Anoop Verma
Are you a compulsive over analyser? It is time you decided to let go of things and started embracing uncertainty. Only by doing things you can have a better life. Analysing and thinking are part of the creative process, but unless you take concrete action, nothing worthwhile can ever be achieved. In the business parlance, they call it analysis-paralysis, people dwell on the past so much that they are unable to make any moves for future growth. We keep searching for something that may or may not exist and, meanwhile, the rest of the world moves forward leaving you behind.
You can think and plan as much as you like, the search for meaning and understanding is a noble one and it should not be abandoned completely, but over-thinking and over-researching and obsessively brainstorming and creating one pro/con list after another will not enable you to move forward. The clarity is only going to come once you start taking action. It doesn’t matter if you are involved in intellectual endeavours. No amount of daydreaming will enable you to compose music or write an essay, you need to take actual steps for accomplishing such work.
So how do you make yourself standout as a doer, or as someone who actually strives to achieve some results? Just formal education may not prepare you for a life of action, you need to develop skills in the area of your choice; you may have to develop the ability to speak to different demographics, learn customer service and sell to people. But you can’t get really started until you can muster the desire to act. You have to build up sufficient amount of passion in your mind. For getting what you want from life, desire or ambition is a key factor. You have to know what you want.
Make a beginning as quickly as possible. Lot of dreams die due to procrastination. You keep wasting time in analysing or planning, while someone else, who is more results oriented, wins the target. Take into account the means that are available and take the step forward. But you should not make the mistake of over-spending or over-committing initially. Depending on your confidence level, you should keep a fallback option in case things do not work out. You can also bring others along so that there is sharing of risks and rewards.
Experience is priceless, but experience can only come through action. Every time you act, you gain new experience and the reality changes for you. More often than not, you may get what you want through judicious action. Even if you don’t get what you want, you will have gained the experience, which you can use to make your next endeavour successful. But if you choose not to take any step forward, you will certainly fail in achieving the objective, and you won’t even have the experience. Thinking does not have the power to change reality, nor can it lead to any new learning. If procrastination continues for longer periods of time, you face the risk of stagnation and you could be set to fail in your career or relationships.
The lines from Shakespeare’s famous tragedy, Hamlet, come to the mind:
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
Like the tragic Prince of Denmark, Hamlet, you don’t have to waste your valuable time in indecision. If you aspire to be a leader, you have to make choices and take action. At times, those actions could be painful. If you are in a powerful position, then your decisions can have impact on the lives of many other people. It is possible that the result of the action that you undertake turns out to be a spectacular success, but they can also bring you and others, whose destinies are linked to yours, close to you to the brink of disaster. Nevertheless, leaders have to make decisions and act. If they keep procrastinating, then their fate must be like that of Hamlet.
The motto of your life should be to move from analysis to activity as quickly as possible. Only by remaining decisive, you can reduce your fear and uncertainty, and learn to act when times are uncertain. In fact, when you are in doubt, you should endeavour to act in a faster manner, because doubt is something that can quickly grow into your mind and paralyse your powers of decision-making. When you are caught in a difficult situation, usually the worse thing that you can do is do nothing at all. Whether your goal is personal or professional in nature, you must Stop — analysing; Stop planning; Stop searching for meaning; Just move forward.
