“When you’re on the fence, just do it,” Shaun T.  We’ve talked about leaning in to how we feel, pausing to ask ourselves how we feel, and the difference between nervous and excited.  The mind isn’t very good at discerning how we feel—more often than not we need to spend some time interpreting that.  This is why we have to trust our instincts and our bodies.  We know more than we think we do, we are simply trained to ignore what we know.  When we face a decision and the outcome can go in either direction, or we feel an affinity toward either side, or even if it is between stop and go, the truth is we really should just leap.  We can sit on the sidelines as long as we want but that won’t give us any results.  The only wan to know is to do.  We can’t get lost in potential outcomes, or hypotheticals, because the mind can play out a bunch of scenarios—and that isn’t always a good thing because of our negativity bias.  So there comes a point where we have to eschew the consequences and just go with it, especially if there is a glimmer of hope in whatever it is.  Sometimes even the smallest inkling that something is exciting or feels right is all we need.

When we spend too much time in what if, we deny ourselves the opportunity to grow.  We deny ourselves the experience of whatever may come from trying.  As someone who spent a lot of time on the sidelines out of fear, I can tell you this feeling sucks—not only is it like missing out on things, but there are times I don’t feel equipped to make decisions or take action because I don’t know what to do.  And sitting on the sidelines diminishes our ability to trust ourselves, to follow our instincts.  The world preys on that because those who don’t know what they want can be easily swayed toward what others tell them to want.  It’s the game of distraction and the only one that benefits is not us.  Whether it’s because we think we can’t do it or because we are thinking too much, we can’t think ourselves out of the situation.  Sometimes the only way through, the only way to get clarity is simply to do it, no matter how scary the leap is.  Marie Forleo says clarity comes from action, not thought, so the days we aren’t feeling like we can do it, we simply need to do the thing.  Even if we can’t bring ourselves to do the actual thing, we need to do something and trust that no matter what happens, we can handle it.

There is no need to fear the doing because the truth is we will never know what happens until we actually do it.  We can spend time worrying but it won’t get us anywhere—that’s an action of the mind.  It’s up to us to take the mind and put the body to work.  To take the ideas and bring it to reality.  We’ve talked about the body before and how the mind has trouble distinguishing between nervous and excitement.  There truly is no physiological difference between the two.  That means if we choose to put excitement into action we can move forward.  If we choose to stay in fear, we close ourselves off to what may come of it.  Don’t allow thought to stop us.  If there is a thought telling us that this might be what we need to do even if it seems scary, remind ourselves that the thigs that scare us are often what we need to do to grow.  Move forward and do the damn thing.  The mind will tell us every story we can think of based on our experience and knowledge base—that doesn’t make it true.  The only thing that’s true is what comes from taking the leap.  Don’t miss out by allowing “what if” to stop us.