HOW CAN WE POSSIBLY THRIVE IN THE WORLD WITHOUT THINKING?
“Anxiety is thought without control. Flow is
control without thought.”
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Here’s a question that will guide you to an insight about this question:
What thoughts are going through your head when you’re doing your absolute best work where you’re fully captivated and entranced by what you’re doing in the moment?
Take about 15 seconds to wait for an answer to pop up before moving on.
If you still haven’t had the insight or epiphany from the answer, here’s another question that may point you in the right direction:
When you are loving what you do so much and are completely engrossed in it that you lose all sense of time and
space (aka when you’re in a state of complete flow), what thoughts are going through your mind as you’re in the state of flow in the moment?
Pause here and wait for the answer to arise (give it about 30- 60 seconds for the insight to come in).
When you are doing your best work and are in a total state of flow, where there is no separation between you or the work you are doing, you are having no thoughts in the moment. And if you are having thoughts, it’s just flowing right through you without you having to think about it. In other words, the state of peak performance for humans can be described as the state of non-thinking. It may seem crazy, but we do our best work when we aren’t thinking, and you just proved it with your own experience.
Here’s another example that will help illuminate the truth of this topic. When professional or even Olympic athletes are competing, do you think they are thinking and overanalyzing every single thing that’s happening during the game? What thoughts or thinking do you think is going on during the competition for them? The highest performing athletes will describe when they are in their peak state that they are in “the zone”. This “zone” is the state of flow or the state of non- thinking.
In Japanese culture, they have a beautiful word to describe this phenomenon: mushin.
Here is the definition from Shotokantimes:
“Mushin is achieved when [the] mind is free of random thoughts, free of anger, free of fear, and particularly free of ego. It applies during combat, and or other facets of life. When mushin is achieved during combat there is an absence of loose
or rambling thoughts. It leaves the practitioner free to act and react without hesitation. He reacts according to all of the study and training that has brought the karateka to this point. Relying on, not what you think should be your next move, but on what your trained, instinctive, subconscious reaction directs you to do.”
After practice, thinking hinders the performance of athletes and the same is true for everyone. We only hesitate, are reluctant, have doubts, insecurities, and fears only when we begin thinking and over-analyzing. We function and perform our best and embody our full potential the moment we enter a state of non-thinking. Without thinking, we are free from limitations of the ego and are able to create the most incredible things in the world. I am not asking you to adopt this belief, but to try it and experience it for yourself so that you gain the insight to make it your own.
