Decide

“Love God and trust your feelings. Be loyal to them. Don't betray them.” Robert C. Pollock.



Certainly, to a great extent, your feelings about things – your children, your dog, your job – motivate your willingness to engage. However, many of us today have come to speak of “trust your feelings,” as if -- if it felt good it was good, if it felt right it was right.



This is not at all the real experience of those who create. Whether entrepreneur or weaver, for most people who create there is a lot of indecision, embarrassment, fear, uncertainty, doubt -- costs in money, time and energy involved. Moving into the unknown is tough – and it often does not “feel” particularly good.



One of the difficulties of generating new ideas, plans, products or paintings is that to make a decision to pursue something new necessitates the leaving off of something else. You’re 49; do you become a choreographer instead of a dancer? Travel the world but not put down roots? Marry Larry instead of Mary? If it’s a hard choice it’s likely that your desires are fairly well matched and yet in conflict in some way. If you could do both well, why would you be deciding?



When deciding, much of the bad feeling has its foundation in the fact that by simply choosing one you have to turn away from another. I read recently in Rolling Stone magazine that Johnny Depp took up acting as a way to pay the bills while he worked for a deal for his band. He says that he doesn’t take acting seriously, even now. I’m not saying that he ever regrets his choice, it’s just that on the days Johnny Depp experiences that he is an actor now and not a musician (starving or otherwise) he must wonder about the something lost, the thing not chosen.



Interestingly, it is said that the word “decide” comes from the Latin word, decider, meaning to cut off or cut away and, the suffix, --“cide,” meaning to kill -- related to the words, suicide and homicide. To decide means literally to cut off and kill something. Ever been in the position where you’re deciding to quit your job and take a mortgage on your house so that you can start that design firm or open that shop?



The new feels bad – the fear, risk, embarrassment, financial failure; the old, it feels bad too – the sameness, the boss, the regret. Knowing that a scary, sad, uncertain feeling about moving in a new direction is ordinary and literally, an experience of loss, can help you focus more on gaining the knowledge you need to make smart decisions and the self awareness to make values-based ones.



The fact that a decision feels bad does not help inform you of which direction to go. Don’t let fear be the thing that arbitrarily dismisses you choices. Everyone feels the fear of the new and the emptiness of the lost.



So, what’s left? Well, of course there is good fact gathering. Are you purchasing that building armed with information about ratios and market trends? Does that new product fit into your marketing image? Do you have good community involvement, do you know your banker, have you come to understand your company’s agenda, do you have good boundaries and chip in when appropriate?



And, yes, maybe some of the other emotions, are you excited about one option, does that give you energy for the struggle that either one would be? Do you feel hope, instead of stymied? It is as hard to pick between two magnificent, inspiring and life-changing events as two terrible ones. Don’t let the fact that it feels AWFUL to think about leaving your job of 20 years and becoming a children’s advocate be the reason you don’t do it. I’m not saying do it, either, I’m just saying that all decisions involve a loss and all loss feels bad. Acknowledging that factor in the equation