“How do you know…?”
I get asked this question a lot, usually with something specific attached to the end.
“How do you know how to take the next step?”
“How do you know what to do with your life?”
I’ve been asked several times, “how do you know when your marriage is over?”
I don’t have the answers… and I’ve had a lot of these questions myself, but I have come to understand a few things.
Joseph Campbell said it best when he said, “if the path before you is clear, it’s probably someone else’s.”
You aren’t ever going to know for sure… but you always have choices and that means you get to build your own path instead of being forced to follow one (because what if you hated it?).
When you don’t choose, because you don’t like the choice you have to make, you have ultimately chose nothing and then you feel like you’ve lost your power… I think this is a dangerous place to live.
I’ve felt powerless before and it’s awful.
All of a sudden it feels like life is happening “to you”, instead of “for you”.
You lose relationships that were important to you, you lose opportunities that were within your grasp, and you lose confidence in yourself because you feel like you are always losing.
Regret comes from looking backwards, paralysis comes from not taking immediate action, and fear comes from thinking you are alone and won’t be supported by the universe (or lack of faith).
My dad told me once, “I wait to make a decision until my ass twitches, and once I get that twitch I go for it…and I never look back.”
This was some of the best advice I’ve ever received in regards to a “how do you know” question of my own.
You make the decision, you commit to it, and then you make the best of it.
You really can’t go wrong when you do it this way.
You choose.
That choice unfolds a whole new set of choices, and you choose again.
That also brings you new choices and you choose again and again and again, and pretty soon you can look back and see the path you’ve created choice by choice.
Almost every choice is made without ever really “knowing”, and yet somehow it always works out.
It’s going to be ok.
It’s always going to be ok.
You’ve just got to keep swimming.