Tell me, girlfriend. How do you
make decisions? No, I don’t
mean as in head versus heart,
but rather whose head or whose
heart.
See, most of us grew up in a good-versus-bad kind of straightjacket: if
you did what you were told to do,
you were good; if you didn’t, you
were bad. “This kind of discipline
undermines a person’s ability to find
their own moral centre and to trust
and be guided by their own inner
self,” writes author Madisyn Taylor.
Still, many of us feel a tsunami of
badness approaching when we do
something we were taught was
wrong, even if we don’t agree with
it. Just like we feel chuffed with ourselves
when doing something we
were taught was right. And so we
end up smack-bang in the familiar
old straightjacket again.
An important part of becoming
yourself involves growing beyond
what you’ve learned so that you can
take responsibility for your life on
your own terms. The first step is to
get away from the good-versus-bad
and the right-versus-wrong labels.
Rather see each decision as a
growth-versus-stagnation option.
Only you can know the difference.
Odd how many of us spend such a
lot of time and energy evading these
decisions. I’ve long suspected that
we get caught up in our to-do lists
and overwhelmed by our busy
schedules so that we can dodge
spending time with ourselves, avoid
looking at our lives.
Madisyn says that one of the reasons
it could be uncomfortable to sit
with ourselves is because when we
do, we tend to open ourselves to an
inner voice, which might question
the way we’re living or some of the
decisions we’re making.
So, how do you begin the process
of being less absent in your decision-making process? If you find it
impossible to contemplate making a
decision without getting some sort
of feedback on it first, well, then I
have a plan. We’re going to play a
game. The 83-year-old American
Monk, Burt Goldman, calls it
quantum jumping, but we can call it
anything we like.
Let’s name our game The Time
Warp. Come on, all it needs is some
willing suspension of disbelief. Say
you have a difficult decision to
make. You’re going to ask two
people what they think you should
do. The first one is your ten-year-old
self and the second one is your
eighty-year-old self.
Do you remember your childhood
bedroom? Imagine sitting on your
bed with all the dreams and ideals
you had for your future. Weren’t
you just going to fly to the moon?
How would this idealistic child, who
still believes that she can do anything,
advise your grown-up self to
be?
Then jump ahead in the time warp
and imagine your eighty-year-old
self. What would this self tell you?
Maybe this would be the self who
would tell you to take more risks, to
walk barefoot more often, to grab
opportunities while they’re still
ahead of you.
Okay, but the game needn’t end
here. Burt Goldman says that we
can imagine a whole host of alternative
universes and that we live a life
in each of these. So, in one life
you’ll be a politician, in another an
opera singer or mathematician, artist
or rock star. Go to these selves and
ask them how to do the things your
current self believes it cannot do.
“It’s never been about what work
you choose, what gifts you develop,
or what niche you fill - let these be
for your pleasure,” writes Mike
Dooley. It’s all about the way you
think. “Think as only you can think,
which will lead to feelings that only
you can feel, from which connections
will be made, lives will be
changed, and worlds will come
tumbling into existence.”
You choose the world you want.
And if you’re not clear on that, ask
your different selves for their
opinions. See, there is nobody who
can know you better than your own
selves. |