I Made All My Decisions Based On A Coin Toss And It Changed My Life.

I Flipped a Coin and It Changed My Life

In around 2009, I battled a crushing combination of insomnia and anxiety for the first time in my life. I’d moved across state for the career I’d dreamed about since high school, but a year later I knew I had a problem. I just didn’t know what to do about it.

The problem was that I had finally achieved my career goal and despite knowing that the work didn’t make me happy the thought of giving it up and starting from scratch terrified me. At the same time, my relationship had failed and left me with some nasty emotional scars and I despised the city I lived in.

After months of trying EVERYTHING to kill the anxiety and insomnia, I had such a mental breakdown (or break-through) that I decided the only thing to do was to turn my future over the fate of the universe. I’d read about a guy who made all his decisions based on the roll of a dice and by that point, the lack of planning (and responsibility) that went with his experiment seemed like a godsend.

I decided to do my own experiment.

For the next three months, I’d flip a coin and let fate decide the result.

This included everything from where to live to what job I should do.

I asked the coin if I should quit my job. The coin said yes.

I handed in my notice the next day. When I told my co-worker that I was making my career decisions based on a coin toss she looked at me like I’d just grown a horn out of my head and to be honest — I kind of felt like a bit of an idiot. I mean, who does that? But I was desperate to beat my crippling anxiety so I persevered anyway. Lucky!

The next questions was where to live. I had two places in mind. Thargomindah — where I had lived and loved in the past or Toowoomba where my parents were, but a city that I held no affection for. I had a definite preference for Thargomindah, but the coin said otherwise so as soon as I’d served my notice, it was Toowoomba I headed for.

I still had no job and no idea what to do with my life, but the coin soon told me that I should get a waitress job while I waited for the perfect opportunity to come into place. The job hardly paid my bills and it looked crazy to throw away my career to serve tables but a month later, two opportunities that I was keen on were both advertised in the local paper. I applied for both, interviewed for both and was offered both.

One of the jobs was in a Community Consultant capacity. It paid more, I knew I’d enjoy it and it had loads of government benefits to boot. The other was as an Employment Consultant which I knew I’d enjoy but which had significantly less pay and came with no benefits. When the coin said to take the Employment Consultant role, for the first time, I seriously considered ditching the whole experiment!

The thing is — it turned out to be absolutely the right choice. After a while, I branched out on my own and started my own employment consultancy which now makes 3 x as much and I’m lucky enough to wake up (nearly) every morning feeling lucky for the role I have instead of anxious and depressed.

During the 3-month experiment, there were too many coin flips to count (or record) because I flipped the coin for EVERY DECISION. This included the small stuff like what to eat for breakfast to bigger stuff like where I should live.

SPOILER ALERT — it was a small decision that led to the greatest gift(s) of all.

I was invited to a party with my friends that I hadn’t seen in a really long time and that I really wanted to go to — but the same night a guy I’d hung out with in High School invited me to go to a bar downtown for a few drinks. The coin said that I needed to skip the party and head to the bar so that’s what happened. Long story short — I ended up marrying the guy from the bar and had two children as a direct result. At the time I wasn’t looking for either a husband or a child so no-one was more shocked than me at how it turned out!

It’s been over 8 years since the experiment, and I wouldn’t change a thing. The coin led me to both my children and a career I loved (plus more money than I could have ever made in my original job).

It still amazes me how quickly my life changed in such a positive way. At the time, I thought that there was no way a three-month experiment could radically change my life forever — but that’s exactly what it did.