Decisions, decisions, decisions. We’re faced with so many of them every day. They range from trivial ones like what clothes to wear or what food to eat, to major ones like which college to go to or which company to work for.
Most people get overwhelmed by having to make all these decisions. Especially, the big ones. We’re told that a single choice we make will determine how the rest of our lives turn out. Oh my God, are you serious? The rest of my life depends on what I decide right now? Oh hell no. I can’t handle that magnitude of responsibility. How am I supposed to know what to do?
Say you come to a fork in the road and have to choose between option A and option B. You think long and hard, consult friends and family. Everybody says different things. You analyze pros and cons. You’re thoroughly confused. You want to feel assured that you’re making the right choice, but there is no way to be sure. Every time you lean in one direction, some doubts creep in. This decision will affect your whole life, after all. The grass suddenly seems greener on the other side.
You know where the grass really seems the greenest? Not having to make the decision at all. The problem is that picking one option, means not picking the other option. It means you will never know how things might have been if you had taken the road you didn’t go on. You can only know what happens on the road you picked.
Wouldn’t it be great if you had a time machine and could simply pick option A, travel to the future and see how the rest of your life turns out? Then, after a quick bathroom break, pick option B and again see how everything turns out. You would be in a position to know exactly which path will make you happier. That would be sweet, wouldn’t it?
The bad news is we don’t have access to such a time machine (yet). But, we have at our disposal a powerful tool that can act as a substitute for a time machine. It’s called our imagination.
Here’s what you do. Find a time when you’re alone, you have some peace and quiet, and your mind is relatively undisturbed. This could be early morning or late night. It could be in your bedroom or your prayer room or even your bathroom, if you can’t find any place else.
Close your eyes. Assume you have already picked option A. Visualize in your mind and feel with your heart, where you are, what you’re doing, who is with you, what the environment is like. Project yourself into the future: one month from now, one year from now, ten years from now.
Take no more than ten minutes to do this. Then, after a quick bathroom break of course, clear your mind, take five deep breaths, and repeat this for option B.
There, in less than half an hour, you’ve traveled to the future and seen which choice makes you happier. No need to talk to many people, or do a lot of research. Too much information is sometimes detrimental to decision-making. All the answers lie within. Learn to trust your instincts.
After making the decision, people frequently revisit it again and again, wondering if they made the wrong choice. This is especially true when things start to go wrong, which they inevitably do at some point or the other. You start to look back and chastise yourself for making an incorrect choice.
Don’t do that. It serves no purpose whatsoever. How can you know that things would have turned out better if you had made the other choice? Maybe they would be even worse than they are now. Or maybe, this struggle that you are going through now is exactly what you need to take that next step in your personal evolution and prepare for what lies ahead.
There is no way to say for sure that any decision you made was a bad one, since you can’t know what would have happened had you made the other choice. So, don’t go back and revisit the decision. Don’t ever do that. What’s done is done. There are no wrong choices.
Besides, it’s not just the decision that matters; it’s also what you do after that. The time when you make the decision is just a single moment in time. It is followed by many more moments in the months and years to follow. Once you make the choice, you have to handle whatever comes your way. How you face the situation from there on is equally important as the decision itself.
And if you truly start to feel that this is no longer the right path for you, you can always backtrack. Very few decisions are irreversible. In the words of Led Zeppelin from Stairway to Heaven, “Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run, there’s always time to change the road you’re on.”
Above all, remember to follow your deepest intuition. It already knows what’s best for you, before your thinking mind figures it out and gets with the program.
