Beliefs about the best ways to make decisions, how to make them, and when to make them can be really heavy without us even realizing it.
What exactly is a “decision”? It’s a great word. In the latin root it meant to CUT OFF or kill. Kind of dramatic. It’s like there are different pathways or roads, and to decide is to cut off all of them except one. Deciding means eliminating possibilities.
When someone is decisive, they are considered to have solved the problem, persuaded themselves or others, convinced, settled the situation. They are clear, they move on quickly, they have killed multiple choices.
People are seen as successful when they make clear, quick, “good” decisions. People are more wishy-washy or flaky, changeable, unpredictable if they change their minds or don’t know what they will decide.
It can be really fantastic and liberating to question beliefs and theories about making decisions. Are you sure that it’s best if you decide NOW? Are you sure that it’s true that choosing-not-to-decide-IS-a-decision? (I always loved that one, so stressful in some situations if you believe it).
Is it really true that it is best if you make a good, solid, quick, zippy decision? Or bad if you reconsider, take in more data or information, let things digest, or wait?
The mind that is very identified with YOU and YOUR SUCCESS loves to chatter away at you about your problems and other peoples’ problems. It will use scary tactics and threatening ideas to force you to decide or make you nervous about a decision you just made.
I love questioning any thought, ever, that arises about making decisions that is nerve-wracking, anxiety producing, anything that creates uncertainty.
- I need to get moving
- I absolutely must make a decision
- Other people will think less of me if I don’t decide
- Not deciding means I’m procrastinating/weak/anxious
- I made the WRONG decision
- I’m the one who decides, it’s up to me
Your smaller ME mind, some call it the ego, will be focused on one thing only. Making the RIGHT decision. No regrets. Making sure it works out for you and those around you.
“You have a decision to make, and your mind wants to know what the right decision is. But you realize that that isn’t a relevant concern anymore because your framework for decision making has been conditioned. A “right decision” according to whom? One person’s “right” is another person’s “wrong.” If you’re not going to make decisions based on right and wrong or should and shouldn’t– which only exist in thought–then how do you move?”~Adyashanti
What is beyond the me/ego/personal mind is infinite possibility, especially if there really is no right and no wrong. It’s vast, and silent. Notice how the Universe doesn’t really ever answer the question about what is absolutely right or wrong. It allows everything, there is nothing to resist. There is NO WRONG DECISION. And no right decision. Wow!
Do not despair if you don’t know what decision to make. The mind will put so much energy into good and bad, right and wrong, justifying what you are about to decide or what you just decided. It will spew out criticisms, lists, analyses about things you “decided” from 20 years ago even.
Instead, relax. I have found it’s all I can really do once I question my thinking that seems to enjoy churning out the list of pros and cons about everything. That becomes….boring, unimportant.
Instead, know that you don’t have to know how anything will turn out. Let yourself stop trying to find the right answer. Trust in the subtle silent force of life….of love, that is just here. If you’re not sure it’s here, question your thinking.
Even if this is not the acceptable norm of society, allow a decision to come by feeling out what is true beyond fear and worry, beyond what is YOU. Literally.
“A healed mind is relieved of the belief that it must plan….”~ A Course In Miracles
Love, Grace