What If There’s Nothing to Figure Out?

Here are things I hear often:

I need to think about it.
I need to figure things out.
I’m thinking it through.

I’ve heard these things come out of my own mouth, and out of the mouths of clients. Life hits us with a challenge, a decision, a problem, and our instinct — our habit — is to “think it over.”

Something to consider:

What if there’s nothing to “figure out”? What if you don’t need to “think about it”?

If you’re a thinker, you’re invested in thinking. You get rewarded for your thoughts.
But you can be too good at thinking. And that can keep you looping in the same place for a long time.

Take a cue from Albert Einstein, one of the world’s greatest thinkers:

No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.

The answers you seek are not found in thinking. You can “figure out” how to do things, but you can’t “figure out” what to do.

What you seek is found in the heart. It’s feeling and emotion.

This doesn’t make you any less smart, any less worthy of the title of being a “great thinker” or a “thought leader.”

The best thinkers know when to stop thinking and when to start feeling.