“You study long, you study wrong.” Don’t spend all day looking at those cards!”
That was usually Kim, or Charles, or Will, or one of my other college friends yelling across the card table imploring me to play quickly instead of having lengthy deliberations with myself while playing spades, the card game that I spent more than a little time participating in while a student at Georgia Southern (go Eagles). The view of my fellow card players was that little about the circumstances in my hand were going to change. The cards I held weren’t going to transform to something else so sitting there poring over the cards was going to do nothing but hold up the process for the others waiting to play, so play already!
While I’ve always considered it important to think twice as long as you speak or act, waiting can also be detrimental to some of our situations. Who doesn’t want ideal situations or wouldn’t rather wait until timing and conditions are perfect before stepping headlong into something? All of us! But quite frankly some of us don’t have that kind of time; there are things that we need to say or do today, right now!
“You study long, you study wrong.”
Much like those card games that I played in on those late nights in Statesboro, GA, over-thinking and delaying only hold up your process. You may not think so but there’s someone whose own decision is hinging on the one that you’re failing to make! There is a floodgate of opportunity behind every pronouncement we refuse to act on, possibilities abound with every action that we decline to resolve and in the end we only impair our own cause.
My collegiate buddies were right as we sat late at night in those dorm rooms and apartments surrounded by empty pizza boxes and beer bottles. Whatever the cards in your hand, play them, the actions you’re compelled to complete, perform them, the words you need to say, by all means, say them. The good that is likely to come from your bold steps forward could very well outweigh all the bad you’re hoping to avoid by not taking them. I implore you then not to wait to do or say what lies on your heart because that very thing may not come pre-packaged with a tomorrow.
~thanks for reading
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I have a bad habit of overthinking before i do anything. Thinking before you act isnt bad, but too much of anything isnt good for you either. We need to learn to keep our minds open without rushing in. Its all balance.