Decisions are often hard to make.
We’ve all been there, those choices that just don’t make any sense. It can be really hard to know what the right choice is with a huge number of things in life. Things like:
- When to quit your job or look for a new one
- Whether or not to break up with your partner or try harder
- What to do in life and what journey to go on
- Which country to visit
And it can feel a little overwhelming when you just can’t seem to make your mind up. After all in life, we can do ANYTHING! We could at any moment quit our jobs, look for new ones..
Or break up with our partners and potentially find more happiness somewhere else. But is it the right choice? It’s often impossible to tell because until you MAKE that decision, you’ll never know what COULD have happened. If you never quit your job, you’ll never know about the exciting new jobs you could have found.
Now, I’m not saying you should quit your job, leave your partner, go to another country etc, these are big things and big decisions. What I AM saying is that if you have a gut feeling that something isn’t right, or that you need a change, listen to it. Our guts and intuitions are very powerful and often guided by higher consciousness.
Things that we’re not even aware of consciously and so our gut feelings are often not logical. For example, my GUT feeling a few years ago said ‘quit your job and make it on your own. Follow your passions and heart’. I ignored it the first time, and stayed in my job. Things were okay and I wasn’t doing BADLY, but I was sort of stuck in place.
It’s like I was spinning my wheels. Yes I’d earn a good wage but my time was all tied up and I couldn’t choose what to do and when to do it. I had no way of creating freedom in my life. So the second time I had these strong gut feelings, I left the job.
Now, it wasn’t a bad job in fact it was the BEST job I’d had up until that point. I LOVED the people I worked with and actually still meet up with my ex boss (more of a friend in my mind!), but the decision to leave I know was the right one.
I could have made lots of money in that job and stayed for a number of years, but money isn’t everything. In fact I often say I’d rather have a small income doing what I love (and earning it passively and remotely etc) than a LARGE income doing something I don’t love.
It’s not about money, and once you’ve reached a certain level of income, more money just isn’t really a motivator for me. More TIME however, is HUGE. time is the one thing we can’t buy back, save up or manipulate. Once we’ve spent our time, it’s gone and no amount of company bonuses or promotions or titles make up for the fact that your TIME is gone.
So for things like that, when you know your TIME isn’t being spent the right way, just take the leap. Make the decision but do it in a loving way. Don’t move from a place of ‘I hate my job so I’m just going to QUIT’ because that’s not coming from a place of love.
That’s coming from hatred of your job, and what are you really moving towards if you quit like that? You have to move towards something for the motivation to last the longest. When I left it was hard because I did love my job and the people I worked with.. But I loved the idea of traveling the world and sharing my passions with the world MORE, so I did that.
And it’s worked out very well, not just in terms of income but in terms of my happiness. And your happiness is always more important than a bit of money. If you’re going to be happier doing something else, then do that because life is way too short to do something you don’t like for 40 years.
The common theme I’ve followed in my life lately, is that I’ll just follow my heart. Whatever feels right I’ll move towards that. Now that sounds a bit hippy and ‘up in the air’, but don’t misunderstand what I’m saying here:
I’m not saying do what’s COMFORTABLE and easy.. I’m saying the opposite.
Sometimes the thing your HEART tells you to do is fucking scary. Sometimes you’ll find your head saying ‘What! Don’t do that! Thats’s unknown and scary and you don’t know where that path will lead’.
But if your heart feels pulled in that direction, EVEN IF it’s scary, you have to do it.
In fact the easy thing would have been to stay in my job. Reliable income, I knew what I was doing and I was good at it. I opted for the scarier, riskier and less well trodden path but it felt right. My heart felt pulled in that direction and it excited me more even if I was a bit scared.
And once you make that leap and do something you’re scared of doing but that you know is right, the fear sort of goes away. Not completely, but it seems insignificant compared to the love, excitement and passion you feel when you’re doing the THING, whatever that thing is.
For some people that thing might be quitting their job to pursue their artwork, or leaving their country to go and live in Australia for a year. If your heart feels like it should do that, then you do it. It’s never wrong, but your mind however, your mind is a tricky character.
Your mind has been trained (and is fundamentally wired) to seek COMFORT and avoid DISCOMFORT.
That’s kept us alive for thousands of years as a species, but it’s sadly NOT so good at helping you achieve your dream life. It keeps you alive, but doesn’t help you LIVE.
So often your mind will just want to do the easy thing. It’s easier to watch TV in the evening, to go drinking with your friends, to stay in the same comfortable job, to not go to the gym, to order takeaway..
These things are easier and let’s be honest more fun in the short term. But do those things repeatedly for years, and you’ll be looking in the mirror at someone you never wanted to be. Something you NEVER would have allowed if you could have seen the future already played out.
So play it out now. Think about what your life will be like in 5-10 years if you change nothing. Now add in the scary things that are going to happen ANYWAY if you change nothing;
Things like:
- You get ill or injure yourself
- Your partner might leave you
- You might get fired from that stable job
- You might get evicted from your flat
And so on. These scary things could happen anyway, even if you take the ‘safe route’. So move towards what you love, and don’t worry about the fear, or the uncertainty. WORST case scenario, you’ll end up miles ahead of everyone who just did what they thought was ‘safe’ and comfortable.
BEST case?
You’ll have lived a life beyond your wildest dreams.
You’ll have experienced things you NEVER would have, if you’d followed your over protective ‘logical’ head. You’ll have no regrets, and countless memories of beautiful things.
Don’t make the right choice, make the choice RIGHT
So, if you find yourself on that cliff edge trying to decide between two paths, consider this:
Successful people don’t make the right choice.
They make a choice, and then make that choice RIGHT.
Meaning, they make a decision on something and they make it work. They just make it work in whatever way they can. Say you leave your job and pursue your art, but it doesn’t work out right, and you’re not making money fast enough. Just keep going! Maybe you need to put in more hours, call more people, learn more skills or even start selling a different TYPE of art.
Keep moving towards that goal and make the original choice right. You might get hurt along the way, in fact you WILL get hurt along the way. But I guarantee it’s nothing you can’t overcome. It’s nothing you’re not going to be able to deal with, no matter how hard it seems in the moment.
Moving with love instead of fear
In life you only ever have two choices. Love or fear.
If you think about it carefully, almost every choice is either based on love or fear. If you’re not sure whether to leave your job because you’re scared you’ll be unable to earn money, that’s fear speaking. The fear of not earning money, and it holds you back.
If you’re not sure whether to leave your partner because you’re not 100% happy but you’re scared you won’t find someone else, that’s fear again. And I’m just using the examples of a breakup with a partner and leaving your job because they’re the biggest choices most of us make, and they’re certainly the most important and pivotal life choices.
This could apply to anything, and really it’s just about moving forward with your life doing what you love and not just doing something you’re comfortable doing.
Good luck!