What people say
I can honestly say that, for the first time in 50 years, I’m learning how to just be. How to relish the present moment, which, magically and mysteriously, unlocks the door to the treasure house that is the rest of my life.
- Jennifer Green, Salem, Oregon
From the moment Jon and I connected, I had this deep experience of loving presence and complete trust. Something bypassed my mind and my ability to figure things out, and communicated directly to my heart and soul that I was safe and in the right place. There was a creation of power in our relationship that he honored and witnessed as being mine. It was my power. I had the experience of being wonderfully, beautifully powerful, in the most loving, energized way.
- Laura Lind-Blum, The Idea Midwife, Waterbury Center, Vermont
Jon can help you recognize where you are, and become more clear. My work with him has not been about plotting out my future, it has been about helping me come into deeper relationship with myself so that next steps unfold easily and effortlessly.
He creates a safe, spacious container for you to go as deep or wide or high as you’re capable of in any given moment. It’s a matter of him being able to see the facets and help me make them real in me.
- Sandra Leader, Carmel, CA
My feelings changed from, “Quick, fix me, I can’t stand how I feel, make it better, hurry,” to, it’s not about hurry, and it’s not about fixing, it’s about staying where you are and getting more and more and deeper and deeper sensations that this is okay. You’re fine, this is okay.
It helps me reframe experience. I don’t see anything that’s happening quite the same as I’ve ever seen it before, because my viewpoint has been enlarged. There’s more, there’s peace, there’s joy, there’s love, there’s health, there’s everything.
- Layne Young, artist, Salem, Oregon
Allowing Decisions to Unfold
November 16 2010
There seems to be so much struggle involved in making a “good” decision!
Pro/con lists, what-if scenarios, risk analysis, worst-case evaluation ... it quickly starts to feel overwhelming.
But have you noticed that in the end, decisions tend to make themselves?
For instance, you might be caught in an internal debate about going to the gym in the morning. One side of your mind is busy explaining why you should go, while the other side is pointing out that you don’t have time because of how much you have to do at work.
And then — as has happened for some people I know — you find yourself driving into the gym parking lot with the debate still raging in your thoughts.
The decision made itself while you were busy thinking about it.
And while you may not have had a debate like this over a trip to the gym, I’ll bet you’ve had similar experiences with other topics.
What if you were to simply allow your decisions to unfold? Here are a few ways to explore this for yourself.
Notice the debate
It may sound odd, but the feelings of stress and anxiety don’t come from the need to make a decision.
They come from the internal debate that springs up in your thoughts about the decision — your thoughts about needing the decision to be “right” or “good.”
Notice that what’s happening is simply a war between opposing thoughts. One thought lists its reasons why, and the other thought counters with reasons why not.
Breathe. Listen to the sounds around you. Feel your heart beat. Remind yourself that the decision will unfold. And you might — as one client does — also notice that those argumentative thoughts sound a lot like a couple of children engaged in a “will too/will not!” battle.
You don’t know
Those pro/con lists and worst-case scenarios are simply your mind’s attempts to know ahead of time what will happen.
Your mind wants the security of knowing how your decision will turn out.
But you don’t know, and you can’t know.
And yes, you might feel after the fact that there were unintended consequences or results from the decision you made. But you can’t ever know what would have happened if you’d made a different choice.
What if you allow yourself to fully, deeply not know?
“It frees me,” was one client’s answer to this question. “It’s actually a huge relief when I really let myself experience not knowing. And then I can open to discover what I actually want!”
Eventually you will know
Stop and notice that at some point in the future, you will know how you decided.
Whether it’s tomorrow, or next week, or a year from now — there will be a point in your life when the decision is made, one way or another.
“When I remind myself of that,” says a client, “it takes such a load off my shoulders. Just recognizing that there&squo;s a ‘future me’ that knows what choice I made makes it much easier to relax and be curious about how the decision will unfold, instead of wrestling with it. Especially,” she added, “when it’s one of those big decisions I’ve been faced with recently!“
Whose decision is it?
It’s so easy to get caught up in making decisions based on other people’s expectations — and even your own expectations or “shoulds” about who you want to be.
“One thing I’ve begun to see,” said a client, “is that there just isn’t such a thing as a ‘wrong’ choice. And my struggle to make the ‘right’ choice is really a struggle to please other people or do what I think I ‘should’ do. When I can let go of that, my decision becomes an expression of what I really want.”
Start small
If this sounds risky to you — start small.
One client began noticing her internal debate when she was out for a bike ride and was “trying to decide” if she’d extend her ride by taking the left-hand turn, or head home via the right-hand turn.
“It was kind of funny,” she told me later. “Those thoughts were still fighting with each other right up until they noticed that I’d already headed left and was several hundred yards down the path.”
Something in her, something deeper and more real than the thoughts bouncing around in her mind, had made the decision simply and easily and naturally.
Begin noticing the internal debates that arise. Allow yourself to become curious about what might happen if you simply let the debate go, and see what happens instead.
You may find it just as easy — and just as amusing — as my bike-riding client did.
“No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made. Destiny is made known silently.” Agnes de Mille, 1909-1993, American dancer and choreographer
“Ever notice that what the hell is always the right decision?” Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962), American actress, singer, and model.
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