How often do you make a major life choice? No, deciding what to have for dinner doesn’t count.
How often do you even review what your choices are? Or are you driving on auto pilot through life? Sometimes the status quo, no matter how miserable it makes you, is the only choice you can see. But unless you are in prison, which is designed to remove the luxury of choice from the prisoner, you do have choices. They aren’t necessarily going to be easy choices. In fact making important, life altering decisions is a distinctly uncomfortable experience.
The reality is that being unsettled by our choices is one of the main reasons that we put up with situations that make us unhappy. Passivity is a growing modern phenomenon as we struggle with indecision. The making of the “wrong” decision feels so much more dangerous than opting out and making no decision at all. This is bullshit!
For one, living in a perpetual hotel lounge is the only consistently wrong choice you can make. It will wear you down. Your abilities to make a decision will atrophy. Eventually you simply won’t be able to find your way out for want of being able to even see the exit sign.
Secondly, while you live in your passive little bubble, people in the world around you are making choices and these will impact you. Change is inevitable. You can either be its victim or its champion.
I have recently had choice forced upon me. I have to move out of my comfortable little house in Sydney. Louis and I have 2 months to find a new place to call home. The initial trauma was horrible. I’m not an agent of change, particularly if that change is disruptive to my day-to-day life. I reacted the only way I know how. I started to research all my options. The house hunt began in earnest within minutes of my being given the news. I didn’t stop to analyse my choices, I scrambled frantically to keep my life exactly how it was. I wanted to find a new home, quick smart, move in and carry on as usual.
Lucky for me, my initial research yielded little success (don’t get me started on anti-pet buildings). This meant that the decision making part of my brain had a chance to be heard. It made me stop my search, just for now. It has made me realise that there are a lot of things that I need to review. I suddenly realised that I had a lot more choices than I realised if I was brave enough to look at them all.
So that is what I’m in the process of doing. It is a very unsettling experience. I find that I have a lot of nervous energy that I didn’t have before. Now that I’m properly using my brain, my body is awake. I’m also much more aware of what makes me happy and what doesn’t.
In fact, I could say that I’m living a much more mindful life. While I may not know where I’ll be living in just over 2 months from now, I have the courage to weigh up my options and make the right choice for me. Once I’ve made those choices and followed them wherever they might take me, I’ll tell you all about it.
I leave you now to live your lives mindfully. I hope you find it as invigorating as I do.
