It’s estimated that the average adult makes about 35,000 somewhat conscious decisions each day. How that number was truly concluded is beyond me, but let’s go with it. Why is decision making difficult?
I think this will be a dynamic page, relative to current times as part of a wellness side to my blog, but we’ll see… I’m yet to make a solid decision on that.
Emotional Inspiration
My Recent Decision-Making Experience
The 30th June marks another day of which, to most, I have made a fairly crazy decision. In resilience to adversity, I left the “safety” of my home and I took a flight to Germany.
Firstly; however, let’s look at how this circumstance came to be.
Recovering A Bad Decision
Before I left Italy to return home, back in March, I also had a big decision to make.
Return home, as advised, or persevere and try to continue the journey I had started. Looking back I wish I’d have persevered, and here is why.
One. I haven’t been scared of covid-19 from the off. I truly believe it’s a mockery and there’s a bigger agenda behind the propaganda being spilled everywhere. You really don’t need to watch any “conspiracy theorists” to see that the whole thing is a joke on human intelligence – which I’ve also concluded, isn’t so intelligent.
People often say, “but what if your parents DID get ill”. Well, it’s no different from any other day of the year, really is it? A decision would be made as to what is appropriate at the time.
Two. I returned home to make money. For that “opportunity” I traded my location (Italy) and the potential to stay on the road learning new skills with new people in person every day.
I traded those priceless opportunities for money in London. A place I’d left six months before with no intention of returning.
As a result, and I should have foreseen this outcome, but the UK decided to restrict Human freedom too, so there wasn’t any money for me to actually earn.
Three. I also thought things at home would have improved.
I thought I’d built up enough experience to resolve differences with my family – and actually, I did with my mum, which is amazing, but overall, whilst I was growing and learning from amazing people every day, things of course remained pretty much the same back home.
Returning home felt “right” at the time. That’s because it also felt easy as fuck. I made a decision based upon greed and ease of difficulty.
As a result I found myself in state of constant procrastination and frustration.
Things hadn’t gone to plan, so now I was pathless. I figured this craziness would go as quickly as it came, so I didn’t bother with a routine.
I’ve been “leaving in two weeks” for the last three months.
With no routine, my sleeping pattern depreciated, obviously resulting in mild depression.
I bought an online nutrition course and finished all of the learning material, but the diet plans were damn strict. I gave up on the exams.
Maybe I’ll go back to them one day, although I don’t agree with managing minute details on the daily. It should be and it can be, simple to manage a healthy diet without calorie counting and macronutrient counting.
As always I have digressed.
In summary, the decision to return to England was based upon simplicity and making money, neither of which I needed any more of than I already possessed.
I had so many options in reality.
To visit a friend in Serbia, to return to Germany and perhaps even stay with friends in Hungary or Slovakia.
Ultimately it’s one of things – in hindsight, bla bla bla. I could have spent the rest of my life dreaming of a time machine and wishing upon stars that I could go back and change that decision.
Ok, maybe it wasn’t that dramatic of a decision, but you get the idea.
I could have continued sitting around complaining.
To motivate myself to move on, I could have put my positive bunny hat on and turned all those negative frowns upside down.
Of which there were plenty of positives returning home. I did make some money through UK benefits. I bought a new, more appropriate backpack, and I packed it a lot better this time, with fewer clothes and more survival gear.
I had time to take the nutrition course, and watch philosophy youtube videos all day, and I also had full days of playing video games. etc. etc. etc. the list could go on.
However, the method of moving on that I chose and have used consistently for a while was “whatever”. It happened, life can be shit. I made a shit decision. There were some positives, some negatives. I got something wrong. Whatever. My ego hurt a little. What is my next move?
I feel looking at things in acceptance of negativity helps with acceptance of loss in all things. I wrote a post about Tibetan Sand Mandalas a while back which is relatable.
Spontaneity & Chaos
Once I found out that the German border was open and there wasn’t a quarantine in place or a forced vaccination, I took a flight the next day.
A majority of people see this kind of spontaneous decision making as crazy.
I stayed at my friend Laura’s house in Hamburg, where I created a vague plan.
I generally only make vague plans as things ironically never go to plan. It removes disappointment when things go “wrong”.
It’s also important to note that an emotional experience motivated me to make a decision to prepare for a spontaneous exit.
I had the entire quarantine period to really do something “productive”. This again is to be questioned. Productivity is relative, and relatable to success. They are actually only opinions of individuals and society.
If you want an easy life: sitting around watching YouTube, eating mini cheddars sounds pretty easy to me.
Of course, then it’s a matter of sustainability and then that’ll be reliant on something else, meaning we could go on all day.
I watched Jurassic Park the other day. Yes. I travelled to another country, and watched Jurassic Park on Netflix.
It was fantastic, and part of my hangover recovery.
The point of this confession is to share the acknowledgement of Ian Malcolm’s Chaos Theory. Since the beginnings of my research into success or ways of life of all living things, I have also come to accept the Chaos Theory.
Maybe You’ve all left me by this point as they did with Ian Malcolm in the movie.
But if you’re still here let’s delve into how ego can also hinder decision making.
Destructive Features Of The Ego
I developed an ego when I was working in my IT career and in analysis of the last 10 years, it damaged or halted a lot of things, such as relationships, pursuit of knowledge, physical wellness and… yeah pretty much general growth of soul, body and whatever else makes me, me.
