“Don’t Think, Just Do”: On Trusting Yourself

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, my father said with stern upheld index finger to a young Margarita, trying to explain the importance of putting forth thought into action, “Don’t think.  Just do.”  The young me muttered something similar to, “Uh, ok, Dad,” and walked off, in favor of playing some Howard Jones in some dark corner of my bedroom, and writing and binding one of my homemade books.  His profoundness was totally lost on me at the time.

Fast forward to the somewhat older, feisty, fist-in-the-air activist me, who is at that time, learning Filipino Weapon Fighting.  I am practicing with double sticks, and trying to sync them up to flow fluidly together around me, in an arc that looks a lot like the figure eight, rather than bopping myself in the head.  The goal is to aim with strength and accuracy, but to keep the actions smooth, repetitive, and to get faster without messing up.  Every time I got better at the movement, I got a little full of myself and pushed myself to go faster, putting a lot of thought into the motions.  Without fail, it would be at that precise moment that the sticks clacked together, out of sync, and smacked me somewhere on the head or shoulder!

As I continued my practice, I noticed that if I just let the sticks flow, not think too much about the micro-movements, and just trust that I would be fine, just trust my blood, my spirit, my physical motions, I would get better.

“Don’t think.  Just do.”

This little mantra has come up often in life, to remind me that I may overthink things.  And things tend to flow more easily when we just go with the flow and trust ourselves, despite the symbolic fear of getting smacked in the head.  And, that instead of preparing with many thoughts of what we’d like to do, sometimes the best thing to do is to just do it.  At the expense of sounding like a Nike ad, the realization to just do something may sound simplistic.  But, life gets complicated enough!  Break things down, and maybe you’ll find that there is great power and beauty in just trusting that you’ll make the right decisions, and to take the jump to do whatever it is – revamp your diet, choose to leave that abusive relationship, treat your body with more care, take on a personal or career challenge – knowing that your best interest is already being supported by the universe.

It may not be the easiest thing to do, but once you begin the process, there is no turning back, and there is great liberation!

Maybe the time is now to stop planning, and to put your pedal to the metal.

What are you over thinking?

 

 

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