Making Life Choices

Many of us find making life choices a difficult and daunting task. Some of us put off choosing for so long, that by the time we finally pluck up the nerve to decide, that particular opportunity has passed.

Choice can be a scary word. It seems so final. You have made your decision and you are stuck with it. At the ice cream stand of life choices, you bravely opt for chocolate over vanilla. You then discover that all the hype was wrong, and you don’t like chocolate. Too bad, you are informed, someone else has already eaten the vanilla. You have chosen your ice cream, and chocolate it is for you, like it or not.

But wait a minute! That is not how life choices work. Decisions are very rarely final and binding. There is usually a way to change flavors if you discover the one you have chosen really isn’t what you wanted. If the vanilla that you declined has been eaten, there will almost always be some more available elsewhere. In the highly unlikely situation that there is no more vanilla to be found anywhere, then shrug your shoulders and take your time investigating the options of hazelnut, mango swirl, or butterscotch.

Even though you didn’t like chocolate, choosing it was not a wrong choice. If you hadn’t tried it, you would not have discovered that you didn’t like it, and knowing what doesn’t work for you is very valuable knowledge.

If on the other hand, you chose chocolate and do like it, enjoy! But don’t feel that means you must stick with chocolate forever. You can always decide to try another flavor at any stage, and you are not limited to one at a time either.

Let’s say that your current choice is deciding whether to go to college, or spend a year travelling. Take a look at your options.

If you decide to go to college now, you can always try doing some travelling during vacations, or taking your big trip after you graduate. The benefits of this choice may include better work opportunities when you do travel as a college graduate.

If you decide to travel first, you will gain a lot of life experience, and may even come back with slightly different career goals than the ones you left with. This may be helpful in choosing a different course of study when you return.

If you decide to choose the ‘vanilla’ of college first, you could definitely add some chocolate chips. How about studying another language, meeting new friends in international forums, or showing travelers from other countries around your town? These are all ways of getting some of the benefits of travelling while you are still at home.

Sometimes you will even find that your life choices do not require an ‘either/or’ situation. You may be able to have an ‘also/and’ outcome. This was the case for me when I first met my husband, Ian. We began to get serious right at the time I had decided to leave my business, and go to live in Europe. I thought that I would have to make a difficult choice between pursuing the relationship, and making the move which I knew in my heart was what I needed to do. As it turned out, Ian was ready and willing to pack up and go with me. Definitely a great outcome!

There are of course, some life choices that are truly difficult, and require very serious consideration.

That being said, endless thinking and analyzing, is not the best way to make any decision. You will never be able to make the right choice by figuring out all the pros, cons, and possible outcomes. It is impossible to know how any future scenario will turn out. There are too many variables.

Big choices are best made by getting very still and quiet and listening to your heart. If you go with the option that feels right to you, you cannot go wrong. Even if the outcome is different from what you might have hoped, the experience is one that you wanted to have, and whatever the result, you will definitely have learned many things.

By hearing the voice of your intuition, and realizing that there are no wrong decisions, the challenging task of making those big life choices becomes a lot easier.

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