'Don’t think, just do!’

‘Don’t think, just do!’

These were the words uttered to me one day in the midst of a particularly critical task that I was engaged in. New to the field in what I was doing at the time, the words grated on my fledgling senses. 

Here I was so green, so eager to make good, utterly careful in the line of duty.  Planning down to a ‘tee’, writing lists, checking off as I went along, verifying and counter verifying that I had all the accurate details, measurements and logistics. 

All of which in one fell swoop was being negated by one flippant statement…’don’t think, just do!’

‘On what planet do you live?’ would have been my snarky retort to what I had deemed to be a negligent statement at the time. 

Only I hadn’t had the courage to voice the words running through my head at that moment, because I was fairly new at what I was doing at the time, wanting to learn it all yet not wanting to upset the apple cart.

Years later, done with my fire breathing moment of inward anger done, I can honestly look back and call that red flag utterance a pivotal moment in my life. Only once my pulse rate had calmed and my vanity receded a bit, did I realize that there can never be such a guarantee that everything would go right or according to plan even if I did exert a ‘choke-hold’ over things and strive for that ever elusive word; ‘perfection’.

There’s just that moment, that little fragment of realization that hits, that tells you to release your hold to a power slightly larger than yourself. That little thing called instinct that tells you somehow that you are part of something so much bigger and yet it is in the palm of your hand.

I’m beginning to learn how to trust it. To understand that there is an innate radar that screams at you when you are ‘off’ in your decisions and judgments’ and sings to you in a golden voice when you are exactly where you need to be at a certain point in time.

I look back at that moment uttered by that old colleague and send up a little word of thanks that the words had the ability to grate at my senses, get under my skin and strike a chord somewhere deep within my heart.