Wishy Washy

Uncategorized Nov 22, 2019

I’m convinced that life hands us what we need on a platter, uninhibited and in plain sight.  The tricky part is grabbing what you want.

Like most of you, I’m full of great ideas.   A patient said to me the other day (in relation to a major community outreach effort)  “I have so many great ideas, I don’t understand why none of them get implemented”.   My monkey brain can relate to this.  I also humbly realize, that my lack of follow through with implementation can’t be blamed on my circumstances, the people around me, the timing, the resources, or the weather.  It’s (always) because I’m standing in my own way.

Whether we have the bandwidth for it or not, once an idea is born, it tends to stick like gum a shoe.  So, we’re forced to pick and choose what we want.  After all, there are only 24 hours in a day.  How much can or should one person do anyway?  When is enough… enough?  Why can’t we just be satisfied with what we’re currently doing?  What’s wrong with just riding the wave and not fixing what’s not broken?  In fact, why reinvent the wheel?

Well…because we’re creative geniuses.  

We all uniquely have a bold vision.    This vision may be so hairy and audacious that we’re often too embarrassed to entertain it because we don’t feel worthy of such thinking.  We’ve adopted the need to “check” ourselves because “who do we think we are?”.  

Great ideas aren’t just born by happenstance.  The birth of a new thought isn’t just a random glitch, even though it’s often not intentionally “summoned”.  The moment we indulge a new idea, we question, second guess and stress about what happens if we do follow through…AND what happens if we don’t.  Indecision becomes our norm and the stress it spreads is so common that it’s disguised as normal.

My son Marco bought a new Star Wars video game last week.  The morning after he bought it, on the way to school, he was telling me how happy he was that he decided to buy it.   He was explaining to me that after having a few experiences with losing sleep over the stress of parting with hard earned cash, he’s decided to never allow himself to have buyers remorse again.   He vows to do his due diligence on said products and then he wants to just trust that it was the right choice.  He said that he would make quick decisions, follow through and never allow himself remorse.  He went on to explain that the flip side of making a decision is indecision.  

According to Marco, the bath of anguish and distraction that indecision bathes in is apparently much dirtier than that of making a wrong decision.  In fact, how can we initiate momentum if we’re glued to a particular spot?

Um…when I was 14, I was only thinking about the blue contacts I wanted to change my brown eyes…and how to cheat on my curfew.  Just saying.

2 days after Marco’s truth bomb, I heard somebody I highly respect say as part of a lecture that “the most successful people are those who make decisions quickly”.

Being someone who has always labored over decision making, I’m well versed in the fact that indecision IS an energy drain.  It’s anxiety causing and chips away at our self confidence.  It creates a tone of uncertainty which pushes its way through all the pieces of our lives.  After all, how we do anything is how we do everything.

The idea of giving ourselves the  “permission” to make decisions quickly is liberating.  I’m not talking about being recklessly impulsive.  I’m talking about trusting ourselves enough to make the choices that’ll create space for other things to unravel.

I’m talking about making a decision based on how it aligns with your core values and based on how it feels in your gut.  The wishy washy, back and forth around decision making is enough to not only freeze us in time but it can catapult us into a fight or flight way of being that over time will undoubtedly lead to illness.  

Decisions about nutrition, decisions about a fitness goal, decisions to try something new, decisions to do something we’re afraid to do, decisions to take a risk.  What if we just cut ourselves some slack around the possibility of making the “wrong decision”?  

We’re all worthy of jumping in you know?   If we fall on our faces, we’ll wipe the blood and sweat off with a rag woven out of personal freedom.   We’ll unveil a version of ourselves that we never even knew existed.

 

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