I’m a pretty serious overthinker.

I actually thought I had gotten good at not overthinking, but friends near and dear to me have told me otherwise.

To me, it feels like I’m just taking normal precautions, so I’m not always able to tell.

What sucks about overthinking is, of course, that it causes you to hesitate. When you hesitate, you’re not acting intuitively. Acting intuitively is acting from your center. It’s good to always be acting from your center. “The mind is a tool, don’t let it become your master.” Not acting from your center means you’re doubting yourself or that you’re living according to what someone else thinks.

Those who don’t overthink often say the answer is to “just go for it” and “stop overthinking it!” That really is the solution a lot of the time, but not always. Sometimes, what’s suited for the overthinker is a series of “progressions.”

My thesis here is basically that parkour and jumping onto stuff is a great illustration of:

1. Confronting the scary situations that make you overthink
2. Giving yourself chances to not overthink
3. Using progressions to strengthen that “just do it” muscle

Stop Overthinking or Die

The long story short is that I let my inner manchild take over, and I decided to join a parkour gym to fulfill a childhood dream. I made it through the beginner course just fine, but overthinking started to manifest in the second level.

Beginner-level parkour stuff is pretty intuitive. Jumping, running, and balancing is easy enough. Refining those movements will require some guidance (land on the balls of your feet; absorb the impact; etc), but it’s something that quickly becomes automatic.

But as soon as you start incorporating more complex moves or any element of danger, overthinkers will have a hard time. What’s worse is that overthinkers tend to hesitate right in the middle of a move. “Just do it, stop overthinking it!” can get them hurt if they add height or concrete obstacles to the movement.

Parkour is frequently called a very safe sport, because the practitioner is encouraged to only do what they’re comfortable with. Most of the nasty falls you see in parkour are from someone A) doing something they haven’t practiced enough B) not assessing the environment or C) taking on something too scary and hesitating right at the take off.

The Two Types of Thinkers in Parkour

From my time in attending the parkour gym, I learned that there were two types of thinkers:

1. Those who learn by copying what they see

Many of my coaches admitted they had no idea what most parkour moves were called until they were forced to learn them as part of the job.

Guys at open gym, who had no interested in the class sessions, were the same way.

“A what vault? Oh, that thing? I can’t really explain it, just watch what I do.”

I get how “just do it” works for talking to a cute stranger or cold calling a prospect, but that never worked for me when trying to use my hands to throw myself over a vaulting block. I just can’t wrap my head around it to even understand what’s happening in the first place.

2. People who learn through explanation

I got discouraged and thought I’d never be any good at parkour if I couldn’t get into the “just do it” mindset that came so easily to everyone else.

Fortunately, one of my coaches—who is great at the sport—is also a great teacher because he comes from a similar mindset.

One of the things he taught me is breaking things down into progressions.

Just Keep Getting Closer and Closer to the Scary Thing

So here’s a jump that has been in my mind for a little while now. It’s not a very far jump (only 8 of my feet), and it’s not very tall either, but it’s exactly the kind of thing that gets me all locked up. I couldn’t even attempt the jump because my feet would bail immediately after jumping. I’ve messed my ankle up a few times on similar things, so I think it’s some ankle-related PTSD.

So here’s the progression I needed to stop me from being a bitch baby. I practiced each one several times until there was nothing left but to “just do it.”

• Blue arrow: Start from ground level and jump onto the thing
• Purple arrow: Take a step back onto slightly higher surface and jump onto the thing
• Yellow arrow: Starting from the intended point, jump next to the thing. This is proving that you can make the leap at the distance and from the height.
• Green arrow: The slightest modification is all that’s needed in order to make the jump, so just fucking do it, you’ve done literally 99% of it by this point.

So now let’s stop overthinking it and put it all together:

fucking epic

So now go and take the same approach to scary things in your life. But also, don’t forget that sometimes there really is no option but “just fucking do it”