Starting this blog was my very first implementation of the ‘more do, less think’ approach that I’ve finally decided to commit to this year. Before I started A Land Called Me, I had gotten the urge to start back blogging a year ago, and since then I’d read many articles that all talked about the benefits of doing so. The more I read, the more I was convinced that I needed to get back to blogging, and yet I still hadn’t resumed it. What was I waiting on??? The right time? The right topic? Oh wait, it’s this: belief in myself.
From time to time we’re prone to getting ideas that in theory seem very promising and exciting, and then immediately we beat that idea to death with our self-defeating, self-doubting thoughts like:
- Can I really do this?
- What if no one else is interested in this but me?
- What about money? Will someone pay money for this?
- Will the effort I put into this all be for nothing?
- Am I even good enough in this subject area to offer this to the world?
- Am I even ready yet?
The unending cycle of giving up before you even begin to try
It’s exhausting, right? Giving up before you even begin to try. Assuming your idea will fail before you’ve even given it a fighting chance, keeping it in theory in perpetuity. Well this drives me nuts, because when I see other successful, ‘winning’ people roaming around this planet, there’s no doubt in my mind that they didn’t get where they were with that self-defeatist, cautious attitude. Like seriously: we don’t know what will happen, so why do we naturally assume the worst when the very delightful opposite can take place?
Two simple facts
Consider these two facts that are true for almost everyone:
- Today we are pros at walking because when we started trying as babies, we fell on our asses, often stumbled, but we picked ourselves up and tried again.
- Today we are pros at talking because our parents and family started talking to us since we were born and we eventually learned to say words like ‘dada’ and ‘mama’, and picked up more words along the way, until we could string these words into sentences and so on.
See, as babies, we were fearless! We placed no limits on ourselves. We just did what we wanted and even if what we did hurt as hell and made us cry, we did it again anyway. So where the hell did that fearless spirit go? What happened that reconditioned us to second-guess everything we’re capable of doing today?
Why the ‘more do, less think’ mindset makes sense
It’s my firm belief that when we place limits on ourselves with self-doubting thoughts, we limit our growth potential, and thus limit our chance at success. And yet, we are surrounded by examples of what we can achieve with a ‘more do, less think’ approach every day!
For example, when I see that pole vaulters have the ability to take a long, flimsy pole and propel themselves safely over a high bar and survive every Olympics, they clearly couldn’t let fear and doubt get to them, when the simple act of doing that is so bloody scary and life-threatening! I’m sure they probably took baby steps and started with a shorter length pole, and after mastering the shorter length pole, they graduated to longer length ones. But they surely wouldn’t have been able to reach to the Olympics if from the first try, they thought about it too much that they eventually believed they couldn’t do it and talked themselves out of it.
The undeniable truth is that if we trust our abilities, believe in ourselves, be fearless, do more doing and less thinking, we can similarly pole vault our way to success. We owe it to ourselves to give our seemingly crazy, scary ideas a try. Let’s just do the damn thing as if we were babies again, and spend less time thinking, thinking, thinking about it, until we basically talk ourselves out of those ideas, or lose interest altogether.
In closing …
If you’re tired of always of thinking of really great ideas but are always second-guessing yourself instead of actually implementing them, these are the two simple steps you should implement right now:
- Think less
- Do more
Does that seem too easy? Yes, I know it probably does. Do you tend to be skeptical of easy things? I do too. But if I know that even Sir Richard Branson himself used that same very philosophy to build his Virgin empire and continues to live by it to this very day, why the hell would I assume that it can’t work for me? If there’s anything I have left to say, it’s this: just trust me, you’re ready, so just do it!
