Thinking...

It's very difficult to make decisions. You get to a point where you have a gut feeling, you know it, you believe it, then you begin to doubt it. You begin the painful process of thinking. A while after you chew on the idea, the great idea goes by the wayside. What happened? Well what happened was you thought it out.

I'm tired of thinking. I think thinking has gotten in the way now for a quite a while. Thinking about this very idea makes me begin to doubt, think of how cliche this very notion is, but guess what? I'm tired of it. Thinking with your head reduces you to logic, a perfect rational creature. What am I not? What are people not? Rational. Listen to what people say, and listen to what you hear and think they're saying. Nine times of out of ten you probably going to be off a bit.

So what has thinking done for me? Well, for one it has kept me in one place for a while. Any momentum I've had recently has been when I stopped thinking and began to feel, and listened to the proverbial gut. Earlier this year when I knew things weren't exactly right at my last job, I had to seriously listen and acknowledge the physical sensation in my gut. I knew I had to do something, and I did. I was proud of myself. If I had listened to my mind, or just "thought it out," and I'm not so sure it would have turned the same way.

Let's continue. Thinking also puts a temporary stop on creativity. I'll put my hand to guitar, play something. The mind says, "oh no, that's not good enough. It's been done before." So what do I do? Seriously reduce my proverbial creative output waiting for the right set of conditions to be in place. Right sound from the speakers on the right day when I'm in a good mood.

I go through the day thinking about what I like and dislike. However, I find the older one gets the harder it gets to know directly what you feel. Do you like chocolate? Most people can directly answer that question. Yes, no, but very few maybe so's. When you think about your next choices, it all gets very gray. One feels safe, one can rationalize. Don't get me wrong, you need to think -- I do it all the time. But sometimes, you need to let non-verbal parts of you get their say too. When I overthink I begin to loose touch with myself.

Do you have a pet? Cat? Dog? I have 3 crazy cats. We got one cat recently named Sherman. We named Sherman Sherman because he's like tank. He's big, stocky, and he likes to walk into you with his little battering ram head. And when you pick him he purrs. He clearly enjoys his time with you. Sherman likes to be on your lap. Direct. He communicates to me without using words. "Oh yes, Doug, you have a very nice lap, and I like your company." Sherman isn't thinking if he's showing too much attention, and trying to purr because I expect him to. He's not that complicated. He likes to be on my lap -- that's it.

It get even harder when you coordinate your decisions with a partner or group. Now you need to coordinate your feelings, preferences, thoughts, which you may not even be positive about in the first place with another. Their stuff in their mind is changing too, and now changing even more in anticipation of you! What can a person do? Keeping it strictly to your brain space and thinking, you could be constantly adjusting your thoughts to what you think other people's thoughts are of your thoughts. This goes on and on, and then basically, you're stuck. Ooops. You get stuck in a loop. Over and over again. And again. Tired. How'd this happen?

Well, on days like this I'd like to thank the brain. And also on the fact are brains are kind of messy. We're smart enough -- we can think, put together some fancy ideas, but sometimes we hit some walls. Ouch. We're not so smart to realize we're stuck in this ridiculous loop! Especially when you're stuck in the loop with somebody else. Couple's therapy anybody? We just get stuck in these patterns thanks to our little brains. Sometimes I just want to remove it from my body.

So if I'm not using my brain, what am I using? I'd like to use my gut, or my intuition. They may be different, they may the same thing (I tend to think they're probably different, I was reading someplace, they are in different chakras). After all this time, I think you've accumulated enough experience where you don't necessarily need to actively think all the time. You can hopefully sort out the chestnuts useful from the garbage. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. If it works more often than not, I think I'm good. There's just too much out there (not fooling myself this is just happening now to us in the "information age"), and it's hard to figure out.

So what am I do? (Besides finish this long post without pictures.) Continue going at it. What's it, you ask? Experiences, life -- accumulate and treasure those (even the bad ones), and put them to good use -- at some point. You may not use them immediately, but you may put them to use at some point. The brain has taught me one thing that's been useful. That thing is perspective. Having a brain gives me self-awareness to know I exist, others exist, as well as their other perspectives. I just can't forget that I am here, even when I'm surrounded my zillions of people and ideas floating about. I need to acknowledge and respect my feelings, yes, my thoughts, and yours too along they way. Just don't make it so complicated.

We'll see how it goes tomorrow.