“I have analysis paralysis!”
Why this is a wall:
Sometimes we think we need to “figure it all out” before taking action. Particularly after a psychedelic journey, the big stuff we encounter can exert a high demand on our psyches as we try to fill ourselves up with all we can learn about a topic. Whatever big life changes we may be considering, we want to get them right, so we dive into all the books, articles, websites, webinars, podcasts, conferences, and documentaries in an exhaustive quest to amass the info, all of it. This goal is admirable. I mean, it’s a good thing to do your due diligence and access well-earned lessons from those who have been there before you. But if such efforts carry a perfectionist impulse, they will impede you more than lead you.
For sure: study stuff, do your homework, just don’t get bogged down in the immobility of minutiae. And stop waiting for a sign that you’ve learned enough. There will never be a green light that suddenly appears to let you know, “You are now ready to act on this knowledge.” Waiting for that light is letting your insecurity about making ill-informed mistakes dictate your indecision. Doing nothing because you still need to learn everything is a fear-based response. The way out of it is to leave your info cave and get out into the sunlight and try stuff.
Trust me: there will ALWAYS be something you didn’t consider, a nuance you didn’t capture, a finding you didn’t incorporate, an insight you failed to ponder. You’re human, not ChatGPT. What you want to attain is the “good enough” level of familiarity with something to make decent but likely imperfect decisions. Then you get to learn from those mistakes, which will make you more and more informed about what is needed next. Our endless scrolling for perfect knowledge is a recipe for stagnation. We delude ourselves when we think expertise is the goal; but growing is the goal. And we grow when we learn, try, reflect, and improve. So be brave enough to stop the analysis and start acting (and failing). Mistakes are not to be feared; neglecting to learn from them is the real danger here.
Potential ladders:
Using the one-page plan. Write down a single-page summary of the insight you’ve been researching and pondering. Describe its basic components, relevance, and one immediate step to apply it in your day-to-day. Let that single page be enough for now. Then put energy and resources toward its application rather than elucidation. When you do, repeat the following mantra: “Done is better than perfect. Everything is practice. I am always getting better.”
Inventing a rule of thumb. If you can name it, you can integrate it. Take a grand concept or complex phenomenon and reduce it to a simple phrase that will be easy for you to remember. Example 1: “Accept what you can’t control and just breathe.” Example 2: “Slow, Know, Flow, Grow.” Example 3: “Stress is an opportunity to feel a need.” Whatever you invent, it should reflect what you experienced in your journey and what you have learned about it since. Bonus points if it helps you live, relate, manage, care, and thrive better. If you can, try to name things in a way that keeps them open and flexible, capable of adapting to unforeseen circumstances. Try to stay bouncy and curious with these rules of thumb so they don’t end up calcifying in your psyche and making you too rigid to keep learning and growing. A good rule of thumb for rules of thumb should be that they expand your thinking and being, not restrict it.
Checking in with the body. What you think about X is not the same as where X sits in your body, how it feels there, and what it can illuminate when it’s accessed. Analysis paralysis sometimes occurs because we’re doing all the work from the neck up. But our bodies are constantly registering, storing, expressing, and releasing all kinds of knowledge and signals. Truly, our psyche isn’t just our brain—ours is an embodied consciousness. To use the awareness that emanates from our chest, gut, shoulders, limbs, pelvis—wherever—we have to practice listening to it. Where do you feel openness? Where do you feel tension? What feels hot, or cold? Look in as much if not more than you look up, around, and at. Practice body scans, somatic listening, various forms of movement, stretching—anything that gets you tending the vibrant matter you inhabit.
Adhering to the 5-minute rule. Your experienced big stuff then researched the hell out of it. Now put it all aside. Set a timer for five minutes and take one small action toward implementing the insight you have been investigating. It doesn’t matter how minor the action is. Do it, do it now, and then stop doing it and evaluate it after 5 easy minutes. Pick another insight and rinse, lather, repeat.
Doing an 80/20. You’ve learned a lot about that big thing but the scope of its nuance can be crippling. There is likely a small subset of actionable morsels you found that are worth trying, so quit striving to get every single tidbit down and lined up. Ask yourself: “What 20% of what I’ve learned will give me 80% of the benefit? If I had to act right now with nothing beyond that 20%, what would I do?” Then do that. Don’t stress about leaving 80% of all the interesting and worthy things behind. You want only the big shiny powerful bits first. Later, as you get better at using that 20% you’ll find all kinds of ways of bringing in the remaining 80%. Trust that 20% will give you the traction you need to expand into the full complexity of the insight later. Start small to go big.
Getting your brain offline. The interwebs isn’t always our friend. Endless rabbit holes await us at every click. Stop the insanity. When you find a good article that really resonates with you, print it out and walk away from you screen. Grab that printout, sit in a chair, put away your phone, read that thing and only that thing. Don’t get seduced by the scroll demons in your pocket. Sit with that single text and let it bounce around inside you. Pay attention to what it hits and how it feels. Then go do something with it: write, paint, run, walk, sing, anything that feels aligned with how it wants to be expressed. What is this text suggesting for how you need or want to be? Now go try being that for a little while and see how it feels.