The Decision Maker’s Toolkit

Every new visitor, follower, like or comment on this blog elicits mixed emotions. I feel massive gratitude that even one person wants to read my writing. While I am still a bit on the fringes of this community, the support I have received thus far has inspired me. And yet, with each new view I feel more pressure to commit, to stay active in this world, and to not let anyone down.

And this is what happens when we must make an ongoing choice to commit to an important life decision. We gain tremendously when we choose every day (or every moment), to be a part of something bigger than ourselves. But as with every decision, there are costs.

If I keep writing this blog, I lose time. Time I could use to focus on my paid work or my family or binge-watching every episode of The X-Files. And yet time seems irrelevant when I am writing, thinking and exploring ideas.

If I keep writing this blog, I open myself up to incredible vulnerability because I have never really shared my spiritual views with anyone. And yet, I yearn for membership in a community of people who care deeply about their own spiritual development.

What I mean to say here is that every choice we make is marked by loss. For some, including me on occasion, this certainty is too tragic, too weighty to bear. This can lead to stagnation or even paralysis if we are not careful. So how does one navigate the perilous waters of choice when the risks of loss are so frightfully ever-present?

I think the answer involves two of the most trusty tools in a spiritual person’s toolkit: gratitude and intuition. If the Law of Attraction is real, then gratitude for that which we have gained draws more positivity into our lives in the future. If we allow intuition to guide us, then we give ourselves permission to stop overthinking the decision. We “get out of our own way”, as it were.

But, beyond that, when using both of these tools we get to feel good now without undue emphasis on the past or the future. Gratitude removes focus from past ordeals, regrets or losses. Intuition helps us to stop attempting to predict the future, a futile endeavor.

Ultimately, neither of these “tools” involves much cerebral activity at all. Instead they seem to stem from a less rational, more visceral place. This is something that Pam Grout wants to emphasize in the fifth experiment in her book E-Squared: Nine Do-It-Yourself Energy Experiments that Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality.

Here, Grout asks the reader to pose a “yes” or “no” question to The Universe, and then sit back and wait for inner guidance, rather than reason, to provide answer. She writes, “The conscious mind was designed for just two things-to identify problems and formulate goals”. Now, we might take issue with this claim-surely the conscious mind is good for more than that? Perhaps it is, but the basic idea is this: Rationality is useful to a point, but it can also hinder flourishing if it is relied on too heavily.

I have already spent several sleepless nights attempting to decide if I should keep working on this blog; and I have come up empty and exhausted. So I have decided to take Grout’s advice, and let intuition lead the way on this one. I am giving The Universe 48 hours to provide a clear answer to the question: “Should I continue writing?”