The “To-Think-About” List
If you could get inside my head and hear my thoughts, you would quickly come to find out that I am a “processor.” Ok, maybe an “overprocessor.” I think things to death. I literally make time in my day to just sit down and think. Usually it’s with a pen in my hand (or a keyboard at my fingertips), but I often end up staring into space and contemplating the details of my life.
Inevitably, things will get in the way and cut into my thinking time. When this happens and I don’t have time to process things, I feel fragmented, unprepared, fuzzy. It’s almost like that feeling I would get in high school when I would arrive at school without my homework being completed. I just knew there was going to be a pop quiz and I wouldn’t know the answers.
That is how I’ve been feeling lately.
The other day I went for a walk around my neighborhood. Something about walking and being in nature helps me to process things. There was a whole list of things on my mind, so I started at the top and just started working my way down my “to-think-about” list. I wasn’t getting very far because my mind kept jumping around to the different things on the list. It seems sometimes that life gets so busy and I’m juggling so many different things that I’m not sure which thing to focus on.
Being the efficient, multitasking, nearly OCD person that I am, I wondered if there was a way to process everything at once, instead of having to think about each individual thing. So I asked myself, “What do all these things have in common? What connects them all?” If I could answer that, and focus on whatever that thing is, then maybe I could tackle everything at once. Well, the answer hit me like a freight train.
It’s ME! I’m what connects everything. I’m the common thread causing these things to come together and intertwine. And therein lies the solution. Processing me and working on myself will make everything else fall into place.
It is so valuable to know who you are. You are the only thing that can make sense of this life. You are the only thing that you can control in this world, and by knowing yourself, you will be a stronger person. It is not selfish to focus on yourself; it is necessary. And by doing so, everything else in your life will fall into place.
How do you process things in your life? Are you like me, in that you make a list? Or do you process by osmosis, by choosing not to think too much about things?
I process way too much. I can’t help it. But I have to say that it has lent me some amazing results, because that kind of thinking moves me to action. What’s the point of figuring out something and getting answers to a problem and then doing nothing about it? None that I can see. While I may think things to life (I chose that instead of death) more than some people, I also live a life that doesn’t have a whole lot of regrets. I don’t look back and say I wish I would have…, because I thought it through and did… Great post, by the way.
I like that…think things to life. It’s so much more positive. But yes, a life with no regrets is the only kind of life worth living! I take the good with the bad, and it’s usually the bad things that make me grow and become a better person. Thanks for your comment and kind words.
If I make a fool of myself, who cares? Im not afraid by anyones perception of me. Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing. Love is not blind, it simply enables one to see things others fail to see.
The D