looking up

I have had to learn to make decisions. Not everyday decisions like whether to have eggs or oatmeal, but the big, hard decisions. I was so programmed to look up, to let the part of my brain that handled hard calls lay dormant. I would absolve myself of the responsibility for making the wrong choice by staying passive. It was a mystery how some people could see things so clearly and just make a call. Pick the gray tile. Switch our son’s school. Sign the long lease. I was scared of making the wrong choices, my overly analytical brain wanted to feed me all sides of every possibility all the time, giving me just as many reasons to go left as it did to go right. One day after asking my husband for the umpteenth time “What do you think we should do about…”, I woke up to what I was doing. I kept looking up for the answers, and lucky or not for me, my husband would most often solve the problem for me. I asked him, “How do you make the right decision so easily?”. His answer was so simple, “I don’t always know if it is the right decision, but until you make it, and let it play out, you don’t know. If it is right, great, you got there sooner. If it is wrong, great too, you know so you can adjust and change it.”

It was not some big mystery, there was no missing gene in my makeup, it was just the act of deciding. Newsflash to my brain: He didn’t always know which choice was better! What a relief to find this out! I began noticing opportunities for me to practice my new awareness, and becoming more confident in my ability to make choices. It is a muscle you can build. It has to start with letting go of being attached to being right all the time. Being okay with making mistakes. Stepping into uncertainty, and letting go of the outcome.