Every choice you make has a consequence. Choose wisely and choose often. — Unknown
We’re encouraged to choose, to choose wisely, to choose what’s best, what feels right, what feels good. Eventually, following all the choosing, we’ll need to face the consequences of our actions. No one actually prepares you for how soul-destroying and heart-wrenching it can be when it all goes wrong, and you look at how your choices have impacted your life, how you’re going to pick up the pieces, if the choices you made don’t necessarily lead to the life you thought it would lead to.
What do you do? Where do you go from here? How do you manage? Then the worrying wheel starts turning. Then the anxiety starts climbing. Then the panic starts choking you. Your brain starts screaming: What the hell have you done?!?
The first thing you do is you stand still. The need to move will probably feel inescapable. But you need to keep still. You need to breathe. You take a breath to settle and stop the spiralling and spinning.
Then you need to forgive yourself for the decisions you made. They were choices you made with the capacity and knowledge available to you at the time. You are where you are now, and it is what it is. Settle and learn. See the lessons.
After that, you accept responsibility for your actions, but also accept that you did what you could with the emotional capacity, wisdom, and life experience you had at the time. You were learning, processing, synthesising and executing in real-time. Stay still long enough to learn the lessons. Settle so that the wisdom and evolution bakes in and takes hold.
Then map out where you go from here, armed with lessons learned, kindness for yourself. You didn’t know then what you know now. And that’s okay. Now you can choose better.
Yellywelly 