Life is the outcome of your decisions.

In January of last year, I left a job I absolutely hated. I broke up with my girlfriend because I didn’t see myself spending the rest of my life with her. I moved apartments because my housemate was self-centred & toxic.

I had only moved to Berlin 6 months earlier.

I made major changes in my life by taking a few, simple decisions.

A few weeks later, as I mused upon the deep sense of fulfilment I felt in my life — that came from taking decisions I knew I needed to take — it made me realise:

Life is the outcome of our decisions.

That’s really what it boils down to at the end of the day.

The decision to leave that job. The decision to not leave that job.

The decision to learn a new skill, or not.

The decision to pursue fulfilment in life, or not.

We focus on our conditions to such an extent that we try to ignore this truth.

We say we don’t have enough savings to leave the job we hate.

We say we love that person that makes our life miserable.

We say fulfilment is for other people, but not for us, not in our situation.

And by creating barriers to our own progress, we pass on the responsibility.

“It’s not my fault because there’s nothing I can do about it.” It veils & denies decisions that we should be making: building up our savings so we can leave our job, looking for another job, speaking to our boss about why we are unhappy, etc.

In fact, in every situation, there are usually endless options open to us, yet we fall back on a non-decision:

To not address any of them, and therefore to decide to settle for what we have.

And that series of non-decisions, to not leave our job, to not pursue greater fulfilment in life, for example, is the reason you are where you are now.

If you like that place, carry on making similar decisions.

If you don’t, time to stop hiding from them.