Essential ingredients to our prescription for misery

The best decision we can ever make is to stop choosing. To allow the countless other available choices to become irrelevant and accept our path.

Bonheoffer, the renowned theologian and political dissident, gives the following advice in his book of daily devotions:

The question about whether or not we have made the right beginning no longer needs to be asked, for it would drive us into fruitless fear. Our job now is to learn to understand ourselves as people who have been put on the right path and can do nothing but travel it.

The beauty of this approach is, it’s forward focused. Rooted in mindful acceptance and peace. Whereas shrinking from our commitment creates doubt, which quickly eats away at our joy. Not to mention, makes us prone to a wide range of psychological problems.

Professors who conducted the landmark study on indecisiveness found that people who constantly doubt their own judgment are especially prone to mood swings and anxiety and depression.

In fact, they created a doubt scale to measure the consequences of having a poor opinion of one’s own judgment. Here are few of the questions that caught my attention. As you read through these, consider whether or not they reflect your behavior around decision making.

In making decisions, do you often tire yourself out by switching back and forth from one conclusion to another?

Do you have a tendency to change your mind according to the last opinion you hear?

After deciding something, do you tend to worry about whether your decision was wrong?

Each of the examples are either trapping in the past or obsessed with the future. Both of which create a suffocating burden of worry.

Which doesn’t suggest that you should change your decision making style, but it is important that your method of making decisions develops as you do.

And so, if you’re the kind of person who gives diminished weight to their own interpretations and perspectives, ask yourself what that may be costing you.

If you have always been habitual in nothing but your indecision, try focusing more on traveling and enjoying the path, rather than debating and fretting about it.

The decision to stop choosing is not an easy one to make.

But the closer we can get to that place, the more liberated we will feel. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
How many of the decisions did you make yesterday that had absolutely correct answers?