy flow.
Sometimes we’re going to be pushed in a direction that we weren’t expecting, but it’s not the end of the world. Trust that whatever happens is for the best, and tell yourself, “So what.”
At the end of the day, the small annoyances won’t matter, and the comfort that you offer to yourself is so important to your mental health.
If it helps, you can even add onto the quote a little and say, “So what, who cares?” It’ll make everything even better if you recite it in the voice that Fred Armisen does for his SNL impression of Joy Behar. (You can fast forward to 1:30 to hear it.)
The holidays are right around the corner, which means that winter break is also coming soon. To get through the rest of this semester, let’s not allow ourselves to stress out over the small stuff. We should all take some inspiration from Andy and just say, “So what.”