What Does it Mean to Stop Questioning and Just Be?
A new challenge on my path to be here now, more.
I love learning. One of the driving forces in my life is my desire to gain more knowledge, to learn new things, to evolve my understanding. Much of what I know is largely useless. Trivia? Oh, do I have a head full of useless trivia. Also quotes from movies and TV shows, song lyrics, and the like.
I love when I’m writing, and I come up to a question of plausibility, logic, or scientific fact. How far IS the Earth from the moon? How fast is the speed of sound? What goes into making ice cream? Even facts I learn but don’t retain are fun to question and explore.
None of this is terribly deep, however. They aren’t questions about Life, the Universe, and Everything. Those are still questions I ask, but mostly about my own mindset/headspace/psyche self. What makes me tick? How did I get from there to here, and what do I need to do to get to there? Why do I feel this way?
I’ve long believed that knowledge is power. But more than that, knowledge is empowerment. The more you know, the more you can take control of your thoughts, feelings, intentions, approach, and actions. Questioning in-depth things about your life shows you who, what, where, how, and why you are. They tell you the state of your health, wellness, and wellbeing on all 4 levels – physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.
The constant, endless questioning, however, can also turn detrimental. It can cause inaction, indecision, confusion, and self-sabotage. Like everything, you need to find the balance and practice moderation.
Presently, for multiple reasons, I need to find that balance. How do I stop questioning and just be?
What, specifically, do I need to stop questioning?
There’s the rub. Getting down to the nitty-gritty of what it is I need to stop questioning. Because it’s not everything, it’s certain, specific things.
This requires some history. After my parents divorced when I was 5 or so, I was an emotional wreck. My therapists helped, but they missed that I logiced out my emotions but didn’t feel them. At least, not with ease. It wasn’t until a brilliant therapist I was seeing in my mid 30s figured that out, and helped me to find and feel emotions, for real, again.
Over the years, after reintegrating true emotion, my life has improved in all sorts of ways. I’m less anxious and uncertain, more content, and more capable of both giving and receiving love. I’m more centered and balanced, and have a far better understanding of who, what, where, how, and why I am, as well as how to adjust those when I desire to change them.
But this is where I start to overanalyze. When I can’t make sense of an emotion, or the emotions can’t be put into words, my need to know, my desire to learn, pushes. I start questioning how this emotion came into being, why it is, where it came from, what it means, what it is, and how to shift/alter/release it.
To learn these things requires a lot of digging. And that digging, to a point, is good. However, go too in depth, look too long and hard, and it becomes detrimental. It’s a distraction to further self-sabotage, further embed blockages, and keep me from the one and only place I can do anything: The now.
Hence, I need to stop questioning, stop wasting time and effort that could be better used elsewhere, and just be.
What does it mean to just be?
The only time that’s really, truly, real is now. This moment. The present. Only in this moment, right here and now, do we wield any and all control we can.
The past has come and gone. It cannot be changed, redone, undone, or otherwise altered. Despite cults and misguided individuals seeking that end, it’s not possible. Likewise, the future is unwritten, uncertain, and full to overflowing with unknowns. You can take paths and choose ways and means, but the outcomes are not predictable.
When you place yourself in the present, here and now, you open yourself to being able to just be. You can just be, experience the world around you, and exist in this moment, unaffected by anything within you or without.
To just be means to be consciously aware, mindful, here and now. Be present in this moment, observe the world around you as it is, now.
For example, I’m in my office as I write these words. The sun is streaming in from the window behind me, and I hear the cars on the street outside the window to my right. I’ve reached the annoying part of typing where the fingers on my left hand go a bit numb, and I need to pause. The fountain for my cats in the hallway to my left is hissing because it needs more water.
As you read these words, the above is now the past. But in the moment above, I was just being, wholly in the here and now. No thoughts of the past nor the future. Present. Just being. Now.
The more in-depth version of just being, where you stop questioning, takes practice, choices, and decisions for action.
