This Way Or That Way?

It’s been on my mind the last few days. Choice, I mean. We have so many choices available to us, which for a Libra like me, known to be indecisive at the best of times, can be both wonderful and overwhelming!

Three years ago today I was in California recording my debut album. I was in my heaven, honestly. They were the best three weeks of my life. I was so grateful for all the amazing people around the world who had helped me raise the money to get there, so excited to be hearing my own songs come alive, so happy to be spending my days immersed in what I loved to do. It was such an incredible time and I will never forget it.

What has that got to do choices? Well, it was my choice to follow my dream in the first place; it was a choice to commit to something I had always wanted to do. It was a huge choice for me to ask for help with the funding, to travel on my own and stay to with people I had only met once before and to record a professional album when I’d only ever stepped into a tiny home studio before then. It was terrifying and exhilarating and so utterly worth any fear. At the time I remember thinking that those weeks had balanced out all the pain I’d ever been through, that all my suffering had been worth it to be there. It’s an incredibly life-altering moment, when you realize that being alive as you makes sense. It was like I’d arrived.

However, despite all this, in the more difficult times that followed, I questioned it all. Life got in the way and the reality was that I had no idea what to do next or how I would ever begin to make the rest of my dreams come true. The hurt and disappointment I met along the way made me forget how blessed I was to be sharing my songs, and instead had me believing I’d made a big mistake… the sense became sense-less. And there’s nothing like heartache to throw everything up in the air, right?

But I have absolutely no regrets now, simply because every choice and every step I’ve taken has made me who I am today and it seems to me that if we are happy in the present, we can never, ever  regret anything in the past. We humans grow in the most bizarre ways sometimes and while it doesn’t mean that we should be any less responsible for the lives we lead, we never truly know what life has in store for us because our blessings can be very mysteriously disguised! So even the most crazy, unexpected outcomes do not make us wrong. They are all experiences and the key is to make sure we learn from them and move into a new space with our eyes and our hearts wider open!

There’s little point in holding on to regret or guilt or blame. It doesn’t help anything. Similarly there’s no point in tying ourselves up in knots over the decisions we are yet to make because that keeps everything stuck, too! I once heard someone say that ‘making no decision is still a decision’ and there are certainly times when waiting (for more details, clarity etc) is the best option, but being indecisive for fear of making the wrong choice is another story. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m not sure I believe in a ‘wrong’ decision anymore. It’s all just part of a journey. There are no guarantees. There are no 100% fool proof choices; anything and everything can change, especially when we all have free will and other people’s choices can affect our own. Perhaps our lives are like a map: we can take one direction or another; sometimes we might come across places that don’t feel right to us, sometimes we might take detours, or a complicated route, but ultimately we get where we are going in the end – wherever that may be for each of us.

Let’s be grateful for what has been and gone and for the choices we made with what we knew then. And hey, even when the red flags were ignored and we made a choice that we knew wasn’t so great, it taught us to trust our gut more the next time, didn’t it? Personally, I believe we never miss what is truly meant for our highest good anyway, and so we might as well just decide to keep living our lives the best we can.

My choice right now is to be happy, no matter what. And to commit to my dream of making a second album. How about you? What do you choose today?

Much love,

Anna