A wise soul once told me,
“I think of you in shades of grey. . . in the moment of hesitation before the change is made. In the midst of the concrete certainty of every day life there comes a fundamental doubt. It is this doubt that will ultimately be your salvation, freeing you from the tyranny of a future dictated by the past. It is at once the doorway to the possibility of another ‘way’, and the announcement of your own responsibility to choose, to act, to exercise your freedom.”
I’ve always struggled with decision-making. Even a seemingly small decision such as what to order at a restaurant brings much mental gymnastics as I calculate the trade-offs between calories, nutrition, satisfaction, and cost. The challenge lies in that, with every decision, with every Yes, we are saying No to a different path, a different possibility, and a different outcome. How do we know we are making the right decision, one that will make us feel happy, fulfilled, and satisfied? One that affirms what we truly want?
For years, I went through many iterations of the decision-making process, from a mind-centric approach of writing an extensive list of pros and cons and assigning different weights to the items on the list, to more esoteric practices such as using a crystal pendulum, pulling tarot cards, or even seeking psychic mediums for a moment of clarity.
From my professional and academic training, decision-making has always being a rationale, reductionist approach, by breaking down large, ambiguous and complex problems into smaller, concrete pieces that are more manageable to unravel, before fitting them back into the larger puzzle. That worked to a certain extent, when solving concrete problems in the material world.
However, when it comes to solving the puzzle pieces of life, rationality itself is not enough.
Growing up, no one taught me how to navigate the path of life or how to make these major decisions that would have a tremendous impact on the future trajectory of my life. Thus, I struggled at every major crossroad, from deciding where to go to college and what major to choose to what job and role to take. As life progressed, the decisions became more entangled - do I stay or end this relationship, do I quit my job to pursue my life’s purpose without the financial stability, do I purchase this home with a mortgage to pay for the next 30 years? Many decisions are what we call “one-way door” decisions at Amazon, which means there’s no turning back (versus “two-way door” decisions that are reversible).
So how do we make those decisions? Do we use our mind or do we listen to our hearts? How do we know if we arrived at the right answer? At times, it feels like a tug of war.
What I’ve come to realize is that the answer lies neither in the rationalities of the mind nor in the whims of our emotions. Rather, it lies from a deep knowing of who we are at the core. The ultimate question isn’t about choosing path A versus B. It’s about diving into the self-inquiry process to learn and understand who we are, what are our core values and needs, where do we want to go in life and why. It’s about uncovering our true desires and intentions and then choosing our thoughts, words, and actions that are in alignment with our true self.
You may then ask, how do we know who we truly are and what it is that we truly desire?
This is the path of life, to seek the truth, our truths.
And the path to finding our truths is through feeling and sensing the subtle intelligence of our body, the physical, emotional, and energy body. It’s a feeling sensation when we are in alignment with our truths, a feeling of integration and wholeness, expansiveness and openness. We feel a sense of resonance in our heart center, like striking the chords of a perfectly tuned instrument. There’s no struggle or resistance, just a centering feeling of being on the right path, like finding the right key that effortlessly unlocks the door of the next step.
Finding our own truths is a path to empowerment. We can seek counsel from outside sources but ultimately, we have to arrive at our own answers, that come from this deep knowing of who we are, through the relationship we have cultivated with ourselves. When we become disconnected to ourselves, when we don’t invest the time and energy to cultivate and nurture this relationship with our true self, we can get deceived by the many veils of illusion.