Happy Sunday Canna Fam!
This blog topic was also picked by you guys, so I wanted to make sure I delivered. How DO we know if we are making the right decision? One thing I am sure of when it comes to making decisions, and especially hard ones, is all of us at some point have had these moments where we question whether we are making the right choice. Now these decisions can be even more stressful based on where they lie on the list of priorities in your life. Is it your career that is causing you to make hard decisions where you’re just not totally sure how to proceed? Is it your personal life that you are looking for that clarity in when decision making? Or is it when it comes to you and your relationship with yourself that it becomes to most difficult to know what’s right? This can absolutely be different for everybody, but it is good to recognize the level of importance this decision can make in your life before you fully make it. I think a way that helps me to really slow down and consider the outcome of such a decision is the “pause” before even making it.
Have you ever found yourself feeling such pressure in the moment to make an important decision that you end up making the wrong one just based off your quickness in responding? Sometimes the lack of pause can really be detrimental to the outcome of your decision. In my opinion, sometimes when I feel pressured, I can feel anxious and end up almost in a “fight or flight” type of response instead of one that resonates with how I feel on the regular. When you require yourself to take that extra pause before deciding, you give yourself time to sit with the options, and consider the outcome of each of them. I think sometimes we forget that we can ask people for a moment. Even though we live in a fast-paced society of instant gratification, it is okay to let someone know that you need some time before responding. Will that make someone else uncomfortable? Probably. Will it ultimately make yourself more comfortable when making that decision? Absolutely. Like I wrote about in “The Myths of Being Selfish”, this is one of those moments where it is okay to be selfish, especially when it is an important decision where the outcome absolutely should be weighed before making it. On top of the “pause”, I also find peace in trusting my gut more and more these days.
How many times have we all been told in our life to trust your gut? How many times have you all actually done it? I know I have struggled with this myself. Sometimes it can be really hard to trust your gut, when your mind decides it wants to be super involved too, and then not to mention there’s your heart putting in its two cents. While you can listen to all those things and probably make a decent decision, my gut has probably had my back the most. There is just something about the feeling your gut gives you when you are about to make a decision, you always know deep down what you should do. I think we let other people’s opinions and sometimes our own bullshit of self-sabotage over power this gut feeling, but it is very real. Trust yourself and trust your body’s reaction to things that aren’t good for you whether that is a person, a career, a city you have decided to settle in, you know what brings you peace in life. At the end of the day, these things will absolutely help you to make the right decision, but we also need to be prepared sometimes to make the wrong decisions and deal with those outcomes as well.
I think the key to making the right decision, is knowing that sometimes it starts with the wrong decision. I believe I talked about this a little bit as well in “Dealing With Life’s Imperfections”. We are not always going to get it right, so the earlier you learn to be okay with that, the easier it will get making the wrong decisions that lead to the right ones. Now sometimes we will get blessed and make the right decisions the first time around, but there are a lot of times something will feel right until it doesn’t anymore. Life is all about change, and we have to be willing to recognize sometimes that maybe at the moment you made the decision, it was perfect for you. People grow at different paces, and as you grow, you may sometimes realize you also outgrow those decisions you once made. However, that doesn’t make them the wrong decision, it just might mean that this current version of yourself would make a different decision that better serves you now. This is where that grace tool we talked about can come in as well, and you can give yourself grace for every version of yourself and the decisions you’ve made thus far. The fact is, you made the decisions, and that is half of the battle. Let me a be a little bit vulnerable and give you a perfect example of this. I got my real estate license in 2022 and within 2 years it is now inactive. At the time when I got it, it absolutely WAS the right decision for me. When recreational got voted against and then Oklahoma cannabis regulations changed dramatically, this was no longer the right decision for me. I paid the price in money spent, stress for both the sellers and me, and just spending a ton of time on something that just did not pay off for no matter how hard I tried. Even though it turned out being the wrong decision for MY life, it was worth exploring. It was worth showing myself I could boss out a real estate test that is actually really hard. I sold 2 properties alongside a full-time career that is extremely demanding, so that was a win alone. There was enough good and learning that came from it, that it still doesn’t feel like it was the wrong choice, just wrong for me right now.
We forget that when being put in a position where you must make a difficult decision, making the decision should be an accomplishment alone. Some people wait years before making a decision that could have changed their life for the better, and some people stay stagnant because they are too scared to even make a choice, forget about it being right or wrong. If you are finding yourself in a position where you are just struggling with which choice to make, you should be proud of yourself for even choosing. We don’t give ourselves enough credit for the little things in life, because we justify that it is just part of life, and everyone has to do it. While that isn’t exactly wrong, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be proud of ourselves for those small things. So just continue choosing, and even more than that, continue caring about whether you are making the right or wrong choice, but remember to give yourself credit regardless for just making the decision. I hope you continue to question making the right and wrong decisions for your life, because they both will eventually get us where we need to be if we just trust the journey.
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