Not Thinking - It Does You Good

I once knew a guy who had stopped thinking -- or so he said.  Or rather, I should say, it was that he had stopped thinking so much.  He had used to be -- so he claimed -- too much in his head, and so he had made a decision to stop thinking so much.  In consequence of which he became more extroverted, friendlier, and happier.  At the time, he was asking us, my friend and I, what we thought about this.  And at the time I told him I could not imagine giving up this inner life that he used to own for this seemingly shallow happiness; would not he be losing something profoundly wonderful in relinquishing the ability to live in his own world, if he gave it up to live only in the real world?  Those were my thoughts then, but time and experiences have made me a bit wiser and a bit more open to the possibility that thinking has its own evils.

As in everything, too much of a good thing is indeed a bad thing.  Like sugar, cake, chips, and even water -- taken to excess, bad consequences await.  That is the nature of life.  And so, it is not surprising that thoughts follow this same rule. 

Of course, reading all the self-help literature I do I had already realized that thinking the "wrong" thoughts, i.e. negative thoughts, can cause terrible consequences.  But thoughts don't always come into play when you are avoiding doing some wearisome task.  Sometimes there is just a feeling of weariness, a sense of a tedious future, and you wish to avoid that task without the slightest verbal thought.  I suppose what I mean is that sometimes the thoughts we have are not expressed through our usual conscious voice --that is, we don't hear it-- but through other more emotional senses.  We just feel a certain way without putting it into words.  We just know that this project is loathsome and this project just begs to be put off as long as possible. 

The danger lies then in our being carried away by these feelings, in being led by them to believe that we should act on our negative feelings, without analyzing, without verbalizing, we follow dumbly these sensations we have.  And of course it usually turns out that a task or chore that we had been dreading, had been putting off doing is not that terrible at all.  And once we have done it, we wonder why we hadn't done it earlier because it has in fact made our lives so much easier or more beautiful. 

This is all in my effort to say that not thinking, not feeling, can be good for you at times.  I put this into practice this week when going over my daily goals, and finding myself dreading each task, I told myself to "Stop thinking" and "Just do it."  And I did just that.  I acted without feeling and I got things accomplished.  That was a victory within itself, but an uphill challenge that I face each day.  That is why they say that those with good habits are the ones who will be successful.  It is because the person who can just do something, day in and day out, without feeling if they want to or if it makes them happy or dreading it, can get a lot accomplished -- just as I did when I made it a habit to go to the gym three days a week no matter what. 

It is a delicate balance to hold however, since in certain things, you must feel in order to be successful.  And you don't want to become so much like an automaton that you do everything and anything without feeling at all.  And there is that fear that if you suppress your feelings once, will it be that much easier to suppress them all the time to the point where you can no longer feel and be sincere in anything?

It would appear then that the best solution is for you to pick and choose the times when you can allow your feelings to steer your decisions, and for other times, to go through your tasks as a server at McDonald's goes through a line of customers.  No matter who comes next, no matter how big their order, or how dreaded they are as a customer, it is the next customer that is taken cared of and dealt with before the next; and it is in this way that McDonald's serves all its customers each day.  So in that respect, sometimes not thinking can be good for you.  When you want to get stuff done especially, it is best not to attach any unproductive thoughts.