Sometimes Is Better Not To Think

I often ask myself what could have happened if I acted straight away instead of thinking.

Did you ever ask yourself the same question? "What if I had acted instead of thinking?" or "What would have happened if I had acted in a different way?"

On how you could have lived a completely different lifestyle or could have met different people?

Yes, I ask myself the same question almost every day.

I think, think and think and perhaps I take action. But before I do that, I think about it a fourth time.

Why? Why can't I shut down my mind for a day, a minute or a second and act?

Why aren't we able to free our mind from all of these thinking and be more impulsive? Or at least, why can't I?

What happens to our brain when we think?

Brad Postle - Professor of psychology and psychiatry at University of Wisconsin-Madison responded with this explanation to a 4 years old girl who asked this question:

"A very simple demonstration of the nervous system is when you're at the doctor's office. If the doctor hits your patellar tendon on your knee, your knee reflex sends your leg forward. That action doesn't involve your brain.

Another example is if you're walking outside and suddenly see a circular object heading toward you. Your eye detects the fact that this object is coming towards you, and the signals go from your eye into the visual part of your brain. Your brain then communicates with other neurons, sending signals to muscles in your body that will make you duck out of the way so the object doesn't hit you.

In order for your brain to think, you need nerve cells that can detect information about the outside world and can transmit that information to other nerve cells".

In my experience I find myself thinking more in two situations: When I have nothing to do and when I'm worried or stressed

Stress plays an important part: It can change the size of your brain.

A study about rats found out that if the brain is exposed to a chronic stress the hippocampus will actually shrink, and this is the part of our brain that creates memories.

In my 22 years of life I can see a lot of missed occasions, things I didn't say or people left behind because of my thinking. All of this because I didn't act and I thought too much instead.

Missed occasion because I over thought. Over thought about every single decision I made in the past. I didn't say what I was feeling for people because my anxiety brought me to over think, and as a result I also left those people behind. Every single action I took is connected to the other one because of it.

I always find myself staying in my comfort zone because I know that I don't have to think in there.

Stop acting as if life is a rehearsal. Live this day as if it were your last. The past is over and gone. The future is not guaranteed.

–Wayne Dyer

Think means to reason. In my case it means doing thousand of calculation about every single scenario and situation to be prepared for how it might end.

Pros and cons of everything so that I will not be unprepared for inconvenient situations. I need to stop doing that. I have to.

The worst part is when things don't go as I planned and as I imagined. And then I find myself improvising and wandering in the dark without knowing what's going to happen.

Thinking too much is making me feel safe and not impulsive. I like being safe, but I would love to be impulsive.

Thinking about every single details of a possible situation is taking away from me that thrill that you feel when you're doing something unexpected and out of the normal scheme of your everyday life.

That action that you don't know how is going to end.

My life is full of "what if" and it should be like that at 22 years old and is consuming all of my energies.

Maybe it will end one day, or maybe not. I don't know yet, but in the meantime, I will try my best not to think too much and take action instead.

And you? Are you an over thinker?