I recently came to realize that most of the mistakes I make are opportunities I miss out on. Really, a matter of inaction rather than action, more often than not. Opportunities that I fail to take and regret after the fact, mostly for the consistent reason that I spend so much time thinking and analyzing, that I never get around to actually acting on the chance.
It’s so tough to find the balance between over analyzing every choice and moving forward without any thought or planning at all. My natural tendency to overthink things isn’t always wrong. It is right to put some thought into the actions you are going to take. People who are thoughtless and dive head first into all of their actions tend to cause massive problems for the people around them. If you act thoughtlessly, you will be taking action without considering the effect that your decisions will have on the people around you. We all know people who live this way. They aren’t bad people necessarily, but they still inconvenience people if not outright tick them off.
It remains true, though, that the opposite is not really a better option. Instead, I equally inconvenience people by leaving them stranded, waiting for me to make a decision that may never happen. For me, I often find myself so focused on the potential consequences that the action itself is terrifying. Paralysis by analysis is kind of my normal operation model. It leads to a lot of the same consequences that a lack of thought does.
In reality, as is so often the case, it’s a matter of finding the proper balance. Yes, we need to think about the impacts and consequences of our actions, but we can’t be so focused on the outcomes which we can’t control that we fail to act. It is easy to fall into the trap of making the perfect the enemy of the good. The things which we can control, we need to make the best of. At the same, we need to recognize that we aren’t God. Most things are not in the scope of our powers, but we still have an obligation to act.
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