Choices we make

Choices.  We make them almost every second of every day.  Some matter, some don’t.  Some have lasting consequences, some have next to no impact on our life.  The most important choices we make are the choices between right and wrong.  I also think those are the easiest ones to make if you know your values.  They may not always be easy to carry out, but when you have your values set they are at least easy to know what you should choose.

What tends to be harder are those decisions where there isn’t a clear cut right or wrong – a decision between two or more good things where you have to pick just one.  

For example, whether to go to one event or the other that are scheduled on the same night, or decisions on helping out with one service project or another when the two conflict, or decisions on whether to pursue one business opportunity or another where they are both good options but you can only pick one.  I think making the choice from two good options is incredibly hard! And often we can have the most anxiety making these type of choices.  

We make our pros and cons list and sometimes those help us see which is the better option, but many times the pros and cons are fairly equal and it comes down to guessing which is the best one. Last night I could have gone to either of three things: a ward Valentine's party, a celebration with the people from Daniel's work at the US Embassy or a Valentin's party with the Latin women Club. You couldn't go to all since they were all at the same time so I picked one and have to not stress too much if I made the right choice. We ended up going with the people from the office at the US Embassy. I wanted to attend the ward party because I like to support the efforts the Bishop and the Relief Society are doing on our behalf but Daniel felt that we needed to attend this other event we had paid a lot of money to attend and it sounded very interesting. 

The funny thing I have realized is that I often forget what these decisions started with – they started with two or three GOOD options.  Had it been one bad option and one good option it would have fallen into the category of right and wrong choices and we have already established that those are simple to decide on.  So when I am stressing over a decision between two or three good options I literally have to stop and tell myself that I started with three GOOD options!  So no matter which I choose it will be good.  Sure, one may end up being better but I will never know for sure going into it – so rather than beating myself up over it and having major anxiety over which way to go I have to stop and say “These are both good options so I need to just pick one and rejoice.”  That is why I love the following quote:

“For everything you have missed, you have gained something else; And for everything you gain, you lose something else.  It is about your outlook towards life.  You can either regret or rejoice.

Sure making a choice between three good options means that you might lose something but it also means you gained something.  So make the decision not to regret what you lost but rather to rejoice about what you gained.

con amor,

Vero