Hard Decision Easy Life

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Hard Decision, Easy Life.
Easy Decisions, Hard Life.
Jerzy Gregorek

Regretting is easy, it’s like day dreaming of a better life. It might be even helpful, if you’re learning from your mistakes and conditioning your mind to act better next time. Making the right decision is often the harder path, it’s not a dream, when you do act on a meaningful problem you are right in the moment, now. Life is now.

The quote from Jerzy Gregorek has really stuck with me. I often ask myself:
Am I doing what’s best now, or am I avoiding making a decision?
Am I going the easy route and how will I pay for it in the future?

Unfortunately there usually is something we’re avoiding. Couldn’t life just be pure bliss and perfection for a few years straight? It’s just not how it works. We reap the rewards from the work we put in. Putting off the work delays the gratification. Put it off for too long and pain starts creeping in. And that’s amazing! We’d be lost without it. Would you be ready to start on those hard problems without a healthy dose of suffering from time to time?

You would, really?

Fulfilled Life

I could argue that the secret of a fulfilled life is learning to do the things, which are good for you, but are hard and then feeling joy while doing them. If that were the case, you’d eagerly take on the toughest of your challenges. How amazing would life be even tomorrow, if you’d start on that quest today?

“Today?” you say. “Why not tomorrow? I have so much to do today! I might be working overtime tonight, I have shopping plans and then…” here you pause to think of a few more excuses, but your mind comes up with just one, but a really profound one. “I have to finish watching that show on Netflix!”

And so life drags on. Today similar to Yesterday, Tomorrow similar to Today, but have you seen the world outside? After winter comes spring and then summer and fall. Nature flourishes, blossoms, grows and matures. Don’t you think you should too?

In fact if you’re reading this you probably already are. After all, you're a seeker. You sometimes like to grab life by the handfuls. Yet how can you keep that up, lead a balanced and fulfilled life?

Where to Start

Yes, we come back to the hard part. And I really mean it, start today, even if it’s going to be a teeny tiny decision. It will start you on the path to change.

Have a look at the 6 aspect of your life:

Physical
Intellectual
Occupational
Spiritual
Social
Emotional

Which aspects are you doing the worst in?
What’s blocking you?
What decisions have you been putting off?
Is there one thing you could do today to make a change?
Think in Pareto terms: What’s the one thing that will give me the biggest return on my time and energy?

Promise

Do this exercise in a notebook or a sheet of paper. Write down 5 points:

Problem
Solution
How this problem causes you pain and how much pain will it cause in the future, if you do nothing about it.
What will your life look like, if you solve the problem. What will the rewards be like now and in the future.
Your promise to commit to it by a certain deadline.

It's crucial that you dedicate yourself to doing the solution that you found. Later on you might find that it was not perfect. It doesn't matter. Thanks to doing part of the task you gain insight into how to solve the rest. If you wouldn't have started you wouldn't have gained that insight. So don't beat yourself up. Getting up and doing the thing that's important is what counts, as when you learn to do it, you can change about anything in your life.

We’re a Whole

Yet if you find a solution, and just leave it there in your notebook,your mind will know that you're not interested in fixing your life. There are many aspects to our personality, but we are one person. You might think that you can divide your life into compartments, be diligent and thorough at work, but an absolute mess at home.

It doesn't work that way unfortunately. Who you really are and how you deal with problems, even the tiny things like eating your sandwich or combing your hair, is how you function. You can keep pretending only for so long.

For this very reason I’m talking about solving problems although it’s a blog of a financial well-being app. In order for us to achieve well-being we need to look at our life as a whole. After all, what good is a full bank account without personal fulfillment.