Tag: trust

The right choice only exists in the present moment

A friend of mine who recently moved back to her home country after living and working a long time abroad in Kenia expressed her struggles to adapt, feeling torn between the two worlds and questioning whether she made the right decision.

Does this really exist: the right decision? It feels all too familiar to me: wanting to get it right, therefore spending time considering a lot of facts before making a decision. I did this often in my life. But nobody can get it perfectly right because everything is subject to change and we just aren’t clairvoyants. We don’t know how the future will unfold. 

And we could never possibly know all facts, all parametres anyway. In hindsight, we will know more, but in the very moment of decision-making we did not. 

But even with an abundance of facts and carefully weighing pros and cons, there is no guarantee that I get it right or will feel happy about it afterwards. It could work out either way.

That’s my experience with moving to other countries. Knowing a lot before making the move did not spare me inner conflict or struggles. Knowing less and following an impulse, a feeling can surprisingly work out very well on the other hand.

There is a reason why human decisions are very much based on feelings rather than facts. Where AI is binary – we most certainly are not. Only I can know if something feels right for me, but my feelings can also be quite complex and ambivalent. 

Allowing myself to rely on my intuition as an important part of what we humans call decision-making is essential, instead of pretending that it is just a fact-based process.


May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears. 

(Nelson Mandela)

Moreover, decisions are always a choice, a reflection of my current circumstances and mindset. And all that inevitably evolves and changes.

It makes no sense to blame myself for a decision I made in the past. At that moment I was in a different place and in a different situation. I did not know what I know today. I was younger. My values, preferences, priorities were different, and so were my mood and my emotions. 

Things change. We change. Our perspective changes over time. Our level of maturity evolves, our health changes. 

And so we make the best decision we can under these circumstances at that point in time. That is enough.

Since I came to understand this, I don’t view it in the right/wrong context anymore. This isn’t black or white. 

The need I felt for a long time, to take the “right” decision was deeply rooted in perfectionism which developed during my childhood when I was not allowed to make mistakes. Recognizing it helped me change my perspective. 

The right choice – if I can call it that – is always a temporary thing: it only exists in the time and space we inhabit in the present moment.

Now when I make a choice I know it’s to either stay on the path I am on or take a turn somewhere at a crossroads which will spin me into a different direction. Every choice has consequences and only time will tell if I remain comfortable with them or whether I will feel the need one day to make an adjustment and take another turn.

It has a lot to do with personal values and priorities: what’s important to me? What do I need in my life? It always comes down to these questions. And we need to liberate us from other people’s expectations in this regard. I’m the one who has to live with my choice – not someone else.

Just like healing, our life journey is never unfolding in a straight line. There are lots of turns or doubling back, and that is perfectly ok. My priorities change as well over time because I am not the same person I was years ago.

Being torn between two sides facing contradictory feelings after making a choice is very normal. Again, nothing is black or white.

But no matter what we decide – even if a decision turns out not to be the optimal one – we always gain insights. We grow and develop new interests and suddenly new opportunities come our way. It’s interesting to see where life takes us when we are open. We only realize it in hindsight.

A very personal example for me is an unhappy relationship I had in my twenties. A positive event during that time however, was a holiday we spent in Ireland.
I fell in love with this country immediately. Some time later it led me to do a four months’ stage in Dublin, which in turn sparked my wish to come back to live and work in Ireland, something I eventually managed to do.  

That was a clear turning point in my life, starting to work for an international company and then, many years later moving to the Netherlands. 

I would not be where I am today had it not been for that holiday in Ireland decades ago. Many wonderful friends I found that way – some at work, some by chance encounters – I would have never met. Finding a place I call home, gaining insights about myself – sometimes through tough experiences – I am grateful for what I encountered. 

So I clearly cannot say that if I could go back in time I’d make a different choice, because then I’d be a different person with a different life. 

There is no alternative universe to explore – this life is all we have got.

Let’s make the best out of it.

Inviting unpredictability

Have a little faith. There is no black and white situation. Things always change. There is no inevitability in how an event unfolds – even if I think (or wish) there must be.

How often have I experienced that things turned out much better than expected, but before they did I was fretting about them a lot and at length. 

Of course, it is always good to be prepared and to think things through, considering options and alternatives. Nothing wrong with doing my due diligence. But often, even that turned out to be not necessary at all.

So I am trying to have more patience and trust, ultimately having confidence that things can sometimes turn out well. Adjusting my expectations and not always assuming a negative outcome by default has become an important practice for me. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

There is also a flip side of course. Life is unpredictable. 

We don’t have a lot under control, but we are deluding ourselves that we do. I am very familiar with this behaviour, because I am a planner. Fear of bad events (real or imagined) is driving my need for control. 

Well, life doesn’t work like that. I am so used to attempting to eliminate bad surprises and trying to get on top of all important tasks in my life – but I know my wish is a mere illusion. 

It’s much more liberating to let go of this idea – an idea essentially rooted in perfectionism. Herein lies the real inevitability: that I am unable to control the outcome of life events.


Become comfortable with not knowing.

Eckhart Tolle

Allowing myself to experience conflicting emotions is part of the package. Questioning from time to time if I am on the right path is fully ok – I just need to hang in there. 

Letting go of things I cannot control, again and again, is important, but it’s also a real struggle. 

That’s what I learnt during the past months. Unfortunately, my parents are not happy in the care home they are living in. Of course, it was a big change at a very late point in their lives and they are understandably upset. They are grieving what they lost, lacking the strength and willpower to adjust to their new situation. Their cognitive decline makes it harder.

