Beyond Bounds Blog

This last week I made a huge mistake: I started thinking too much.  I started thinking about the past, the future, hardships, relationships, friendships - anything and everything and uncontrollably.  Sometimes I would think of grand solutions to my problems and would envision myself being successful; other times I would think about what would happen if I failed, such as going back to teaching English or even worse, getting another full time job.  Will I have to go back to America?  Is my dream over?

Thinking is like quicksand, once you put your foot in it you can’t help but get pulled under.  You can’t move.  Paralysis becomes the only choice until you somehow snap out of it and grab for an overhead branch to pull yourself out.  Thinking leads to indecision, as the nature of thinking is inaction - it is the opposite of action.

If you let your thoughts run free they can even make normal routine things overly difficult or impossible at the extreme.  When I was in grade school I was a sports fanatic, and I was amazing.  I was a fast runner, an All Star baseball player, and one of the best soccer players in my city for my age.  Around middle school I remember suddenly feeling different.  My consciousness had fully awakened (possibly in conjunction with puberty), but there was a side affect that I never fully understood until now - thinking took the place of reflex action.

Suddenly throwing a baseball seemed like the most impossible task.  I questioned my body’s ability to hit a small target from so far away, and because of that my skills plummeted.  In soccer I over thought every kick, and they always ended up off target.  Over thinking took the place of rote confidence; however it is not confidence that was important, as that implies some sort of evaluation process.  What was important was the lack of a process in the mind, rather a simple “act.”

Understanding and knowing what you need to do automatically leads to top performance.  Thinking requires an internal evaluation process before every action.  It’s like an internal bureaucracy.

This is why routines are so powerful.  Routines take your slow mind out of the process.

This does not mean that you should be a walking robot and do everything without thinking.  Obviously thinking has its purposes.    Your consciousness is best used when creating new routines, or adjusting old routines.  If you don’t follow through enough in baseball you will have to consciously train your body to follow through, but you don’t want to be thinking “follow through” during a game.  You need to train yourself to turn your brain off strategically.

This goes for goals as well.  You can spend some time thinking about what really makes you happy, which may require some day dreaming, and planning how to get there, but once you have those set goals STOP thinking about them and start acting.  Don’t even talk about them too much.  The more it is on your conscious mind, the more pressure it puts on your willpower to continue.

It is natural for us to want to stop and think after we have made a mistake.  For those of you that don’t do this, you should.  You need to be aware of exactly why you made a mistake and how to prevent it in the future.  However, this is a double edged sword, as once you start thinking it easily leads to sulking and your thoughts can run wild.  Instead of productive thinking, you start running 1000s of “what-if” scenarios through your head, or even worse you might start thinking about what other people think about you.

I made some mistakes recently and let my thoughts slip into the quicksand.  I was rendered ineffective for 4 days straight.  I knew why I made the mistakes, but I let myself sulk instead of ignoring my thoughts and taking action.  I could no longer wake up in the morning, work out, write in my blog, or even go out.  I couldn’t (or wouldn’t) stop myself from thinking too much.  In order to combat this, I turned to TV and movies, and like a snowball everything only got worse.  I’ve finally snapped out of it, but I expended a huge amount of willpower to do it.

Stop thinking all the time and start strategically thinking.  Start allowing your body to do what it does best.  Learn to control your thoughts.  Create routines and plans, then shut your mind off and enjoy the process.

Try to catch yourself thinking instead of acting.  Every time you do, bring your awareness back and shut down the thought process.  Don’t let it wander.  Over time you will be able to stay more locked into tasks, and things that previously seemed difficult, won’t seem like anything at all because you won’t think about it.   Even not thinking takes practice and training.  Think about not thinking!

PS: Academic thinking is controlled, strategic thinking.  You are controlling your thoughts to solve a problem.  It is not the same as remembering past events at random, or thinking “how hard” something might be, or thinking about how to throw a ball during a game.