Are you faced with tough choices in life?
Recently I've found myself having to make some seemingly very difficult decisions in life. As I look more widely around me it strikes me that we're all going to be faced with some tough choices as the global economy moves into increasingly troubled waters. Of course at the highest level we create our reality including especially those difficult decisions. So why do we create such experiences? Are we having some great cosmic joke at our own expense? How can we make it more easy for ourselves to decide and find the best pathway forwards in life?

The purpose of choice
As I contemplated these questions the other day, I was compelled to rewatch a film called "The Matrix". Have you seen it? It is a brilliant metaphor for the society in which we currently live. I was particularly drawn to a scene in which the lead character "Neo" goes to receive advice from "The Oracle" about some difficult choices he has to make. The advice he receives is this...

"You didn't come here to make choices because you've already made them. You're here to try to understand WHY you made them."

These seemingly simple words stopped me in my tracks. I was reminded of the fact that 70% of people who get divorced end up divorcing a second time. It seems many people end one relationship simply to fall into another without really understanding what caused the breakdown in the first place. The same can be said for those who move from career to career or house to house. Unless we understand why we make the choices we do, there remains the risk that we'll simply recreate the same patterns albeit in slightly different circumstances.

Indeed its not until we start to ask why we make the choices we make that true liberation and the possibility to change our reality arises. Firstly, each choice is pre-configured to invite a question: "what does this choice reveal about what I am now being?" "does it serve who I really am?" If not, "why did I make the choice in the first place?" and finally, "if I am now acting according to what I feel to be my highest truth, what choice would I make the next time?"

In fact switching from asking what choice to make to why we are making it is an awesome liberation when you think about it because it means that the outcome of our choices is not really that important. What's important is unveiling another aspect of who and what we are.

If we don't question what we are being within the choices we make and continue just to repeat the same patterns, we won't evolve and we'll be continually faced with similar situations - trapped like the proverbial mouse on a spinning wheel. However, if we let go of the struggle around decision making and just go with what feels right in that moment, then all we have to do is experience the consequences, understand why we made the choice and uncover who we are in the process.

If we do this, we'll find the distorted behaviour patterns that we continually repeat fall away over time and a new reality shapes for us around our new and more highly evolved beingness. So we are truly shaping a different more harmonious reality.

Making tough choices
There's another great line from "The Matrix"...

"You can't see further than a choice you don't yet understand"

In other words, if you're struggling to make a choice, its because you haven't yet realised what that choice is revealing about who you are. The moment is offering a chance for us to understand something about our true nature and it won't let us proceed until we've understood it.

So if you find yourself currently facing a tough choice in life, you might like to try this approach...

• relax as much as possible
• don't labour but simply select the first choice that feels right
• ask why you would make that choice?
• does your choice reveal your highest truth about yourself?
• if not, what would be the alternative choice?
• make the choice that reveals your highest truth and follow it through
• if your new choice does reveal a new aspect of beingness, simply settle into that new state and watch your new reality shape around you.

Seems too simple you might say. However I've conducted countless one-on-one coaching sessions with people who've all been faced with difficult choices and the same answer arises every time. Its not so much about what choice we make but why we made it in the first place.

Asking why instead of what
So if you are faced with a difficult choice today, you might try the suggested approach above. You might try and let go of the tightness around your choice and instead ask why you are making it. You might find that approaching life's difficult decisions in this way is a great liberation. So I'll leave you to make your choices with this summary...

"We are not here to make choices
because each choice is already made,
we simply have to understand why we made the choice;
so it is not a question of "what?" to do but "why?" we do it.
When we switch from asking what to asking why,
then we can liberate ourselves and truly change our reality
to something that more accurately reflects our new state of being.
Chosing to ask "why"? instead of "what?" is in fact the only
authentic choice we will ever make in life,
the rest simply unfolds of its own accord."
Openhand

Incidentally, when I originally wrote this article I clicked the wrong button 'by mistake' and lost an hours work in the blink of an eye! Fortunately I was able to resist the temptation to get angry. Then I realised I didn't choose the wrong button at all; my higher self chose to delete the fruits of my labour to remind me of something - that it is what we are being in the doing not the doing that counts!

I trust that in the fruits of your labour today, you'll realise something new about yourself too.

With love and best wishes,

Chris