Make the decision right

Navigating big decisions from a place of self-trust.

Everyday we make small decisions that could have profound impacts on our lives and don’t think twice about them. You could accidentally sleep in, miss your bus, and meet your soulmate on the next one. The world is constantly in motion, and every choice we make contributes to the fabric of our existence.

We don’t spend much time worrying about the little decisions that make up our daily routines. Those go off without a hitch. It’s the big ones (the ones we perceive as “life-defining”) that paralyze us with indecision, wake us up in the night, and eat away at our agency.

Lately, I’ve been approaching decision-making through the lens of “make the decision right”—meaning choose, then use your creativity to make it work for you. This practice requires a ton of self-trust, because you’re saying, “Regardless of the external circumstances, I know that I can make this useful for myself—that I can take something positive away from it, even if I get hurt or it doesn’t go exactly as planned.” The onus shifts away from choosing the “right” or “wrong” path, to deciding to creatively respond to whichever path you choose, since both will have something to offer you.

Often, we avoid committing to something because it gives us a sense of control. When you are indecisive, you know what to expect. You haven’t stepped into the unknown, leaped off the cliff, or had your holy fuck moment. Indecision is a safe place for most of us, but it’s also incredibly painful. It keeps us in limbo. All of our abundant, creative energy is being channelled into our anxiety, rather than towards whatever our goals are.

Another reason we may refuse to choose is because we fear we won’t be able to forgive ourselves if we end up in a situation that hurts us. We can’t risk “making a mistake” because our internal world sees this as life-threatening. We delay making a decision because we know that if it doesn’t pan out how we expect, we’ll be punished from a voice within. One that says something like, “You idiot, look what you’ve done. You fucked up again.”

While scary, I promise you this voice is not evil. It speaks to you this way because it’s worried about your preservation and well-being—it just doesn’t know how else to express it other than through criticism or berating (maybe you heard this voice growing up from a caretaker and it’s mimicking what it thinks is love). If it’s not safe to make mistakes in your internal world, then your subconscious will do whatever it takes to avoid making them, like stalling on important choices or avoiding commitment at any cost.

So much of what makes a decision “right” is you deciding it is by trusting yourself. And “right” doesn’t mean everything plays out smoothly, it just means that you get closer to what you want through your actions. You reduce the internal friction that’s holding you back by reassuring yourself it will be okay, then using that freed up creative energy to actually make it okay.

The cool thing is that by committing to something, you actually strengthen your self-trust. Shying away from decisions reinforces that you can’t rely on yourself to navigate the unknown. Jumping in the direction that seems like your best shot right now reinforces that you have faith in your own abilities.

I read a book about dating (called How to Not Die Alone—lol) and it broke people down into different “dater profiles”, one of which was “the Maximalist.” The Maximalist is the person who has a hard time committing to someone because they’re always wondering what’s out there that could be better. They pass up plenty of great people because their mind is always wandering a little further into the future. The author’s point is that people who decide they’ve made the right decision experience much more satisfaction that those who question their choices. This is scientifically-backed information. To me, this reinforces how relaxing and productive it can be to settle into something (or someone). It helps you focus your attention on the present, so you can dig in and really live your experience.

There’s a wonderful excerpt from The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath that was shared in another newsletter I follow that illustrates this concept beautifully:

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”

I love how she relates sitting in indecision to rotting. To not commit is to die in small increments. And yes, you may commit to something that doesn’t “work out”, but if you choose to look at every experience as fruitful (aka there is something you can extract from it), then the only time wasted is time spent not tasting what’s in front of you.

I’ve struggled with this type of indecision so profoundly, especially in relation to my career. For me, it really stemmed from the belief that I wouldn’t be able to navigate my way out of a situation (aka a lack of self-trust). I was worried that if I committed in one direction, I’d get trapped in something less than ideal. But an important thing to remind ourselves is that we can always leave. We are never actually stuck somewhere. We can start again. We can change our minds. But we’ll never know if something is right for us unless we give it a shot. Doing is what helps us hone our intuition about what does feel good and aligned for us; contemplating it is less effective.

So, next time you have to make a choice and you feel painfully torn between two directions, or you are afraid of what will happen if you choose x, y, or z—remember that by choosing, you are taking care of yourself. You are signalling to your parts that you can navigate the uncertainties (which exist in both directions, by the way), that lay ahead. So commit to a decision, then choose to make that decision right—whatever that means to you. Focus on what your desired outcome is, then achieve it through the route you’ve chosen. Trust that whatever happens, you’ll take something away from your experience and use that information to guide your future decisions.

There is so much freedom in this practice, and it really is possible to live a life where you can rely on yourself in this way—where your sense of safety and reliability comes from inside of you. A life of flourishing instead of rotting. Doing instead of thinking about doing. Creating and experiencing instead of wondering and aching. It’s powerful stuff.

If you want to work on cultivating this type of trust with yourself, I’m open for 1:1 work through this link.

Thanks and talk soon,

Alex