Decide Already!

When you are doing the work to ensure that you are have choices, please also remember that you then must decide on one.

Earlier this year, I hadn’t learned that yet. I had gotten inspired to find possibility in my life, particularly in my career where I had been feeling stuck. I explored the realm of more and more choices besides the first “this or that” pair. Once I got a lot of great options lined up, I froze. For months. Which one do I pick?

I wondered what’s wrong with me–why can’t I figure out the best choice? I would do the pros versus cons list, the options and impacts table, I’d take polls, research, study, ask for help, ask for coaching. I was doing anything except making the decision.

Decision making both requires and forges discipline and non-attachment. Making a decision is a courageous act of self-assuredness and creation, trusting the the decision I’m making is the right one.

By the way, there are right and wrong options. Let’s say right choices are ones that purposefully cause connection, growth, happiness, etc. and wrong choices are ones that purposefully cause violence, separation, suffering, etc. But what about when you have 3 or more right options? What about when you simply want to do more than one option but there truly isn’t enough time in the day to do both, or you’ve experienced the stuckness like I had been when two options oppose each other?

I wanted to both make x amount of money and keep the exact job I had. When I did my work of finding possibility: the third choice was to quit, the fourth was to try harder at something new to pull in the revenue I wanted, the fifth was to change what I wanted, the sixth was to scale back to part time and get paid somewhere else, the seventh was to try to buy part of the company… the list of good options goes on. I was paralyzed. I wanted many of those choices seemingly equally. And I didn’t want some of them, even though I knew they were right. I was attached to an outcome and had no self-discipline in being real with myself.

Decision making both requires and forges discipline and non-attachment. It hit me one day in a random Crescent Lunge in a Yoga class. So, I made the decision to quit, do only part time in one skillset, and get paid at a different 9-to-5. Life changed in one moment, one decision. Was it the right decision? Who cares? I made it while being responsible and loving all the humans around the situation including myself. That expression of self-discipline and responsibility felt really powerful and good: I was steering my life.

Make the decision. Not because it’s the right one, but because it’s the one you are asserting is the right one. Mourn the loss of the other choices you’re not getting to have right now and move on. The cool thing about possibility isn’t that it gives you infinite choices only right now–it gives you infinite choices as time continues to slip forward. Slip forward with it while holding onto the oar you decided to grab, and steer.