Thinking doesn't help. In fact it positively hinders. A thinking person honestly believes that their thinking gives them an advantage, as though the teacher's instruction is not enough and needs to be supplemented by extra input. The best students are they who simply listen and obey, not because they are naturally slavish or lack creative desire, but because they know intuitively that any input from themselves is ego-generated, and until that ego is at least bypassed, if not conquered, it will always express resistance to the teaching and the teacher. Most of us have to learn this the hard way: wasting years doing our own version of Taiji until we finally have the humility and good sense to realise that it was all there in the very first lesson if only we'd listened.