I noticed a point today that, when I am faced with a life-altering decision, I go into a complete point of resistance. Eventually, I move myself towards practically considering the facts involved - but initially, that first experience still comes up.
The resistance is not so much in relation to either one of the options - but in relation to having to make the decision itself. I keep going back to the thought 'I don't know what would be best!'
Considering my previous blog-series this is quite fascinating as my whole life I've been wanting to make my own decisions and having the space and money to make my own decisions - but now, when it comes to it, I just keep thinking that someone else should tell me what to do - and most prominently, I find myself wanting to get advise from my mother.
Throughout my life I was never really shown how to practically make a decision - when I asked for advise - people would present me with questions to answer, such as:
- What do you want?
- Will you regret doing option B if you go for option A?
- If you go for option A and it fails, do you have a back-up plan?
The advanced considerations always stood in the context of my fears and my desires - where I would then weigh my fears against my desires and then make a decision according to what I perceived would yield the highest positive result.
So - in realizing that desires and fears are no valid premise to base a decision upon, because positive and negative charges are volatile,where something that was first seen as positive turns into something negative or something expected to be negative, is actually experienced as positive - so my expectations of and experiences of negative and positive points would keep changing and altering during the decision-making and even after the decision-making, which would then confuse me and make me wonder whether I made the 'right choice'.
So - in realizing that my feelings and emotions are no trustworthy guide in life, I feel I am left with nothing - that is my first, initial, immediate experience: a big black hole of nothingness.
I've within my process developed a method of making practical decisions - but the fact that this resistance-experience still comes up, indicates that I still have a tendency of not trusting myself in the face of the unknown - where - when I see nothingness and have to actually direct, create and move myself into the future - I immediately go into a belief of limitation and am grabbing to something or someone else to get a foothold, to have a reference, to have confirmation, to have validation - instead of simply trusting myself here - standing equal and one as the nothingness, one can consider everything. If one doesn't stand equal and one as nothingness, it means one has already placed oneself into a particular mind-set, a particular opinion, a particular belief, a particular attitude - from where you already limit and compromise your ability to see what would actually be best.
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I've had several people asking how to make a self-honest decision - like, how can they be sure that the decision they make is self-honest. See - the tendency exists to try to make decisions in one's mind, where reasons for one or the other way are floating around in one's mind and one cannot really see clearly. The mind will continuously jump from one side to the other, from one reason to the other, creating confusion, doubt and fear.
The method I use, especially with decisions that involve a lot of fear - where the mind perceives it has a lot to lose if one goes for 'Door 1' or 'Door 2' - to make the decision-making process a practical one. Practical - meaning: to not try/attempt to make a decision in one's mind - because herein one will never see where one is self-honest and where one is not. Therefore - here is a suggested method:
To take a piece of paper and make two columns. Let's say the decision pertains to moving in with someone or staying to live by oneself. A decision has to be made between:
Option 1: Moving in with X
Option 2: Living by myself
Once you have established what options are involved in your decision - you write at the top of the first column 'Moving in with X' - or whatever your first option is - and 'Living by myself' - or whatever your second option is - at the top of the second column. Then strike a horizontal line underneath those words, accross both columns.
Then - under the horizontal line, in column one - you list all the reasons that come to mind of why you would go for Option 1 - or in our example: why you would Move in with X. This can be for instance:
- I'll have more fun living with another person
- I need someone to help me financially
- I deserve to have the experience of having a roommate
- Then I don't have to miss X when I'm home
- etc.
Once you've listed all the reasons that come to mind in relation to Moving in with X (or your Option 1), do the same for Option 2.
IMPORTANT: Within Identifying the reasons that come to mind in relation to Option 1 or Option 2 - be Absolutely Self-Honest. Meaning: Don't leave anything out - even if it only pops up for a tiny second and then you go 'nah, that's not really a reason' - go back - and add the reason in. The fact that it came up means that on some level it does influence and impact your decision-making process.
Once you have listed all your reasons for either Moving in with X or staying ot live by yourself, take one reason at a time and unconditionally apply Self-Forgiveness on any point of self-dishonesty that you can identify within that particular reason for either chosing for Option 1 or Option 2. Once you have cleared the first reason of all Self-Dishonesty (after which you may or may not have debunked the reason altogether), you repeat the same process of self-forgiveness with every other reason on your piece of paper.
