“When I finally make a decision, this part shakes its head and says ‘wrong’!”
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Maggie writes: “I wonder if you could talk about making decisions? As I begin this year, there are so many options whizzing by like buses, all going to different destinations. I feel quite overwhelmed, not sure when I need to stick my thumb out and stop a bus to get on. And it’s easy to get stuck, just standing here, unable to make a decision.
“There is an ‘all-knowing’ part of me that stands there with its fists closed, as if it has the ‘right answer’, urging me to guess what the right thing is. Inevitably when I do make a choice, this part shakes its head and says ‘wrong! you’ve chosen the wrong thing. You can’t afford this, you don’t have time for this, this is pure indulgence.’ There is this horrified terror that I’ve done the wrong thing, and there’s no getting off this bus, and as a consequence, life will now go terribly wrong.
“I sense that the voice which says all the fearful negative stuff is very afraid, and I sense that part of this fear is a misunderstanding of my significance in the whole scheme of life– as if I am the one whose responsibility it is to plug the dam, and that by making the ‘wrong’ decision, the consequences could be catastrophic for the whole world. (It sounds daft when I write it down, but that is the level of terror and horror I feel.) And I wonder if, by being with the terror this part feels, if my larger self could find a way of not taking my life quite so seriously. That, maybe, yes, there are things that are ‘right’, but that maybe ‘wrong’ is not the opposite of ‘right’. Somehow I think this would help this frightened part– if there was another opposite to ‘right’ than wrong’. Then choice making would cease to be a Russian roulette.”
Dear Maggie,
It sounds like, as you wrote this email, you took quite a few steps in to your whole issue. I want to point to your letter and say: “Look! This is how people sound when they know Focusing!” It’s not just, “I have a hard time making decisions” or “I feel overwhelmed by too many choices.” There is so much intricacy in how you sense what is going on for you.
Because of that, I can tell by the time you got to the end of your email you were in a somewhat different place than you were at the start. (Can everyone see that?)
You already started doing exactly what I would have suggested, which is to turn toward the negative part and sense that it is afraid… and then sense into what it is afraid about. You sensed that its fear had to do with “misunderstanding” your significance “in the whole scheme of life” — that something in you has been believing that huge consequences ride on your choice of whether to take a course or not.
So… no wonder it has been hassling you about every decision being wrong, if that’s what it believes!
Is there another opposite to ‘right’ than ‘wrong’? How about ‘not there yet’ or ‘partly right’ or ‘in the right direction’ or ‘not yet right’?
My GPS is so non-judgmental. If I don’t take the turn she had planned for me to take, she never tells me I’m wrong. She just says, “Recalculating….” I love that because it reminds me that wherever I am, from here I can move toward what is right for me.
