Making Difficult Decisions

When making difficult decisions, the options can feel like deciding between swimming a river full of crocodiles or staying to fight a pack of dingoes. So what should you do?  Here are some tips to help you navigate through this challenging obstacle course.

The Logical Way of Making Difficult Decisions

The good old pros and cons list. This will clarify the issues and benefits associated with each choice. Sometimes the choice becomes clear at this point. The next step is just taking the plunge.

The Intuitive Way of Making Difficult Decisions

Step 1. Employ the self-examination technique. If the choices weigh up evenly and both fill you with dread, then you need to look internally and ask a serious, lay-it-on-the-line question:

“ Unconscious fear and dread are not good things to use to guide you when making difficult decisions. ”

“Are you making conscious choices based on your vision and purpose, or are you falling back in to ways of thinking and feeling that are based on fear and worry?”

Unconscious fear and dread are not good things to use to guide you when making difficult decisions.

The next step is to tune in to your inner compass for guidance.

Step 2. Get to the bottom of it: what do you really want? There's a big difference between this and “What should I do?” The 'shoulds' weigh you down, after all obligation is hardly inspiring. What you 'want' focuses your thoughts on possibilities, and gets to the real heart of the matter – what is your ultimate desired outcome.

Step 3. Look after YOU: what is in YOUR best interest? We often put everyone else ahead of ourselves when making difficult decisions and this serves no one's best interest. Being of service and making a contribution does not mean sacrificing your own health and happiness.

Dealing with cancer made it very easy for me to say 'no' and make decisions as my life was literally on the line. Now I know I do not need a life-threatening illness to give me permission to look after me and my best interests. No one does. Your life is sacred, whether under threat of illness or not. Stop making decisions that sacrifice its primacy, for this is indeed how you invite illness into your life.

So, ask what is in YOUR best interest, and explore this authentically.

Step 4. Heed your innards: what does our Inner Voice say? We've all got that guiding inner sense. Call it intuition, call it your Higher Self, call it God. Most of us have learned to ignore it rather than be guided by it.

However, tuning into your feelings and your hidden inner thoughts is one of the most reliable sources of guiding intelligence.

Step 5. Now what? Have you still got resistance? Likely any tremors of doubt or worry are lingering hangovers from an old way of feeling and being, based in fear, judgement and worry. This is just the detoxing process as you choose a heart-centered way of being, instead of the fear-based way of being.

Your new self-awareness strengthens your inner resilience. As you step through the moment of making the decision, you will experience a profound relief. Any remaining resistance will slip away – a spiritual cleansing of your soul, like new rain washing away muddy waters.

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