How to actually make that life-changing decision happen
two days before Christmas 2014, my mother was diagnosed with a savage cancer. She died the following June. For those six scant yet interminable months, she would plunge towards death every few days. I learned a lot during this period, not least how to restart a drip at 4am. However, most of all I learned how to compartmentalise uncertainty rather than allow myself to be swallowed up by it. No ‘what ifs’ or ‘what thens’, just dealing with whatever was happening right here, right now.
It is a philosophy the AA movement refers to using the phrase ‘one day at a time’. Translation: live life in the present because the future is too vast and overwhelming to contemplate. Besides, why exhaust oneself over something that may not happen? It is an axiom that has been much in people’s minds as the entire planet becomes swept up in corona chaos.
Still, for many, the requirement to live one day at a time is now coinciding with a need to make major life decisions. Do you shut your ailing business, or struggle on? Do you quit the city for life in the country? Do you move on from a failing relationship to start again on your own? How can you come to a conclusion without succumbing to analysis paralysis in the face of such global confusion?
Life coach Mel Robbins is the author of
The 5 Second Rule, which aims to eliminate overthinking in place of not thinking at all. Instead, you must trust your gut. ‘If you have an instinct to act on a goal, you must physically move within five seconds, or your brain will kill it,’ she says. ‘When you feel yourself hesitate before doing something you know you should do, count 5-4-3-2-1-GO and move towards action. If you do not… you will stay stagnant.’
If you can’t even begin to fathom what your gut is telling you, one consolation might be that it doesn’t much matter. Economist Steven Levitt, co-author of
Freakonomics, set up an experiment in which 14,000 subjects decided their fate on the toss of a coin. Six months later, he found those who had made a change were happier than those who hadn’t – even if their rationale had been a mere coin-flip.
Levitt’s findings correspond with the ‘status quo theory’, which suggests that any course of action will be marked by a preference for the safe and familiar. Accordingly, when faced with two options, choose the one that fills you with more fear because it’s probably what you want, if you weren’t too petrified to admit it.
This may sound like a masochist’s charter, but how often is a dilemma a real dilemma and not a choice we are too terrified to make? The moments when I have opened myself up to most change – moving cities, shifting profession, going freelance, giving up alcohol, letting someone into my life – have led to a happiness I never imagined possible. If I were allowed two mottos, they would be: ‘Don’t overthink’ and ‘Embrace change’.