I had been exploring my own decision-making with my coach when I had a liberating ‘a-ha!’ moment. These lightbulb moments are a gift, aren’t they? They provide light on the path and a new perspective. Often I have been unaware of the processes I go through when making a quick decision. It is part of the journey of growing alertness to our own thinking patterns, the reasons for them and what is healthy or not. A bigger, more significant decision does and should take my time and energy to make. But it can be the little decisions that make up our day which can change the trajectory and the quality of our path long term. Choosing gratitude, choosing to pause before speaking, deciding what to overlook and what to fight for. Do my quick, almost subconscious decisions (of which we make on average 35,000 a day!!) lead me to love, to forgiveness, to confidence, to connection?
With my coach, I was looking for a way to express my difficulty in making a certain decision, in deciding what step to take and in which direction. “It’s like stepping onto a tightrope,” I said. Pause. Boom! Yes, exactly. Let’s unpack this. Imagine with me that you are standing in front of a tightrope. What comes into play here? The tightrope is narrow. The tightrope is high. The tightrope is risky. There is no room for manoeuvre. There is a right way and a wrong way to approach this. The consequences of making a mistake could be life-changing. My heart beats fast. I feel inadequate. I don’t have a clue about how to tackle this. What if I fall? What if I hurt myself? Who is watching me? I don’t feel prepared. There is so much that rushes into that moment of standing in front of the tightrope.
So I intuitively described the sense I had in facing a choice was like stepping onto a tightrope. It felt constricted, risky, dangerous even. It felt as though the stakes were so high. In order to step onto the tightrope, one must go through rigorous, sacrificial training that builds strength, poise and confidence. I felt I had to bring all my expertise, experience, values, self-awareness, confidence, strength and faith into this one key moment of taking a step. One step with no second chance. Get it right the first time. Make a good decision with all this weight behind it, making sure nothing is lost or forgotten because that could be disastrous. Exhausting. And of course paralysing. I am not a tightrope walker. I have done zero training in the skill. I have no interest in becoming a tightrope walker. The decision grows in power over me. As does the indecision. The spectre of failure looms large. Of course I can’t walk a tightrope. Why would I want to take this decision? So I remain still. Too afraid of the consequences of attempting to get on the tightrope, because let’s face it, any sensible person who had zero experience or training in tightrope walking would refuse right? (Funny how even writing this, I become aware of the tension in my body. My breathing is shallow. My shoulders are tight.) What can we learn from this?
In the ‘a-ha!’ moment, it came to me that the only person who pictured the decision as a tightrope was me. There was no tightrope. There is no tightrope. The decision only feels risky if I see it as a tightrope. In the ‘a-ha!’ moment the bubble burst and I was faced with the power of my imagination. In coming to an understanding of why I only saw a tightrope, it allowed me to face those reasons, assess them and choose something different.
Wide open space
What happens if I envision a different scenario? Instead of seeing the decision as a tightrope that I had to get right the first time with so much riding on it, I explored the scenario of a wide, open space. Here, I pictured a park in summer. Green and covered in flowers. The space is inviting, welcoming and happy. I do not agonise about my first step in to the park and where exactly to place my foot. In fact my attention is not even on me and the way I am carefully walking. I launch myself into a beautiful place with curiosity, freedom and joy. (My shoulders relax and I breathe out deeply.) I am drawn to one particular flower, dwell there for a while, then I move on when my eye catches another beautiful flower. The picture has a sense of adventure and exploration but in a gentle way. I can go where I choose and the choice doesn’t really matter that much whether I go to the right or the left when exploring.
What happens if I apply this to the decision? I’m curious instead of cautious. I play instead of procrastinate. I experience fun instead of fear. And I move forward. I experiment. Walking into a wide open space creates the momentum I need that was not available at the tightrope.
How amazing! I have gone from thinking that the next step is absolutely crucial for all sorts of reasons to thinking that the next step doesn’t particularly matter! And what is so important in all this is that the tightrope and the park is all a description of what is going on in my thoughts. It reveals and emphasises once again how important out thoughts are. How important it is that we are aware of our thoughts. How important it is that we take responsibility for our thoughts. And how important it is to know that we can change our thoughts.
What difference does it make? I now know I can choose how I position myself at the crossroads of choice. The tightrope does not serve me well. The tightrope constricts and leads to fear and stagnation. Goodbye tightrope thinking! On the other hand, if I approach a decision with the curiosity of a child, open to a new experience with nothing to lose and everything to gain – I am emboldened, free from the fear of failure and more likely to find my way forwards.
If you would like to explore this further in a coaching context please contact Anna at digdeepdreambig@gmail.com
