Take Action — Write and be Happy
Making decisions can be a daunting process to go through. We all do it, get wrapped up in the thought process, the weighing up of facts. We believe that we’re sifting facts from fiction, and hoping that this will help us find the critical moment of action.
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“Think before you speak. Read before you think.”
― Fran Lebowitz
Alas, weighing up things, thinking about stories, and trying to get on with writing can often lead to the tricks that the mind loves to play, just to get its own way and keep itself in the world of emotionally exciting thoughts.
The mind loves friction and conflict — it thrives on these things. It makes the mind feel important. It’ll do anything to keep the conflict going.
Learning to discriminate between planning, meaningless conflicts of the mind, and disciplined thinking is essential to achievement. Actions should always be the first goal. Proactive thinking helps us avoid becoming wrapped up in an imagined and profitless world of one idea after another.
Ideas have a habit of breeding. The mental process of thinking about something interesting or important leads to a flow of ideas that eventually overwhelm your capacities and puts you into a sort of dreamy stupor. A place where everything becomes important.
We can start thinking about a good idea — a business idea, or an idea to write about, then logic shows us that everything fits together, so we should move into action and see some results. Then fear kicks in.
The mind will prey on all our insecurities. Are we good enough? Do we fully understand what we are contemplating? We never feel good enough to do the things we dream of doing. A good solid week long think about it, will confirm that we’re right about it.
The results we hope for are normally impossible to achieve at the first kick of the ball. Actions will help us see more clearly what it is that we are really getting at with our ideas. Actions are the only method of reiteration, and it’s through reiteration that we finally reach the perfect idea of how…