Choosing to stop questioning
Here’s why I am trying to figure out how to stop questioning and just be. Certain dynamics with specific people in my life are, to put it gently, messy. That messiness involves a lot of unknown emotions that tie into thoughts and feelings I can’t pinpoint. I start questioning what it’s all about, why they keep coming on the way they do, and I keep digging deeper and deeper to understand.
My therapist posed an important question about this. To what end? Why am I constantly digging harder to get to the names of these feelings I don’t understand? What do I think putting a name to these emotions I can’t name gives me?
Names have power. Words matter. Naming them disempowers them. At least, that’s been my reason for questioning them so deeply. But what if this is just my excuse to stay in the past, remain in my comfort zone, and keep myself small? How do I know if that’s it, and what can I do to address that?
The answer is simple. Just be. Stop questioning these unknowns and just be. Yes, there are complicated, unnamed emotions rattling around my brain that I won’t stop picking at. But what if doing so is just the equivalent of picking at a scab? By not leaving it be and just being, am I reopening a wound for no good reason?
To find out, the key is to just be.
How do I just be?
This is, of course, both obscenely simple and deeply complicated. It starts with a shift in mindset, which is both easy and not easy.
I believe, firmly, that knowledge is power and empowerment. Hence, I ask a lot of questions because I like learning. But this is not something I need answers to. Not in the way I think I do, at least. So, I need to shift these questions, this examination of a complex and deeply personal matter, from the forefront to the side.
BUT, and this is huge, I can’t just ignore, disregard, or pretend it’s not there. What I can do is recognize it, acknowledge it, thank it for being, and then excuse myself and shift my attention elsewhere (like moving away from a person at a party I don’t actually want to talk to).
Not quite a release, but enough to be present, here and now, and just be, rather than focusing on a matter that’s not entirely of the here and now.
When I’m just being and working in the present, here and now, I can make choices and decisions mindfully to unblock myself, to address self-sabotage, and shine as brightly as I desire to.
Most of all, just being means not questioning the past or focusing on the outcomes of the future. It’s being present, here and now, where all my power is. Because only here and now, when I actively do the work to just be, can I know and adjust the things I control. Specifically, what I’m thinking, what and how I’m feeling, my intentions, the positivity or negativity of my approach, and my actions.
Which brings me to some exercises for how to stop questioning and just be.
Exercises to help us stop questioning and just be
There are 3 ways I know of to engage this.
The first is to pause, be present, and focus on my breathing. Deep breath in, full release. Focus my thinking on the breathing, and be present, just being, for even as little as 2 minutes.
The second way is exercise. Movement, here and now, is a way to just be. Take a walk and be aware of the world around me, stretch and feel the muscles tense and relax, pedal my bike and feel my heart speed up, and so on. Exercise is a way to just be.
Third, meditation. Set aside 5-30 minutes, be still. Get comfortable somewhere, either in a chair, sitting in the lotus position, or even in a hammock. Let the thoughts and feelings flow through and past you without holding any. (FYI, meditation is often mistaken to only be all about emptying the mind. That is ONE form of the practice, but there are many others. The method I share here is not the only one.)
When I just be, and allow myself to be in my mind, body, and spirit, here and now, I can make informed choices and decisions to move my life experience how I so desire. You also have the same power. While knowledge is power and empowering, sometimes you’re better off setting aside the questioning and just being.
How will you know? Try it for yourself and see what you get from it.
Time to put my money where my mouth is (or, since I’m typing this, where my fingers are?) Will I stop myself from all this questioning, and just be?
This is the seventh-hundred-fifty-seventh (757) exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – applying mindfulness and positivity to walk along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.
I share my philosophy because I desire to make a difference in the world and help as many people as I can to find their empowerment with conscious reality creation.
Thank you for joining me. Feel free to share and/or repost where it might do good for you and others.
The first year of Pathwalking, including some expanded ideas, is available here.
Also, please check out my author website for the rest of my published fiction and nonfiction works.
Follow me here!