I pray that I have the knowledge – if that is possible – to prevent an ego growing too large about travelling. And I’m not even sure if a travel ego is truly possible neither… mmmm yeah it probably is, I’ve met a few travel dicks in my life. Anyway. The only truth I know about travel is that it’s near impossible to predict anything. The world is rife with entropy and when you expose yourself to those chaotic climates, you can only attempt to counter them with your experience and available tools.
For example. I was super excited when I confirmed my place on the farm in Galicia, Spain … but I had no idea that I would end up hating it, leading to the next significant decision to attend Oktoberfest and have one of the most memorable weekends of my life.
I kinda planned to work with horses on my trip, but I didn’t expect to ride for the first time though the Bayern forests.
I didn’t plan on meeting so many inspirational …
I didn’t plan on a worldwide pandemic occurring and leading to the decision of going home after 6 months of travel on a 3 year travel plan.
This list goes on. The point is, before I made any decisions, I made assumptions and “intellectual” guesses.
Those assumptions were almost always wrong, because of a lack of knowledge or something random happening.
Actually this is also applicable to something as “safe” as an office job.
This helps keep my ego in check. How can I know anything if my plans are susceptible to so much chaos?
This in turn motivates me to discover.
Resulting in an action.
Resulting in chaos.
Resulting in motivation.
Resulting in an action.
I think that’s why I and so many others really like travel.
Life really is like a box of chocolates.
But if you allow your ego to believe it is always right and knows the outcome of any decision made, you’ll make it incredibly difficult to grow in any walk of life.
Row Row, Row Your Boat
Occasionally I find it incredibly hard to live around people who trust today’s society and it’s definition of success.
My objectives perhaps correlate with the societal definition but largely lives outside its parameters.
I love the analogy of the old nursery rhyme row row, row your boat, gently down the stream – not forcefully, forcefully, forcefully.
How is this appropriate?
Well, if you’re sitting there thinking, “I have no inspiration, therefore I’ll never take action”… don’t worry… because through the rifts of chaos, somewhere down the stream, you’ll eventually be connected with an emotional experience.
It may be good. It may be bad.
You could see a friend do well and become overwhelmed with joy.
A relative might die and you’ll contemplate life.
If neither of those, the universe has one more trick up it’s sleeve, which is to activate the existential crisis mode in your brain.
You will eventually take action. So don’t worry. Don’t damage yourself though further unnecessary stress.
Row your boat gently down the stream. Life is but a dream.
Conscious Decisions - Should They Be Difficult?
I had a conversation with a friend a few weeks back on consciousness.
It’s very natural for a human to discard something that is no longer necessary. Let’s take a bottled drink for example. Once you finish the drink, the bottle is no longer necessary. So we throw it away. Now the only reason most of us don’t throw it just anywhere is that we understand the damage it could do to the environment. So we put it in the bin, where we know someone will clean the bin as part of a process.
So when a wolf kills a deer and eats the specific organs or body parts that it likes the most and leaves the carcass… does the wolf consciously understand that the remains will be eaten or used by other forces of nature?
Or is the wolf just naive to potential disease and just does as his instinctual programming infers?
There doesn’t seem to be any stress on the decision made by the wolf.
Actually, taking the whole life of a wolf into account, it’s only stress would only ever come from surviving desperate circumstances.
Yet, the domesticated human appears to have more stress than a wild animal. How can that be?
It’s incredibly easy for a human in this world to procreate and live until an old age.
Why such fear and stress about making a decision?
Conclusion
Let’s combine everything into some simple notes.
Inspiration: Awesome travel YouTube videos
Ego: It’ll be difficult and you’ll probably fail, because I’ve experienced something similar before.
Fear: What if things don’t work out and I waste money buying these things?
Answer to both: I don’t know what will happen, so whatever, let’s see.
Action: Research more travel information and purchase required equipment for my next trip.
Emotional Inspiration: Arguing with household members, resulting in desire/inspiration to leave.
*The research and purchasing of those items better equipped me to allow a more spontaneous decision.
Ego: Yeah I mean I could just do it, but I am pretty comfortable here and I know accommodation will be hard to find during a pandemic.
Fear: I know it’s not comfortable at home but… the devil you know feels more comfortable than the devil you don’t know.
Answer: Yeah, great! Thanks Fear, you’re absolutely right! I don’t know what will happen so let’s just see.
Action: I flew to Hamburg, stayed there a week, took a blablacar to Leipzig, and now I’m house-sitting for someone until the beginning of August.
As we’ve discussed, the world is in constant chaos. Whatever experience you’ve had in the past, or knowledge you have on the subject will be incorrect until the result has occurred.
So simply, take action.
It’s not as easily done as said or written – but just follow the process I laid out and I’m certain you can diminish your fear and ego, which are both preventing you from doing whatever you want.
And don’t stress yourself out, thinking you need to make major decisions all the time. If you simply row your boat gently, chaos will create an inspiration. You just need to make your decision, which will be even easier to make, if you’ve already made some preparation.
All of this can also be used to replace bad habits with good habits in your life too, but I’ll write about that in more detail another time, probably.
I’m not sure how much more I can add to this post, though I have enjoyed writing it. Of course, it could be that no one reads it at all. Maybe just one person will read it, and their life will change and they’ll become super filthy rich and give me a whole load of money to thank me – of which I may be too scared to accept, because it may change me or my current values.
Whatever.