Living Out Loud

How to make a difficult life decision

Last week I received an email from one of my ezine subscribers asking for advice on making a decision that might result in major upheaval and life changes.  Now as a trained life coach, I would never advise somebody to take one path or the other, or even try to influence them on what I think would be the most sensible path for them to take.  Instead of giving him my view of the pros and cons of either choice I outlined to him what I do when I have a difficult decision to make.

Photo by Joe Thorn

I believe that we all have all of the answers to all of our questions within us.  And so all we need to do is let them come to the surface.  But the more we think about what the best thing to do is, the harder it is for that inner knowledge to surface.  The reason for this is that we're engaging our logical minds to make the decision.  But the answer lies in a much deeper place than our logical minds can reach.

To make big life decisions, I tend to start off having a struggle with my logical mind, and then I get fed up of trying to satisfy all of its very demanding criteria.  At this point I turn it over to my Higher Self.  I have a very simple process for this:
 

1. I get clear about the outcome I want
2. I set the intention to just know what the right thing to do is
3. I let go of needing to know now, and patiently wait until I simply do know
4. When that Aha! feeling arrives, and I do just know what to do, I don't question it with logic.  I simply trust what feels right and I go with it. 

I find this to be an easy and stress-free way to deal with major choices.  Our intuition always knows what the best course of action is.  All we have to do is allow it to speak to us in its own time, and when it does trust it!  
 
It can be a scary thing to do though, to throw logic out of the window and just go with what feels right.  But I have yet to regret a decision made in this way.  ( But I have regretted plenty of decisions that satisfied my logical mind but were contrary to a little nagging intuitive nudge)

What about you?  Would you endorse this decision-making process?  What do you do when you're faced with a tough choice? 

Similar posts:

Learning to trust your intuition

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Learning to Trust your Intuition

I just came across this great Think Positive! blog, and reading a post entitled Men are Intuitive Too! reminded me of this article I wrote last year on how to tune into and learn to trust your intuition if you're not used to doing so.  So, I decided to dig it out and post it here:

Are you aware of your inner voice? Do you pay attention to it? I’m not talking about the one who puts you down by the way! I’m talking about the one that softly whispers ideas and suggestions to you – the kind that the other voice might shout down, crying “Are you mad? That requires stepping out of our comfort zone, and that is to be avoided at all costs!” (even if the cost is living a life of mediocrity instead of the one of your dreams)

Sadly, the latter voice is the one most of us are aware of and pay attention to. The more gentle one, that is our intuition, is often ignored – that is if we’re hearing what it tells us at all. The great pity here is that it’s our intuition that really has our best interests at heart. Our gremlin (the louder, more aggressive voice) does have our welfare at heart too, but in a protective way. The intuition’s way is more expansive.