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When the mind is distorted and lost, no decisions should be made.
The past year has been a challenge to all of us on so many levels, to say the least. Any human being living on this planet has been somehow affected by the difficulties it bore and carried with it toward 2021.
I, for example, have been struggling with making tough decisions in my life—ones that can actually affect my trajectory in life, my physical presence in places, my mental health, and my relationships. I must admit I have been stuck without decently making up my mind—or I could possibly end up making the wrong decisions.
I have never felt this stuck before, and I know for a fact that I am usually capable of knowing what I want, and I work smart and hard to get to it. What changed? What happened?
Well, simply, and as we all know it, the deadly 2020/2021 combo happened.
A good friend, more of a sister, once told me to not go for something unless I get the green light for it (and not the yellow one even)—this notion got stuck with me. To say the least, with the current situation, I think the spectrum of colors lost the color green in all its shades, and it is only facing us with red colors and alarms vigorously.
When faced with too many obstacles, the mind freezes, crawls into a safe place, stops effective analysis, and only operates in “safe mode” (Windows 98 flashback).
In times of stress, when every inch of patience and sustainability in us is tested, we go into survival mode, and we go into the fight-or-flight state, the black-and-white, the in and out.
It is actually called splitting in psychology when the mind only sees two extremes—the positive versus the negative—and cannot hold opposing thoughts. It sees the situation and the world as completely positive or completely negative without the entire spectrum in between.
The mind, like the body, needs to rest, needs training, can be exhausted and unable to operate properly if we don’t take good care of it (as in not well rested, not cleared out, not reset every once in a while). And in stressful life encounters—in the eye of the storm—the mind is definitely as clouded as its surroundings, and even more, it has to do extra efforts to operate in bad conditions; suboptimal situations.
And here comes the challenge. When we feel the weight of the world on our shoulders, when pressured to take an instant decision in an unplanned manner, let us do absolutely nothing—just take a deep breath.
No, this is not blasphemy. It is a raw statement against reality. It is a way to command and control our minds to relax, breathe, clear, and declutter. Then we contemplate our next decision and let our possible next move sink in, take its toll, feel right, feel doable, and feel like this is it; this is what we want to do next.
What we decide might turn out to be for our good (or not), but this is beyond the point. The point is, when the silence gets too loud, when the pressure is breaking us, when there is too much to do and to wrap our heads around, the key is to actually do nothing, let this chaos rest, phase out, get a clear view, and receive the green light to start the next race that the next decision might trigger in our lives.
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