There is so much loss in making big decisions.
Most of them include saying goodbye to something you have done for a long time.
An experience your brain is used to having.
A way of life you have known.
An expression of self.
Making a big decision requires you to feel loss.
And this is why we keep postponing them.
We try to avoid more pain.
Change is full of grief, did you know?
One of the things that I have done for years in my classes was to teach my students how to trick the brain so they feel less grief and fear in making a big decision.
So we break the decision in to many pieces and start with just one piece.
By the end, you get to change your life in the least painful way.
I know you also have a big decision to make and you have been postponing it.
I don’t blame you.
But can we just talk about it a little?
Tell me your big decision.
You don’t have to do anything about it.
Get a piece of paper and write it down.
Write the thing you want to do but you haven’t told many people, maybe not even anyone.
You don’t even like to tell yourself about it because you think you can never make it happen.
Yes, that is what I want you to write down.
It may be that you want to sell your house and move away.
Or that you want to resign from your job.
Maybe even that you want to leave a relationship.
And something even more bold than all of the above put together.
It may even be something you will never dare to do.
Ha. I know.
Yes, write that down.
That you want to be an actress in your 50s.
Or move to Hawaii in your 60s.
Maybe even write a book or two.
Paint beautiful paintings.
Go back to school.
Maybe your big decision is too expensive and you can’t afford it, you better write that down also.
I want so many things for your life.
I want as much as I want for mine.
Sometimes I dream about walking through a Star Wars movie set and hearing them say ‘action.’
I dream about having my own beach house, or living next to a big red rock in Sedona.
I think about my decision to become a painter.
And all the big decisions I don’t dare say to anyone.
I write them down.
And leave them there for a while.
Sometimes I have left them there for years. It’s ok.
The road to a big decision sometimes is a long one. (Click to Tweet!)
Let’s start today.
What is your big decision?
Write it down, take that piece of paper with you today, wherever you go.
It’s your first tiny step towards changing your life.
Just like that we exit the old life, and enter the new.
A piece of paper, some bold words and off we go.
With big decisions,
Christina
PS. Order the Where Did You Go? book here: https://www.amazon.com/Where-Did-You-Go-Life-Changing/dp/0062689622
I wanted so much to come. It was the long ten hour drive each way that scared me. And you see it’s only been 7 months since my Bruce died. I have serious financial issues to deal with and i”ve never been good with money. Is it to early to move forward. Sometimes I think I am so busy that I do not do my grief work properly. I am running two businesses, a house management and photography business. I behave as if he is in the other room. He is waiting. I clean and organize and give his things away and then I grieve over that loss. I’m preparing my house either to live in it and be safe, or to sell it and move somewhere else, but I don’t know where to go. I am a youngish 76 years old. I can’t imagine myself in another place. This was “our” place. He lived here alone too, and I have his sweet letters telling me how lonely he was, how he dreamed of my being here too. And then I came. I moved from all I had known, I took a chance and we were happy for 40 years together. . I don’t know what to do. I love living. Anita