Thinking asks the mind to keep working.
Considering allows awareness, evidence, experience, and time to join the conversation.
One can tie you into a knot.
The other may quietly reveal what was already there.
I am not an advocate of TOO much thinking while out and about.
I consider it a take-away.
When you remain trapped inside your mind, you may be absent from the moment occurring around you.
There is also the risk of sinking in your thinking.
You overanalyze.
Overfantasize.
Rehearse possibilities that have not happened.
Eventually, you enter analysis paralysis—or begin drowning in dreams that never become life.
Thinking is useful.
Living entirely inside thought is not.
EXCESSIVE ANYTHING CAN SEDATE
Drink too much.
Think too much.
Dream too much.
Sleep too much.
Avoid too much.
Any repeated escape can produce a kind of sedation.
You may be technically awake while feeling dull, detached, and half-asleep within your own life.
When the inducement wears off, awareness returns.
Thankfully, full capacity remains available.
The goal is not to eliminate thought.
It is to prevent thought from replacing participation.
SUBSTITUTES FOR OVERTHINKING
When thinking stops serving you, invite other systems into the process:
- Awareness
- Observation
- Feedback and input
- Trial and error
- Learning curves
- Experimentation and testing
These methods bring reality into a conversation previously dominated by imagination.
You stop asking only:
“What if?”
And begin asking:
“What is actually happening?”
CONSIDERING
Awareness, observation, feedback, experience, and testing report faithfully to you.
They provide information without requiring the mind to invent every possibility.
Considering gives clarity time to arrive.
It permits a purposeful pause while the answer you are seeking makes its way toward you.
This is an ancient system.
It was here before you.
You observe.
You receive.
You compare.
You ponder.
Then you move.
PAUSE FOR CAUSE.
Considering is not laziness.
It is active receptivity.
THE PARADOXES
A. PROBLEMS BEGIN THE SOLUTION
A problem often arrives with one, two, three, or more possible solutions hidden around it.
The disruption identifies what requires attention.
In that sense, the problem begins the solving.
We prefer the word correction because correction can improve, refine, and redirect us.
The problem says:
“Something here needs another look.”
B. CHANGE CHALLENGES COMFORT
Change attempting to reach you may be blocked by an existing comfort zone.
Pride may protect the ego by insisting:
“I already know.”
“I do not need to change.”
“This is how I am.”
But without change, how does risk lead to growth?
Remaining exactly the same can cause us to stunt ourselves.
Growth requires enough humility to admit that the next version cannot be built entirely from the previous routine.
C. WILL STARTS—SKILL CARRIES
How do we achieve our wants without will?
We do not.
Directed effort and focus are the portion supplied by will.
But the rest of the progress depends heavily upon the skills bank:
Talents.
Abilities.
Experience.
Knowledge.
Judgment.
Gifts.
Will points the ship.
Skill helps sail it.
Will without competence may exhaust itself.
Competence without will may never leave the harbor.
D. HARDSHIP MAY REVEAL HIDDEN DEPTH
Pain, misfortune, and suffering are not automatically deserved, desirable, or necessary.
But when hardship arrives without our permission, it may reveal capacities that had never been summoned.
Pressure can activate courage.
Loss may uncover compassion.
Difficulty can expose endurance, faith, creativity, or boundaries we did not know we possessed.
We do not need to glorify suffering to recognize what sometimes emerges from surviving it.
THERE IS GREATNESS WITHIN AND WITHOUT
Pause and consider the grandeur occurring around you—and how you participate in it.
The microcosm and macrocosm.
Worlds within worlds.
Life beneath your feet.
Space beyond sight.
Mysteries without an obvious ending.
Much existed before you arrived and will continue after your visit.
Yet here you are with a portion of life positioned directly beneath your nose—and another portion waiting within you.
Tap into it.
Then unleash it.
THE UNCLAIMED PORTION OF YOUR LIFE
Many sojourners—guests of life within the Universe—never fully claim their heritage or living legacy.
Why?
Look for your reason:
- Doubt, confusion, and hesitation allow outside pressure to push and pull your direction.
- Lack of faith prevents you from believing that a presented opportunity might belong to you.
- Wanting something for the wrong reason blocks the help that accompanies a worthy purpose.
- Ignorance—innocent or pretended—must decrease as awareness increases.
- Constant struggle, demanding, forcing, and willfulness consume energy that could be used wisely.
- Expecting poor behavior to produce a good reward delays what honest conduct might build.
- Becoming overly consumed by anything can blind you to what is already available.
- Conduct that repeatedly dulls your ability causes you to devolve when evolution wants to join you.
- Doom-and-gloom thinking rejects possibilities before they can be examined.
- Unworthiness and low self-esteem convince you to sabotage what your life may be offering.
Do you recognize one?
Good.
Recognition is not condemnation.
It is the beginning of correction.
WHAT THEN?
Act with humility.
Do not move as though the world owes you.
Move as though there is purpose within you, for you, and through your life.
Your one-of-a-kind existence supports this.
Cooperate with what is worthy.
Accept appropriate help.
Stop forcing every answer before it arrives.
Give attention to the invitation.
Then use observation, conscience, feedback, skill, and action to discover the next step.
From there, you will begin knowing what to do.
PEARLS INSIGHT
Overthinking demands certainty before movement.
Consideration gathers enough truth for the next responsible move.
You do not need the entire road explained.
You need enough clarity for the next portion.
RICHIE SPEAKS
If thinking has tied you into a knot, stop pulling the ends tighter.
Observe.
Listen.
Try something reasonable.
Receive feedback.
Make a correction.
Thinking about swimming does not move you through water.
At some point, you must enter the pool.
FINAL THOUGHT
Thought serves life.
Life was not created merely to serve thought.
Use the mind as an instrument—not as a room in which you remain permanently locked.
There is greatness within and without.
Consider it.
Accept your portion.
Then participate.
FINAL SAY
Stop trying so hard to force what honest attention may reveal.
YOU WERE CREATED ESPECIALLY FOR ALL THIS—and much, much more.
— Richie
Pearls for the Soul
when you feed the soul, you feed everything.
https://pearlsforthesoul.com
Been expecting you