Think Before You Act

Don’t be bounced around.

Saint Jerome Writing by Caravaggio (1605–1606)

“Don’t be bounced around, but submit every impulse to the claims of justice, and protect your clear conviction in every appearance.” - Marcus Aurelius

You see it early. Long before the scans, before the labs, before the consent forms are signed.

A patient walks in with a story that starts almost the same way every time. It didn’t seem serious. A fall brushed off. A cut rinsed at home. A swelling ignored because work couldn’t wait. A fever treated with borrowed antibiotics. A pain endured out of pride, fear, or the hope that tomorrow would somehow be different. By the time they reach the ward, the body has already paid interest on that delay. What could have been simple is now complicated. What could have healed fast and clean now needs force, steel, anesthesia, weeks of recovery.

Standing there as a surgeon, you learn a brutal lesson fast- most disasters are slowly accumulating their impetus at any given moment. Like interest, they’re compounding. They’re the result of acting on habit, fear, or convenience instead of thought.

Perhaps you recognize yourself in this pattern.

We all move through our days on autopilot. We act like bad actors who haven’t read the script, merely reacting to the other person’s lines. You say yes to the commitment you resent. You snap at a partner because you’re hungry. You assume strain is inevitable, that life is meant to feel tense and overwhelming, that ease must be earned through suffering. So you keep going, tightening your jaw, telling yourself this is just how things are.

But here’s what makes it complicated- sometimes that reflex is exactly what saves you. It’s what helps you seize opportunities.

I’ve seen it in the operating room- the split-second decision that works because there wasn’t time to second-guess it. Evolution built us to react fast because predators don’t wait for committee meetings. The body has its own intelligence, honed by repetition and survival. Your hands know things your mind hasn’t articulated yet. Sometimes hesitation is the real danger.

Hamlet died thinking. Achilles died acting. The question isn’t which mode is superior- it’s knowing when you have the luxury of deliberation and when you’re just using analysis to avoid feeling or handling something.

And there’s this- that patient who couldn’t miss work, who used borrowed antibiotics because a clinic visit meant choosing between medicine and rent- their ‘failure to think’ wasn’t a personal flaw. It was a constrained choice in a system that punishes vulnerability. When you’re exhausted, broke, or terrified, pausing to reflect becomes a privilege you can’t afford. Sometimes the wound isn’t in the individual- it’s in the conditions that force people to ignore their bodies until they break.

So the real work is more than just personal discipline. I want us to handle it together on a structural level. It’s building a world where early intervention is actually possible. Where rest isn’t weakness. Where seeking help doesn’t cost us everything.

But until that world exists, you still have to live in this one. And in this one, you have more agency than you’re using.

Thinking before you act is often framed as hesitation, but it’s actually a form of combat strategy. Consider the portrayal of the detective in Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes. Before a physical brawl begins, the film freezes time. We enter Holmes’s mind. In that suspended second, he dissects the moment before it happens- he notices the twitch in an opponent’s jaw, calculates the trajectory of a punch, plans the block, and predicts the exact recovery time. He runs the catastrophe in his head so he doesn’t have to suffer it in his body. Only after the mental work is done does he press play and execute the moves with frightening precision.

You have access to this same mechanism. You can inhabit that split second between a trigger and your reaction as Viktor Frankl talked about. When the insult lands, or the pressure increases, or the urge to spiral begins, you can freeze the frame. In that pause, you catch yourself before things escalate. You anticipate the outcome of your own reflexive anger. You can prioritize with efficiency. You see the fallout of the rash decision. And because you have already played out the disaster in your mind, you can choose not to enact it in reality.

You can decide, right now, to handle the next hour better than the last. You can decide not to ruin your mood. You can change the story in your head from this is unbearable to this is workable. You can turn the work in front of you into a game- How composed can I stay? How much further can I go? How much can I endure without complaining? How good can my judgment be? How much effort can I save by dropping what doesn’t matter?

Sometimes that means writing until the thoughts lose their grip. Sometimes it means walking until your body settles. Sometimes it means narrowing your focus until the task absorbs you. The method doesn’t matter. The decision does.

But here’s the thing most people don’t consider- this costs something.

Pausing takes energy you might not have. Reflection requires safety you haven’t secured. Deliberation means giving up the thin comfort of momentum, the protective numbness of staying busy. It means feeling what you’ve been running from. It means more work, more back and forth, more frustrating start-overs. And sometimes- honestly- the reflex was mercy. Sometimes not thinking was the kindness. But still, you must face reality if you’re to make progress.

The trick is learning to tell the difference. Between the pause that saves you and the one that traps you. Between the thought that clarifies and the thought that spirals into the void. Between acting from strength and reacting from fear. Rilke wrote,

“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage.”

It’s a seductive idea- that our demons are just misunderstood, waiting to transform the moment we face them properly. But the truth is messier than that. Some dragons are real and need to be fought immediately. Some need to be understood first. Some need to be left alone. And some- the ones we build ourselves out of delayed confrontations and accumulated silences- those really do admire us the moment we stop running and turn to face them with clear eyes.

The question is- which kind are you dealing with right now?

This leads to a quality the Italians call sprezzatura—a certain studied carelessness, the ability to make difficult actions look effortless. The person who reacts on impulse is often messy, loud, and clumsy. They are flailing against the current. But the person who thinks first possesses a cool elegance. They don’t need to shout to be heard or hurry to be on time. Because they have already navigated the terrain in their mind, their actions in the real world appear smooth, deliberate, and graceful. They cut through the noise without becoming part of it.

This is how you avoid unnecessary damage in your own life. You intervene early when you can. You choose thought over reflex when the stakes allow it. You learn to act with both strength and grace, neither paralyzed by overthinking nor destroyed by impulse. You accept that you won’t get it right every time. That some mistakes are inevitable. That perfection isn’t the goal- responsiveness is.

And slowly, almost without noticing, life stops feeling like an emergency, like it’s out of control- because you’ve learned to meet it awake. You finally hold the keys to your inner domain.

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P.P.S: Most people loved the series on How to Deepen Your Friendships, Part I, Part II & Part III. Also check out the practical entries on How To Deal With Toxic People, How to Process & Overcome Grief & How to Prevent and Overcome Burnout. Happy reading!

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