Take time to deliberate; but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in.
Andrew Jackson, 1767-1845, 7th President of the United States
Looking before you leap is a sane sort of jumping, but hesitating for too long in a leaping stance can put you off-balance enough to inspire a hard fall. Changing back and forth between stop and go is even worse, since every beginning and ending is packed full of intense emotions. I cannot like feeling either extreme, so it is all the more distasteful if my own actions are the cause of the upset.
Getting the dial set to the right amount of thinking time is tricky. Meatier issues take longer to digest than fluffy ones. Considering a heavy one for too long can scare a person half to death, or all the way to the asylum. Dwelling upon a light one at length can cause brain cells to shrink, attention spans to shorten, and childlike behavior to develop.
Setting the speed at which you think figures into this formula too. Racing from notion-to-notion gives little insight, half asked questions have no real answers. Loping slowly seems about as ridiculous as speaking slowly in a loud fashion to a blind person. Too fast and you out-distance the answer, too slowly and you never get to it. An ideal medium can be found and maintained with practice and will power.
Strength of will is the portion of self with the most control over what kind of thoughts we have and how we deal with them. A strong mind is necessary to obtain a healthy balance; wrestling a thought out of mind, or killing it altogether takes muscle. After a surprisingly short time the number of bothersome notions will be close to nothing and the ones you do have will be weak as well as lame.
Pondering better thoughts more efficiently will help in thinking before leaping situations. When a target is in mind it is much safer to jump. And going in is more likely to be a successful endeavor with productive planning, even if it is brief than it would be with mindless panic inspired by over-thinking.
THINK ABOUT IT
LET IT GROW
THEN DECIDE
