When faced with decisions about one's life, big or small, it's difficult to know when to make the decision. Often, we think about doing something in the form of a simple thought. It doesn't feel real because we seek comfort in the no-stakes environment of our mind. If you just think about something, you don't have to follow through or commit.
Sometimes, these thoughts about what you might do turn into real action. That's when you make a decision—consciously or subconsciously. The hard part is knowing the exact moment to decide. Where do you draw the line between the ease of thinking and moving into real action?
The best doers in the world have developed a way to listen to their intuition and trust it. They believe their intuition is smarter than their thinking mind, connected to something beyond rational reason. But this awareness isn't accessible right away; it needs to be nurtured over time.
I found one pattern that I believe is useful when you don't have immediate access to a deeper intuition. When you think about something and this thought reappears every other day or week, it’s proof there's some sort of energy connected to that thought that wants to be released. You can see thoughts as energy—each thought represents a set of energy in your mind. If a given thought comes up again and again in your consciousness, it's trying to tell you that there's energy that wants to emerge into the real world.
What stands in the way most of the time is fear. If we trust that crazy or slightly uncomfortable thought, life as we know it may change. And change triggers fear because there's a component of uncertainty our thinking mind doesn't like. It may also be that by trusting that thought and taking action, you show yourself vulnerable, or risk a part of your self-image.
The simple heuristic I found is not to let fear win. Fear only shows that you care; it serves a useful function and historically evolved to help us survive. But today, those tribal instincts are no longer useful in most situations.
Whenever I experience resistance to converting a thought into action, I try to sense and understand the fear that's holding me back. Am I afraid of being vulnerable? Rejected? Uncertain? Once I see what form the fear takes and can reason that nothing truly irreversible or bad is likely to happen, I reframe that fear as proof I need to act. It suggests there's something to gain by taking the jump.
When a thought comes up again and again, yet you’re not acting, it’s probably fear—and it's a proof point that the decision you're avoiding is the one you should make. It's as simple as that. Of course, it requires self-awareness, courage, and a deep trust that everything we experience serves our highest potential. These are virtues we need to cultivate.