You Can't Solve Decisions.

By the time I was 20, I knew I needed to work for myself. I really struggled with having my time, movements, and objectives decided for me. So I left my job and started my first business.

That was almost 20 years ago, and I have worked for myself ever since.

I have found freedom in this, but I have also come to appreciate that freedom and responsibility are inextricably linked. They are, in fact, two sides of the same coin.

At the heart of our responsibilities are our decisions. When you are responsible, the buck stops with you. Therefore, the decisions are in your hands.

As well as a business, I am now running a home and a family. The decisions have multiplied.

Everything from, where shall we live? To what shall we have for dinner?

The last two decades have taught me a lot about decisions, how they shape my reality, what drives them, what happens when I make poor ones, and how to make ones that I feel at peace with no matter how they transpire.

For me, it has become apparent that making a decision is more akin to painting an artwork than solving an equation.

Allow me to explain…

In my early twenties, I had arrived somewhere in my life I didn’t like, and as someone I no longer wanted to be. So I began to question how I got there. What I realised is that the values I was holding, and the aims they related to, had created an unconscious framework through which many of my decisions were made.

Question: Shall I buy this expensive Audi SQ7 I can barely afford?

Vision: Be a rich, attractive, enviable, cool person.

Unconscious Values: Appearance / Status demonstration / Ego validation

Decision: Yes, I will buy this car.

At this point I had very little connection to my body and was living almost entirely in a conceptual, mental reality. So the mind said yes.

But this was also at a point where this version of myself was starting to fall apart.

Ten days after driving it off the forecourt, I pulled up at home. I sat in the car and I thought to myself… Why have I actually bought this car?

Do I love the way it handles, the mechanics? Am I passionate about this vehicle? No.

Do I want my cousins and friends to think I am more successful than I am? Yes.

That day I drove the car back to the garage. Luckily, it was still inside the 14-day window, and I returned it and got a skateboard.

Had I been connected to my internal landscape, to the signals from my body, in the way I am now, I would never have driven that car away in the first place. Even if my mental constructs, the frame of values I was holding, had logically persuaded me it was the correct choice, something in me would have been at unease. Something ineffable would have risen up in me and given me pause for consideration. And having walked away from the garage, eventually a clarity would have emerged.

Within the framework I was holding prior to buying that car, within that identity, it was a rational decision to buy that car. But I was no longer actually aligned to the framework, nor the identity that I was inhabiting.

This taught me there are two landscapes through which a decision must be made, and that these landscapes work best when they are integrated and coherent.

There is the conceptual landscape, which is ‘above the earth’. It is in the air, able to project ideas, visions, frameworks, logic and rationale.

Then there is the physical landscape, which is on the ground, able to feel, to experience the embodied reality.

Imagine you have a mountaineer and a control centre. The mountaineer is climbing, her feet dug in, hands gripping. She can feel the wind, sense the contours, the atmosphere. Then 70 miles away is the guy in the control tower, watching through his drone footage. He has a high view, he can look ahead of the climber and offer direction. But he is not on the ground. Only she can feel the exact route, the timing of the movement, the intuitive navigation of the rockface. Together, working in dialogue, they have the best chance of successfully scaling the mountain.

Decisions are not simply a list of pros and cons. A decision is not an equation. The control tower doesn't work well in isolation. The control tower can hold the framework of values and identity, but needs to be evaluated and expressed through the feeling of the body on the ground.

When an artist sits down at the canvas, they have the frame of the canvas, the vision or intention of what they want to paint. They have their skills and materials, perhaps even a pencil sketch. Then they feel. They allow for the expression to come through the body, and sometimes the lines are not as straight.

Recently we had to move house.

I attended many viewings.

My partner and I had our list of values. There were a couple of houses that ticked all of the boxes, on paper, in concept, so I went to see them. But when I walked into them, my body responded, no. It even got to the point where we were due to be moving a week later and we still had nowhere to go! My mind started trying to convince me to take the one that ticked the conceptual boxes, even though it didn't feel right.

Then someone responded to an ad I had placed. We visited the home, Prue cried, I sighed in relief, and by the weekend we were moved in.

On more than one occasion, we have said to each other, imagine if we had taken that other house.

Sometimes, the time isn’t right to make a decision. Often, my answer to a decision is… I don’t know. Then I wait, then I do know, and I know that there is a leap of faith in every decision.

If I ignore my inner knowing and make a purely rational decision, and it doesn't work out, I don’t feel good. I feel remorse.

If I trust my intuition and consult with my values, and it creates difficulty, I am still at peace that I am where I am supposed to be.

Our decisions are a fundamental part of our participatory dance with life.

In a dance there is intention and pattern, as well as feeling, rhythm and timing.

If we are finding them draining, rushed, forced and dissonant,
we may well have fallen out of step with ourselves.

Until the next time,

Peace and love,

Alex