One of my favourite life mottos is:“Life is a continuous learning journey”. Yes, it is a journey and when we were born we did not come with a manual or guide telling us: “This is how you do it”. So sometimes we learn by example, which starts off with our parents, then continues with us educating ourselves. And as part of this learning journey we make mistakes. We can make mistakes when calculating numbers, and we can also make mistakes in our decisions. When mistakes are related to decision-making: how do you know when you are on the right path?
Mistakes are based on a decision
In a recent interview I was asked the following question: what mistakes have you made that you have learnt the most from - in any area of life? I responded by talking about my above-mentioned motto, about “continuous learning”, then continued with how this involves the process of “trial and error”. How we learn as we go on, how mistakes will occur. This also made me think about the mistakes you may make with people, by judging who they are. You may feel an instant rapport with some people when you meet them, and you want to open up and trust them.
How about “gut” feelings?
There may have even been the like factor involved in this. Other times, there may have been a feeling of unease or a gut feeling suggesting that something may not be right here. How many of you, honestly, have gone against those instincts; resisted those warnings? I'll put my hand up to that. This might be because you want to expect the best in the person. I am an optimist at heart; always looking at the brighter picture. After all, one of my daily mantras is: today is a BRIGHT day, full of possibilities.
I recently encountered one of these situations in my life, where I was trying out something new. They do say that, like food, it is good to try out a new flavour once in a while, as you may like it. Life should be an adventure after all. So I thought “Let me do this with an open mind, see what I gain from this.” So I did, and decided to follow this path. I had an intention when starting the journey to improve an area of my life where I realised that I needed support. At the start of new things, like new love relationships, there was excitement; an energy. But with this, it can wane, so when it did, I started to get that “gut” feeling asking me “Is this right?”. I thought okay; this may be a signal that I was feeling uneasy about leaving my so-called comfort zone. So I pursued it despite these emotions coming up. Then I started to get more warning alarms, and I thought that I needed to make a decision whether I was going to continue.
Happy mind, healthy body
I decided to pause, so literally took time out. Around this time, I started to realise that my body was starting to react. It started with the headaches, and then I got flu-like symptoms. I felt that this was connected to my emotional state. Our minds and bodies are interconnected: happy mind, healthy body. My mind was not at ease. After I recovered, I thought about giving the process another go, as I did not want to quit it. So I did, and then some other things occurred which further told me that this continued path, this journey, was not right for me. So I knew I had to make a decision, not to allow other external forces to sway or go against my better judgement, my internal wisdom. Sometimes being honest with yourself may be daunting. Saying no, when something is not right, as I was finding out.
The emotional scale: “I vow not to betray myself”
The universe can be amazing: as I pen this, I came across a video of an interview that Oprah Winfrey did with the author Caroline Myss. The author talks about not betraying yourself. This was related to choices that you make in life, similar to the one I have been discussing. According to her, a good question to ask when making a decision is: “Does it enhance me or drain me?” In my mind, this was interlinked with the emotional, more than the logic mind. So asking from the heart, rather than from the head.
Which place do you make your decisions from, your heart or your head? Another key factor to add is whether you “willingly” entered into the decision.
So I'd like to suggest: “You are never on the wrong path, but just not managing it well”.
Have you ever made a decision based on your gut and then let your mind talk you out of it? What was the outcome?
Wow, what an amazing read, it is something we all know, but somehow, the logic seems to evade us when we put our emotions into play, Sophia is spot on and I felt as though she was speaking just to me, the way she writes and analyses and I love the way she tells with such candour about her own “mistakes” and “choices”….I feel this is one to keep and read again and again to remind us about our flaws, our choices and how we are governed by our emotions and choices, but most importantly to forgive ourselves and continue learning….Well done Sophia!
Thanks for the feedback Cecelia. Yes, I’ve made mistakes and survived afterwards. Forgiveness, we forgiving ourselves is so important. Often we find it easy when looking back at events to point the blame and others, and maybe decide to forgive them. But how about our own responsibility for the part we played? So often we need to forgive ourselves. It is amazing the amount of people who are walking around with this weight sometimes, of feeling hurt, not realising that in order to move on that they need to forgive themselves. Allow love in and be happy.
Intuition (i.e. “gut feeling”) is always right. But ego and low self-esteem often gets in the way. We may have a gut feeling that our man friend has other lady friends, but our ego chooses to ignore what we know deep down is true. We hold on to Hope. We make our choices. We take it or leave it. When it is right for us. But, we always “know” deep down, what is the Truth in any life situation. We adjust to suit our needs at the time.
Sometimes this is dangerous, yet sometimes it is helpful, as long as we acknowledge the truth in our inner mind and soul. Thank You again Sophia for so eloquently discussing this topic. S. Plisak-Mekula
Thanks Susan for your feedback. Yes the ego can be a strong force within us, stopping us from connecting to the truth. Your comment about how deep down we know the truth, reminded me of a conversation that I had in bar with a group of guys last year. These were some male friends. One of them said, when a relationship ends you are not really surprised about its conclusions, as you always knew. I queried this, and they continued with, “how it was facing you all the time, the truth”. So yes that inner- sense knew the answer and as you described the emotional part kicked in and chose not accept it; resist this. So the first lesson, be honest, may not feel that easy,
Great article Sophia, which seems to expand on subsequent readings! Very clever!
A couple of years back,a much revered friend recommended that I read Focusing by Eugene Gendlin. Gendlin’s approach centres around the body messages, the messages that – if we live too much in our head – never get through until much further down the line in terms of issues. A Focusing practice encourages us to notice the messages more readily and to embrace them and investigate them for meaning.
This we do a lot quite naturally anyway, but Gendlin took it much further. Your article, in an everyday perspective, relates how this process happened for you, and related how much you gained from your subsequent discoveries.
In terms of self-help, Focusing can be hugely rewarding and can reconnect us with our intuitive selves. Modern life tends to make us operate far too much ‘in our heads’.
Best wishes,
Peter
Thank you Peter for your comments. I have not heard of that book Focusing before, so shall be taking note of this one. It is an interesting comment you made about how some people tend to live in their “head”; and not look at the other messages coming from the body.
Self-help is a good a way of connecting to our intuitive self. I would say self-exploratory learning is where we get the big lessons.
What a fab article, Sophia! Many of the things you talk about here are principles I teach to help people live life on their terms.
Identity is key for me in terms of living a life you love – how can you chose a job that suits you if you don’t know what YOU want and need? The same goes for lifestyle and relationships. It is integral to everything we do.
Look forward to reading more of your work.
Take care,
Sarah
Hello Sarah, thank you for reading this article and commenting. Yes, it is amazing how like what you mentioned: we may sometimes get lost in the day-to-day life and lose touch with our own identity. This includes, not knowing what we want or maybe being afraid to just be. There is a picture I came across yesterday of a gold fish with shark fins attached to it. I LOVED it, as it represented to me how people can sometimes believe this is who I am, this is what it expected of me, instead of accepting their selves. I identified with that fish as I had been playing out that scenario. So was one of those “aha” moments. Please go and read my other articles on this site https://smarthealthywomen.com/author/sophia/. And there are also other amazing articles by other authors 🙂 Thank you.