After your self-forgiveness, you'll find that most of the reasons you wrote down on your piece of paper were not actually self-honest reasons but were merely justifications used to try and convince yourself that either Option 1 or Option 2 is the right thing to do. So - after your self-forgiveness, you'll be able to identify which reasons are valid considerations and which are not. If you're lucky, you'll only have one valid reason - which makes your decision-making easy, because then you simply look at which column the reason is in and you see which option would be self-honest. If you have several options to consider, you can now do so without the other reasons floating around in the background, which 'clog' your view and make it difficult to see the trees through the forest.
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This blog-post is a continuation to 'Day 85: To Cut the Hair or Not to Cut the Hair - How Money Drives Decision-Making'.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to base a desire that I have translated on a goal that I must attain within my life on a singular thought in one singular moment - where I saw a girl walking by me while I was walking with my grandmother in Zafarraya and saw how long the girl's hair was, and where I thought in that moment: I want to have long hair just like her - and within that moment decide that this is something that I wanted and HAD TO achieve in my life.
I forgive myself that I have never accepted and allowed myself to question why I wanted my hair to grow long and why it seemed to just be an inherent desire that has 'always been with me' - when actually it wasn't, as it was self-created in a moment through accepting one singular thought - where, I believed that following this thought would somehow fulfill me and complete me.
I forgive myself that I have accpted and allowed myself to simply regard this desire for having long hair as a part of me, as who I am, without considering where the desire originated from and that, in looking at the origin of the desire, which was one singular thought in one singular moment, it was completely insignificant - and thus, that it is ridiculous to base 'who I am' on such fleeting thoughts that have no real substance.
I forgive myself that I haven't accepted and allowed myself to question and investigate my experience within continuously changing my mind about what I want to do with my hair, where the base-line was always to fulfil my childhood desire of having long hair that grows all the way to my bottom, but where I would always give up on letting it grow and go to the hairdresser or cut it myself.
I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to see and realise that what always caused me to change my mind was impatience as anxiety - where I would build up more and more anxiety in relation to having long hair or short hair and then start noticing girls/women with the opposite - so if I had long hair, I'd start noticing all the women/girls with short hair and how it would suit them and imagining how it would suit me - and if I had short hair, I'd start noticing al the women/girls with long hair and how it would suit them and imagining how it would suit me and how much I would be able to do with it.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to take the anxiety as a sign that what my hair is like now is not what it should be or is supposed to be and that there is something wrong with it and that it needs to be changed - therefore, starting to compare my hair to the hair of other women/girls to then see other haircuts as better than mind, where I'd believe that if I just change my haircut to be more like that of other girls/women, the anxiety will go away because my hair will be what my hair is 'supposed to be like'.
I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to realise that the anxiety was actually a result of the fear to lose time or the fear to waste time - because each time I make a decision in terms of what I do with my hair, I was investing time within that particular course of action - and thus, automatically, excluding other options, making it unable to experience these other options within a certain timeframe.
I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to see and realise that every decision I have ever made, including the decision to grow or cut my hair has always been based on economic principles, where I would consider the opportunity cost of 'spending' x amount of time towards trying to achieve and attain a certain experience and whether that was worth it in comparison to the other options.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become impatient when my time investments didn't show immediate results when I was letting my hair grow - believing that my investment wasn't paying off fast enough - because - as I invested more and more time within letting my hair grow, I was at the same time giving up more and more time that I could have spent on playing around with lots of different short haircuts.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to conform my way of decision-making to the idea that time is money and that I am continuously running out of time and running out of money - and thus, that I have to always try to get 'as much as I can' out of any money or time spent - regardless of whether I'm spending it on what I would support me/what I would really enjoy or not - simply trying to attain the largest range of experiences within a given time-frame or within a certain budget.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to give up my ability to be patient in favor of fear, as is instructed and encouraged in a world where time is money and where two dangers are always lurking: that you will lose all your money - or that you will die - and thus, throughout my entire life, base every single decision within this starting-point of fear of losing money and fear of losing time - continuously making compromises for ourselves through trying to make decisions that make us feel like we've made a 'good deal', but in fact has nothing to do with who we are, who we would like to be and what we would really like to achieve in this lifetime, in this world.
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