For Those Who Think a Lot About the Future
Questioner: I keep overthinking about my experiences and my future. How do I tackle this?
Acharya Prashant: Whenever you are thinking, it is with respect to something that may happen in future or something that you need to do in future. And then, there are various options, various possibilities. Some of those possibilities appear gainful to you, some appear harmful. Why not simply do what needs to be done right now?
First of all, that will take away the needlessly vacant mind space. You will not be left with that much opportunity to worry. And secondly, when you indulge in action, many of the alternatives that you were able to imagine about the future, those alternatives just disappear.
The worst thing is to postpone action and keep worrying or keep thinking, overthinking as you said. So, whenever you find yourself in that mode, the best thing is to ask yourself - isn’t there something that I need to be, rather doing at this moment? Not thinking. Doing.
Shouldn’t my energy be rather flowing into some right and constructive action at this moment? And once your energy starts flowing in that direction there is less and less space, energy and opportunity available to needlessly worry. See, thought, obviously, is very useful. One needs to have the faculty to think but thinking must conclude in understanding and action.
Action includes the option to not act at all in the light of understanding. In the light of understanding you may decide to act, you may decide not to act. So thought is not an end in itself. Thought is a means. You want thought to end. You use thought so that it comes to a conclusion.
Now if you’re not letting thought result in something instead thought has become a self-serving inner mechanism, then thought is of no use. So do think, but ask yourself - what is emerging out of my thinking? Is my thinking really leading to understanding or action or is thinking just leading to more thinking?
And if you find that thinking is leading to more thinking, then you need to start acting. Have you noticed this? That when you act and you put everything that you have in the action that appears right to you, then there is not much space left to wonder or despair. Right?
So, I’m not saying that one must indulge in action without thought. I’m not saying that one needs to become mindless or thoughtless. What I’m saying is that one needs to know the proper place of thought and action. We think so that we understand. Don’t we?
If you are, for example, working on a mathematics equation. Why do you follow all the steps? Let’s say, solving the equation involves some fourteen steps, you follow the fourteen steps so that after the fourteenth one, you come to something. Right?
What if the way you are proceeding with the equation involves an endless number of steps that lead to nothing. And, and worse still, they are iterative in nature as if there is a circular motion going on. The same steps in some form or the other are getting repeated one after the other.
We don’t want that to happen. So when you see that, now thought or the process of thinking has entered that phase where it has become cyclic or iterative, that’s when you need to say enough of thinking because now thinking is not yielding me anything.
Now thinking has just become circular or cyclic or iterative. Now I need to do something. Enough of thinking. So there is space for thought, there is space for action. And one needs to be attentive towards both of these.
Questioner: Sir, another issue that I generally face is that - in the morning when I get up, I generally have a todo list made. Ki haan, aaj mujhe ye ye cheezein karni hain (that yes, i need to do these things today).
So, when that list becomes too long, it kind of messes with my mind and I stop doing things and rather than that I end up procrastinating as you mentioned. So that’s what happens with me, like, mujhe lagta hai ki agar main planning nahi karungi cheezon ki (I feel that i will not plan for things), then, I end up doing something random.
But when I sit to plan out things I end up wasting too much time just planning and thinking and instead of, you know, actually doing what I’m supposed to do. So, is there any way that I can stop myself from indulging in it?
Acharya Prashant: See listing must necessarily involve prioritizing as well. You cannot list down twenty-two tasks without assigning them a priority level. And twenty-two is a small number. Think of someone who might have two-hundred things to take care of. If you just list down two-hundred things without knowing which one is more important or valuable or urgent, then you simply get overwhelmed.
Two-hundred is a large number. Right? So, when you, when you make such a list, also segment the list, abcd, A is the most urgent or the critical section, then B, then c, then d. And even within A, let’s say if there are four or five items, then you need to accord them priority. Right? You need to have something within that knows how to value rightly. So, give them values.
Questioner: All right sir, thank you!
