“There’s always a cost and a payoff.  Every decision or action has pros and cons, it’s up to you to decide which direction the balance falls in a choice you are facing.  Weigh up what makes logical sense, then check in with how you really feel in your heart and what you sense in your gut as this can be what tips the scales.  What are we willing to put in and what will we get out of it?” Wild Lotus Tarot.  This is along the same lines as your new life is going to cost you your old one.  We can’t manage to live multiple lives at once.  The human is infinite things, but we aren’t infinite all at once, it doesn’t work like that.  I’ve shared stories about straddling two lives at once, how the tracks were getting farther and farther apart and I needed to make a choice about which side I was on.  I never really shared that I never wanted to commit or pay the price for either side.  I wanted to know what I would get out of something, all of the caveats and hidden things that would come with it.  I spent so much time not committing that I never took a chance on much. 

I didn’t understand that life was created through decisions.  I always wanted to make the right decision and in doing that, I often faced analysis paralysis.  We all know what happens when we get there: nothing.  I thought life kind of worked on a reward system.  We would get what we want if we behaved a certain way or if we did certain things, like it was transactional.  I could put in an order and get what I wanted if I paid the price.  In so many scenarios that just didn’t happen and I felt completely disheartened and angry with the world.  Especially when I began judging people and felt like I had done more to “deserve” what they had.  I know now that it was jealousy and ego and that I would have to learn to be responsible for my choices no matter what they were.   What I learned is this: beyond a cost and a payoff, life sometimes tests us and teaches us.  It’s a way to learn what we really want.  The truth is that when we are aligned with what we are meant to do, who we are, and what we truly feel, nothing about what we choose feels like a cost.  It’s energy and work we are happy to expend.  It doesn’t seem like work.  That isn’t to say that it isn’t work, it’s just that it feels good, like we are in flow, in connection with source. 

I think the other point of this is it’s a matter of how we label it.  The results are what we make them, what we believe them to be—and quite literally, sometimes life just is.  It’s not good OR bad, it just happens.  We are so trained to label a circumstance so we can make sense of it in our minds but that isn’t always possible.  Some people have an innate gift of seeing the good in everything no matter what while others play the victim.  I’m sure we’ve all done both at some point.  If what happens teaches us something, we can decide if it’s good or bad.  There doesn’t have to be a cost if we understand the value in it.  In that regard everything becomes an asset whether it’s a lesson or a loss—so in a very real sense, everything is a gain.  The only thing I can say with 100% certainty is that if we don’t make any kind of decision, nothing will ever happen.  We will always be stuck.  The cost of that is a life unlived, and what a waste that is.  So, we do the best we can with what we know and with what we feel.  We consider what we want to feel and what we want to do with our lives.  And then we take a deep breath and take the leap.  We learn more and we move forward.