The aggression and resistance my brother and I were confronted with really hurt though. It’s sad to see them making themselves so unhappy. It was the right decision to move them and we waited a long time before going through with it. It’s a relief to know that they are not alone anymore and have all the help and support they need. 

We had the best intentions but of course no control over the outcome. And that’s exactly what can happen: you do something for all the right reasons, but someone else is unhappy as a result. 

I had hoped for them to make the best out of this situation and focus on the benefits it clearly has for them, but they don’t want to see it.


The moment you accept what troubles you’ve been given, the door will open.

Rumi

To acknowledge all this, my role in it and how it made me feel, was difficult. I struggled a lot with these conflicting emotions, feeling lost, angry and sad. 

In the weeks that followed I took the time to process it all, focused on protecting myself and on letting go, bit by bit. With time, I felt lighter, easing back into balance.

Where people’s emotions are involved, things get messy. Personal sensitivities have a large influence on their decisions and override the facts of reality quite often. It’s never to be underestimated. It can be a source of hope but can also turn out to be a recipe for disaster. We just never know in advance – and that’s life.

Nevertheless, this is the tiny space where hope is living. Between the black and the white.

There is always potential in every situation, even if I cannot see it in the very moment I am in it. It can turn out either way and there is not a lot we can do about it besides inviting unpredictability into our lives, fully knowing that it’s not going to be easy. 

Ultimately, have trust in what will unfold. It’s not in our hands (not always or not fully anyway most of the time), but that does not have to be a bad thing.

Have trust. In yourself and in life.


Don’t be pushed around by the fears in your mind. Be led by the dreams in your heart.

Roy T. Bennett

The balance between hope and despair

The concept of fairness is deeply ingrained in us. Like a red thread running through our lives, a structure that makes it easier to find our way – a Northern star guiding our decisions.

It determines how we treat others. For most of us, it is self-evident.

But sometimes we hit a wall. Something happens that suddenly throws us off balance. We lose a loved one. We lose our job. Accidents happen, disaster strikes, we get seriously ill… 

This can trigger a reflex making us ask: why me? What did I do to deserve it? Could I have prepared myself better, or somehow prevented it?

Interestingly, we think that we are somehow responsible, beating ourselves up for it, instead of acknowledging that this is just life – a random event happening which never follows the principle of fairness. 

To be a good person striving to do the right thing is unfortunately no guarantee to prevent bad things from happening to us. Fairness is rather an expectation we carry around: an expectation that life should be fair, if we just take the right decisions and behave in a just manner.

The frustrating realization that the world is actually not fair shows the deep disappointment we feel when someone else (or the universe for that matter) doesn’t keep their part of the (expected) bargain. 

We expect the world to be different. We even raise our children to act in a fair manner, to treat others well – like we want to be treated ourselves. And it’s in fact our children who remind us by shouting out “that’s not fair” that they indeed have a very good sense of how things ought to be.

It also triggers a deep fear when realizing that what we took for granted is suddenly caving in like a house of cards. We feel that we lose control falling into a bottomless pit. It is scary. It is threatening. That’s why the reflex in us is so strong to deny it: we are trying to run away from our suffering.

Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today. (Thich Nhat Hanh)

It takes courage to embrace our suffering, to endure a difficult and painful situation and not give up. Especially when it is challenging our beliefs and our inner framework. It can happen anytime and to everyone, and we cannot prepare ourselves for it.

It helps to understand that bad events happening to us are a part of life.

But our inner values and principles which are guiding us, are another part of it. 

These two are not mutually exclusive but rather different companions on our life’s journey. We will encounter the whole spectrum of it all the time. And we cannot expect to have one without the other.

The best way to not feel hopeless is to get up and do something. Don’t wait for good things to happen to you. If you go out and make some good things happen, you will fill the world with hope, you will fill yourself with hope. (Barack Obama)

But what we can control is how we deal with what comes our way. The world becomes what we make of it, and that’s visible every day. 

Everything we convey through your actions or inaction, each word we say or don’t, each act of kindness or the opposite, changes the world. It makes a difference. So, let’s become more aware of how much influence we actually have. On others and on ourselves.

Does a bad thing happening to me make me question my approach in life? Does it make me lose my faith in myself and others? In humanity?

Would I throw my beliefs overboard?

I believe that hanging on to what is guiding me in life is even more important in such testing situations. There is a reason for why I have decided long ago to live my life based on certain principles.

What we can do:

  • Moving through it with patience and compassion for yourself is very important, in whatever sort of such situation you are. To have others supporting you is wonderful, but don’t forget to support yourself in the same way: speak kindly to yourself.
  • Ground yourself, calm yourself down, simply to avoid your nervous system going into overdrive. Meditation and breathing exercises can be a very powerful tool to help.
  • Cry when you feel like it. Once you stop you will notice that the earth has not opened up and swallowed you. You are still there. And then allow yourself time and space to heal. 

Nothing is as important as my peace, my joy. I smile to everything, even to my suffering, my difficulties. That is a practice of freedom. (Thich Nhat Hanh)

It is hard to lean into our pain, while staying confident and trusting ourselves at the same time. But it is important not to ignore the pain. Acknowledge it, but at the same time do not give up hope. Savour the precious moments of joy in your life.

We have every reason to trust that we can move through the hardships in life. Because there is constant change – in either way, hence also to the positive.

Trust yourself.

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If you are interested in meditation and finding inner peace, I can recommend the Plum Village App.

The podcast “The Way Out Is In” offers profound, insightful conversations based on Thich Nhat Hanh’s teachings of Buddhist philosophy.