Decisions: how to Choose Intelligently and Avoid Indecision

Where are you going, left or right?

It’s not always easy to make decisions because we know that they influence, determine, and transform our life.  A lot of times it is hard for us to know what is best or most convenient.  It’s hard for us to say “yes” or “no”, we don’t know if it’s “blue” or “red”, “here” or “there”, “to stay” or “to go”, “cantaloupe” or “watermelon”.

Life seems like an unending question mark, always presenting dilemmas.  A dilemma is having a path in front of us that forks in two.  Which one?  What?  Were to?  How many times have we had these questions in mind?  And how many times do people wonder what would have happened if “I had taken the other path”?

You can never know what would have happened if you would have taken that “other path”, because in this material world, it is only possible to experience one reality at a time.  We can’t be red and blue at the same time.  And even though it is true that we can stay between one and the other, which is to say, between “red” and “blue”, for example, this decision is not very convenient.  Our reality would then be a sort of mess: poorly defined, neither here nor there, tugging and exhaustion with no favorable outcome.

That is why it is so important to know that being someone who knows how to decide, is very valuable and powerful for creating life.  Knowing how to chose is indispensable for forging a personality that sows great things, and that can arrive and take life to new places.  Those that don’t know how to decide, stay in the middle.  This is known as mediocrity.  It is someone who can’t advance or grow, because they never define where to go or grow.  They stay in the middle.

How do I begin to decide with confidence and intelligence?

Imagine that you go to buy a plane ticket, and at the travel agency they ask you “where do you want to travel?”, and you respond, “I don’t know”.  They would then explain to you the different destinations there were, the costs, but you’re still indecisive: “What if I choose Timbuktu and I don’t like it?”, “What is I go to the Andes, but miss out of Hawaii?”.  So you then decide, why not go to the beach that you’ve already seen, and that you like.  However, at the agency they convince you to dare to try new places, because that will give you different perspectives.  And, even though you could have answered them by telling them that it’s not the destination that matters, but what you do there, and what happens, you let yourself be convinced, and you buy your tickets to a new place.  All in all, what this is really all about, is just having a bit of fun.

Great things can happen at these destinations that you know, as well as the ones you don’t know.  It is important that you look at how you feel when you decide: What types of things do you want to live?  And then, listen to your heart, which is your compass that points where you should go.

It is true that choosing a trip can be less complicated than choosing a school, a partner, a job, or a way of life.  The decision gets even more difficult, the more we feel it will affect our life.  To harmonize the tension that making certain decisions can cause, you must never lose sight of exactly what your heart tells you.  How do I know what my heart suggests?  Simple.  Look at how you would feel making the decision you are going to make: if it makes you feel amazed, satisfied, and wakes up a certain dignity, then that is the decision you should take.  If you feel that making one decision or another does not make you feel satisfied or decent, or it makes you feel pressured or in a bad mood, that means you’re trying to please someone else with your decision, or you haven’t looked deeply at the things that make you feel decent.  You could be making decisions just to pacify a moment, which means you are making decisions to calm your anxiety, stress, or confusion, but not with a clear and defined vision of what you truly want.

A lot of times, we make decisions to decorate or “fill” the moment, or to avoid having to make an effort that takes us out of our comfort zone.  We also make decisions considering other people’s opinions, which exerts a strong pressure over people with a weak or poorly defined character.  Making decisions without character causes us to choose things that don’t always make up feel completely good.  These are weak decisions that are easily broken and that make us feel unfulfilled: broken down.

To avoid these types of decisions it is important that you always decide from the depths of the reasons that move us to decide.  If you discover that your decisions are founded in foreign opinions, in the comfort of interest of simply filling a moment, you must then have the strength to not let yourself be carried off, and set out a new destiny.  The truth is, no decision is really bad or good, because each one takes us somewhere, and that place is called experience.  Experience is what feeds our understanding.  It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve chosen things you like or dislike, the important things is to never lose sight of the consequences and results.  That is how wisdom is gained.

Remember to observe the reasons that carry you to decide something: a lot of times our choices demand new ways of acting, of being, and this isn’t always attractive or easy, especially when the world comes down on us for what we decided.  However, if you are convinced that what you choose is something that will make you feel proud, fulfilled, and admired by yourself, you should never doubt to follow your gut feeling.  Whether others like it or not.

Every time we decide something, as small as it may seem, it affect our life in some way.  We could imagine that, every time we decide to take a certain path, we give a small kick to the ball called “destiny”, which can move either drastically or smoothly, towards one path or another.  Success is the result of a series of decisions focused on and fueled towards a certain destiny.  Decisions are the small steps that take us where we want to go.  And if you still don’t know exactly what you want, then you need to begin to understand that life shouldn’t be anything in particular.  It is a creative adventure, you can choose whichever dream you like.  Ask yourself: what do you want to experience?  What are you good at?  Which gift would you like to develop and share with others?  and then, focus the rest of your decisions there.

Revised by: Dra. Loredana Lunadei on 09/16/2014

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