You really can’t make a wrong choice

So don’t waste your life worrying about it

Making decisions is hard. Or at least it has been recently.

I hemmed and hawed today over whether I would take on a particular client relationship, the type of which is no longer the bread and butter of my practice. I typed and un-typed and re-typed my response to this potential client’s email at least three times before I snapped out of it.

When I did, I realized this:

When choosing paralyzes us, it’s because we mistakenly believe it’s possible to choose incorrectly .

When I direct actors, the most frequent note I give is to, “Raise the stakes.” I remind them that this thing their character is fighting for, talking about, or moving toward has to be life or death. It has to have big consequences. That’s what makes theatre worth watching.

Well, in real life, it’s the opposite. I realized today that most of us walk around believing the stakes are much higher than they actually are. We believe – usually unconsciously – that our choices are life or death. More than life or death, really, we seem to operate under the assumption that what we choose to do will dictate our future experience of spiritual, existential, and/or psycho-emotional well-being.

This is of course not the case, especially when we insightfully see that well-being is what we’re made of.

When we know that we are fundamentally okay no matter what – that we can handle anything – that anticipatory anxiety is always worse than reality – etc. etc. etc. – then our daily decisions don’t seem like such a big deal. Heck, even our “important” decisions aren’t so scary.

In the grand scheme of things, it won’t matter a lick if I’m accurately listening to my intuition, if I’m following my wisdom, or if I do or do not take on this new client.

How liberating it is to free up all the mental space I’ve been filling with agonizing over every decision – to get back all that time. How mysteriously paradoxical it is as well to discover that the more I realize it’s impossible to choose incorrectly, the more correctly I seem to choose.

How wonderful to say, “You know what? Fuck it! I’ll be fine either way.”

You’ll be fine either way, too. (More than fine, actually.) No matter what.