Decisions
Decisions…make one and you can create a new world or a new reality. Open a book and get transported to a new world or dilemma, get your worldview challenged or feast your fantasy. Pick up the phone and you may find frustration with the phone tags, machine responses, or joy in the solution you seek. Some decisions have the capacity to change a moment, others a lifetime. “I do ” at the wedding altar is quite different from the “I do” on the witness stand to the “I do” when asked if you own something you are claiming. Yet they are all decisions.
Some decisions can be made in our mind only and our circumstances do not change only our perspective, others are executed and our circumstances change for the better or worse.
Indecision can buy us time or create hell (as per Dante’s definition of hell: indecision). Make a decision and change your mind if things do not work out. Yet some re-decisions and decisions create major life inconveniences. We are always deciding from the moment we awaken to the time we fall asleep. Shall I have coffee or tea, call them or not, wear a coat, take an umbrella, make a lunch date, pay a bill now or later or never, break up or ignore or forgive. Little decisions, big decisions.
Decisions are powerful and are a tool we often undervalue. In retrospect we know the decisions we make consciously or unconsciously as the evidence is before us due to their consequences. But can we make decisions mindfully and proactively or leave it to chance and say “let’s see what happens” and be reactive when the circumstances change without our input. Not to decide is to decide.
For when we offer no input others basically decide and we abide or balk.
All decisions are powerful when they change our life, yet the most important of all decisions is to choose the attitude with which we will respond to all events in our life. Viktor Frankl in his book Man’s Search for Meaning, movingly shares his experiences and insights as he lived his days in Auschwitz and invites us to explore the choices he made through the power of decision.
There is a process for decision making. Most of us may know it but it never hurts to review.
1. Know what your are deciding.
2. Know all your options.
3. Weigh each option against your values.
4. Know the implications of each decision to the best of your ability as there will always be unforeseen consequences. Guaranteed!
5. Live out the decision in your mind only and exclude all other choices for a period of a week or two and allow all feelings related to the decision to surface.
6. Explore all the feelings that surface with the decision and process them.
7. Make another decision based on your options and repeat the mental and emotional exercise.
8. Determine which decision you can live with in peaceful co-existence.
9. Make the decision.
10. Execute
11. Re-evaluate after a period of time to see it if still fits into the goal you were seeking.
Which decision will you make next? Will you decide to heal and become the best you? Will you choose to evolve and rise to a higher state of consciousness and being. A state of unity not division? A state of love not fear? Can you live in these decisions, sustain the decision with the actions they require? Or is it all just “lip service?” There is an adage that says:
“Put your money where your mouth is!” What will be different in your life as a result of your decisions or indecisions? Decisions…make them and your world changes. Create a new world, a new reality with a decision.
Maria Hilda Pinon, author of The Willows of Corona, a novel, and Candles in the Dark…poems to grieve, hope and love again.
theevolvinghealer 