Your mind matters when you think first

Once upon a time, I moonlighted as the mayor of Boulder City. But even then, as now, I mostly earned a living as an attorney. As much as I loathe billing clients, it’s obviously necessary in order to put food on my family’s table.

People hire me as much for my training, experience, and analytical skills as for what I actually “do” for them. The same is true of other professionals like doctors and financial planners. We gather information, deposit it upstairs in our brains, spend considerable time synthesizing, organizing and processing it up there, think through relevant issues and problems, turn them over and over and over again in our minds, apply our knowledge, expertise and experience to them, and eventually spit out a diagnosis, a prognosis, and perhaps even a solution or two in the form of professional advice.

But imagine your reaction if you received a $1,500 bill from me that simply said, “Thought about your case today.” Instead of merely throwing darts at my picture or icy stares in my general direction, you’d be hurling actual projectiles at the real me. After all, if we have to pay for something, you and I much prefer paying for actions, results, and tangible things that we can see and feel than for invisible ideas and impressions.

And yet, would you really want a doctor to operate on you if she hadn’t first observed and analyzed your symptoms, thought through test results, hypothesized about the source of your problems, ruled out other possible causes, drawn upon past experience, and otherwise brought to bear on your case the sum total of her education, training and expertise? Of course not. That’s because 95% of most good solutions involve an awful lot of thinking.

And most of that thinking should usually occur before we act, at least in any definitive way. You don’t have to be a doctor to know that it’s generally not a good policy to operate first and then diagnose later.

Thinking before we act or speak is almost always the best policy in our public forums as well. Even our former first- and second-graders at Mitchell Elementary knew from their 7 Habits training made popular by Dr. Stephen R. Covey that we should “seek first to understand,” and only “then to be understood.” I also like another aphorism that Dr. Covey and other prominent thinkers like Ralph Waldo Emerson and William Makepeace Thackeray have repeated in various forms over the centuries. Its origin is unknown, but it’s often been characterized as an old Chinese proverb: “Sow a thought, reap an action; sow an action, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character, reap a destiny.”

Regardless of its origin, it’s true. Our thoughts ultimately determine our destiny. And the eternal Law of the Harvest is always in full force and effect. So, both individually and collectively, we should first do everything in our power to make sure that we plant good thoughts and cultivate them carefully if we ever hope to reap positive results.

On the subject of good thinking, keeping an open mind is critical to our community’s success as well. When you and I keep an open mind, we’re willing to listen to different ideas and opinions, including those that at first blush aren’t consistent with our own. We’re also more willing to reserve judgment and wait to form an opinion until we have all of the reasonably available information and facts in our possession.

In the long run, thinking first, analyzing problems conscientiously, and doing it with an open mind will inevitably lead to better decisions and results for everyone. And that’s what we all want. So, before you speak or act next time, think about it. And listen to others. Then think about it some more. We’ll all reap the benefits if you do.