“Reminder: Life is hard either way.  Choose your difficult. Waking up early to work out is hard but so is feeling exhausted and unhealthy.  Having tough conversations to fix a relationship is difficult but so is living with resentment and distance.  Budgeting your money with discipline is hard but so is drowning in debt.  Putting yourself out there is hard and risking rejection and putting your work and heart on the line is hard but so is playing it safe and wondering what could have been.  Growth is hard but regret I would say it’s harder.  Every path has its pain so don’t ask for easy, ask for worth it.  You don’t get to skip difficult but you do get to decide what kind of difficult you live with.  The difference between people who grow and people who stay stuck, it’s not talent, it’s how they handle difficult,” Ryan Leak.  I know we’ve talked about this one before many times, but it is a pertinent reminder that we are in charge of our lives and the choices we make.  It isn’t necessarily about controlling that life because all plans can go awry at any time, but it is about making choices, even if they are difficult.  It is in the choosing, no matter how hard that we learn what we are made of.

If what I wrote a few weeks ago about the unicursal line is true, then it doesn’t matter what we choose because it will all be part of the same path that takes us to the same result no matter what we do.  Again, that has nothing to do with a doom and gloom type of fatalism, it has to do with taking the pressure off and understanding that there is no wrong choice because no matter the outcome, we are safe, and we can’t be anywhere other than where we are.  We can’t go back, we can’t go forward, we can only choose with the information we have now and we do our best.  There is nothing to regret or fear because it is all for a reason and we made the choice for a reason.  I noticed with regret, the only time we start to regret those choices is when we make the choices that we don’t truly believe in—or when we lose the opportunity to make the choice at all.  So make the choice and take the chance because if we have the opportunity now, it’s meant to happen now, we have the opportunity now so take it before we can’t.

No matter what we say, different is hard, but sometimes living the same thing over and over again knowing we had the chance to make a change is harder.  The things that replay in our minds, calling us, telling us they want to be awakened and expressed, the things we want to experience, the things that feel like home even if we haven’t been there or done that before—those are the things that will change us.  Those are the moments we understand what is important and we wouldn’t be afraid if it wasn’t important to us.  If it didn’t mater we wouldn’t worry about it.  What we’ve forgotten, however, is that the experience isn’t always contingent on the result—sometimes it’s about how we get there.  Sometimes we have to go through things a certain way to learn a specific lesson in how to get to the next step.  We have to experience it to understand what it is we really want.  And we have the choice at every turn to either commit and take the chance or to sit and wish for it.  The only way to get it done is to do it so we must always remember that no action is a choice as well.  But we can’t regret what we don’t choose anymore than what we do.  So sit with our hearts and listen to what it tells our minds/bodies/souls and we will know what choice to make no matter how difficult.  It will always be the right thing.