One day when I was 27, I was driving up route 422 toward home feeling amazing. Blue skies outside, blue skies inside. I had been in turmoil for some time, but I had just made a big decision, and I felt like the clouds parted and everything was going to be okay. I was free.
Twenty-two years later, I still look back on this as the sliding doors moment in my life. Partly because of the decision itself and the powerful feedback I received in the form of feeling, but mostly because within a few days I let someone talk me out of it.
Over five decades, I’ve made plenty of obviously monumental decisions: where to live, whom to marry and divorce, jobs to take and not. I likely made hundreds of seemingly unimportant decisions, too, that were life-changing in ways I won’t ever know.
This one stands out though, the one in the car. I took an action, got the feedback that it served my wellbeing, and then I betrayed my own best interest.
Going back on that decision is one of a few regrets I carry with me. My impulse is to say it’s my only regret, but of course that is untrue. Plenty of people say they live without regret as if living without regret is a virtue. I say if you don’t rack up a few regrets in life, you haven’t learned anything. Of course there are things I regret, not because of what could have been, but because of the pain my actions caused. And in this case, I don’t know whether my action caused more or less pain for anyone else, but it did cause a lot of pain for me, and made me a more painful person to be around for a long time.
“Trust the feeling of freedom,” became a guiding principle during my year of living synchronously. Like many wisdom practices in this dualistic world, learning to trust the feeling of freedom means learning to trust when the feeling of not-freedom is present, too, and using the information to make freer decisions. Does this not-freedom mean I’m in situation that will keep me stuck in some inauthentic or harmful way of being? Does it require a different action or a different mindset?
The best advice I’ve ever gotten about decision-making comes from one of Anne Lamott’s books. When she was struggling with a big decision, her priest (I think) advised her to pick one of the options and spend the next few days living as if the decision were already made. If she felt relief, if was the right decision. If she felt weighed down by regret, it was the wrong decision and she could still change her mind.
This is where trusting the feeling of freedom is key. I’ve used this framework for years, and it works in the micro, too. (“Do I want to cancel plans tonight?” Yes, I’m going to cancel plans. Pause a moment. Stop doing the getting-ready-to-go-somewhere things. Do I feel lighter, freer, relieved? Or do I feel bad because part of me actually wanted to go, but I was overwhelmed in the moment and bailed?) It’s a low-stakes way of learning to identify and trust what I actually want, versus what it seems like I should want, or what I think I want, or what someone else is doing their best to convince me I want because it benefits them.
The micro is the place to start. The results can be macro. To tear anything down outside, you have to tear it down inside. This kind of decision making, trust, and a gut level understanding of what freedom is (limitless) and what it feels like (great!) also makes it seem unreasonable to stay stuck to any ideas that limit freedom and agency for anyone, anywhere, in any way.