You're Thinking too Much

You know, I've been thinking about something a lot. It's just this idea that's been brewing around in my head about, well, thinking less and doing more, ironically enough. It's a weird, weird concept, you know. We like to think that we're in control, and we like to assert control. We don't like to let go of the wheel. We like to hold on as tightly as we possibly can. Especially people like you and me. People who try to see as much as we can. People who try to understand as much as we can. For, well, various sorts of reasons. It's a weird thing. But fulfilling. But the thing is, there's so much more to a human being than the conscious ability to think. The human personality is an amalgamation of sub-personalities with different motivational circuits. And they all interact with one another. And they all conglomerate into a whole. And that is you. That is you as a human being. And there's so many layers underneath what you see as yourself. There's more than just rationally thinking. We take for granted sometimes how much of a role our peripheral vision plays, for instance. If you were to block out your peripheral vision and then try and walk around or drive, it really wouldn't work out that well. Because there's so much visual information in the blurry peripheral field that's used to map out the environment. And we process that on a subconscious level. We process a lot of things on a subconscious level. Why? Because the conscious mind, it takes a lot of energy. It takes a lot of energy to rationally think through something. To really think about something. And to do that all the time? To move your eyes around an environment like the Terminator, observing everything in fine detail? It's a waste of time because it's a waste of resources. And not everything in your field of view is relevant. Your peripheral vision gives you a low-resolution map. And from there, you determine where to move your fovea. Now if you direct your conscious attention to your peripheral vision as opposed to your focused vision, then perhaps you can glean more low-resolution data faster, giving you an idea of what to look for with your focused vision. This is just one example of this idea of thinking less and doing more. But I find it goes beyond just the senses. It goes to the processing as well. You know, again, we don't like to let go of the wheel. But sometimes you just have to think less about it. You get so focused on the minutia that you neglect the whole. You get so wrapped up in breaking things down, which you should break things down. You get so wrapped up in that that you can't see how it all fits together. Making breaking it down pointless. Because the whole point is so that you can put it back together with a better understanding. You know, I was just thinking about that the other day. I was thinking about how when I let go of control, I am in more control. Because I let my mind do what it naturally does. I let it process the things that I'm observing. Sometimes I have to remind myself, well, I'm stuck. I'm looking at a person and I can't figure out a single thing about them. Sometimes I just have to tell myself, don't think so much about it. Just what is there to see? Let the information speak for itself. Don't bring all your baggage. Don't bring all your biases to the analysis. What does the data say? Ask questions rather than posit statements about what you're observing. If you do that, if you ask the question and you look for the answer. You wait for the answer. You wait for all those parts of you that aren't just the conscious thinking part of you that is hyper-focused at this very moment. You just ask yourself the question. And you'll find that your mind naturally seeks to answer that. And that helps direct your conscious focus. So you never lose control. You still got one hand on the wheel. But it's not a death grip.