One type is obvious while the second is not. The first type are those choices that are for the longer term. Examples of this include: buying a house, choosing to live your life with a special partner, or a job transfer or acceptance of a new job in a new city.
The second, less obvious type, are those choices you make when you are “at your lowest” points in life. When the stress around you is so high that you want to run and hide. Where confusion wraps you up in a knot. You know things are not going well. No answers appear quickly. When the choices in front of us are full of fear, uncertainty, and very hard to make.
It’s within this crucible of, essentially, fire where you learn the most and can impact your life in very profound and different ways. By simply focusing on the next choice that you must make. No matter how fearful, hard, and uncertain it could be.
These next few choices can change the direction of your life. This is where your choices will give you the most leverage because they can be so impactful. Counter-intuitively, this is when you have the greatest power to enact change.
They can help you begin to escape the stressful mess you find yourself in. New opportunities may appear. The one sure thing, is that this next choice, and those shortly after, will only have leverage if you choose differently than you have in the past. We feel powerless and helpless during these difficult times.
Choosing, as we did in the past, will only lead us into a dead end.
Those that have resilience understand, at some level, it is this next choice that is the key to moving ahead. And then the one after that. Not in an immediate way, but one that will help find a more peaceful place, full of sun and warmth over time.
The difficulty in trying this approach, is the need to lock your emotions away in a closet where they can be subdued and silenced, while you try to clear your mind to better see the choices that could be made to move forward. (Even the ones that might sound strange at first.)
Remembering, choosing differently may just make you wiser and happier, soon after the personal storm you just went through.