What makes you hesitate? Why is it that you sometimes feel conflicting emotions when you have to make a choice?
And what do you do? What‘s the dominant factor driving your choices? In this blog I’ll tell about one of those moments in which I followed my heart, although all kinds of potential dangers forced themselves on to me. Thrilling? Yes, quite so. Maybe that’s why a situation like that eventually brings in a lot of satisfaction.
I’ll first take you to last summer. I went to the summer festival of Gent (to celebrate the start of my holidays) and we had a great evening! Singing, dancing, chatting, eating, more dancing and lots of fun.. What a great city Gent is! On the way back I already said: ‘Tomorrow I want to go again!’ At home we put a nice compilation on Facebook. The next morning I got a message from someone: ‘Hey, I just noticed you were also visiting Gent! Will you be there tomorrow, too?’ Not a special message in itself, but I had talked to this Facebook friend only twice seven years ago.. Immediately I felt very clearly: ‘Yes! I want to go there!’ I remembered him as a nice man who enjoys life. The combination with the festival in Gent sounded like a good one.
So here my search for somebody to join me to Gent started. Without really thinking about it, I immediately decided I wanted to go to Gent together with somebody else. One had a birthday party, one had a wedding to go to, visitors, a weekend tour, and on and on. Strangely, everybody was enthusiastic but no one had time to join me. Have you ever had such a situation? Think about it. What thoughts went through your head? I even considered asking people to join me which I normally would never ask. No, that was too odd. After a while I realised that it maybe had to be like this, that I should go by myself. In the meantime, messages dropped in like ‘You can join us if you like?’ and ‘You’re more than welcome.’ So – tadaa – there we had a moment with conflicting emotions.
My feeling stayed the same and was very clear: ‘Yes, I want to go to Gent!’ But all the potential dangers crossed my mind, trying to create fear and doubt in my mind: ‘Are you going there just by yourself? What if it will be dissapointing! What will he think? What if you won’t find a parking place’ and more thoughts like that. Symbolically, I opened my suitcase and let all the fears and doubts march in there. Well cleaned!)
Across the suitcase was a light-coloured linnen bag. I wanted all positive thoughts to go in there. They also rushed by, but they sounded much happier: ‘Listen to your feeling. How does it feel when you go by yourself and have a nice evening? If you don’t try you won’t know. Why not? Just go. You’re planning to go on holiday on your own for a month, aren’t you? You love that. So an evening in Gent will be all right, won’t it?’
Now imagine the heavy suitcase and the light linnen bag. You’re going somewhere, which one do you take? Exactly! Me too! I often consciously choose to let the heavy suitcase where it is and take the light one. That is: I try not to let fear reign over me and try to follow my feeling. Of course that is easier said than done. For those who like visualisations: first I stand with the heavy suitcase in one hand and the linnen bag in the other. I put them both down and alternatingly pick them up. I really hesitate! And what’s strange about it, is that usually I seldom have that feeling. The step to go to such an event all by myself is apparently a serious one. But in the end I follow my intuition. I just couldn’t drop that feeling.. ‘Yes, I want to go to Gent’ was clearly dominant.
Do you have trouble making decisions?
A – Maybe
B – Who knows
C – Sometimes yes, sometimes no
Shortly after that moment in which I took the decision ‘Alright, I’ll just go and see how the evening will look like’ I get a text message from a friend who had been in Gent all day with her anonymous flirt. I had not managed to contact her, until now: ‘If you decide to come this way and would like to meet, let me know.’ Yes!! Now watch out, this may sound vague to you. But when I’ve taken a decision in a situation like this, there’s often happening something which makes me feel that I’ve taken the right decision. It can also feel like a reward. Do you know that feeling? I’m also aware that this could be a creation of my own mind.. Because if I had decided not to go, would there have been a beautiful movie on the tv? Anyway, this message from my friend was the definite little push towards Gent. So after a while I found myself happy and full of energy in my car driving to Gent. I felt proud about following my intuition and I was looking forward to a cosy evening in Gent.
Right?
