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Have you been stuck trying to solve a problem or make a decision and finding yourself nearly obsessed with reviewing the pros and cons and possible outcomes?  You’ve done the research, yet still cannot get a clear answer.  You’re frozen, somehow sure that no matter what path you take, a dire result awaits you.  For example, if you choose the new job, you’re certain the new company will fold after six months, leaving you penniless.  If you stay with the old job, you’ll receive small but secure and steady paychecks while your mind grows cobwebs and all hope of a better future becomes covered in layers of dust.

Your mind just keeps going in circles with the dreaded possible outcomes.  You don’t know how to get unstuck.

In an earlier post, Waiting for an Answer – Are You Listening?, we looked at a solution for this offered by Joseph Murphy.  Today a similar, yet with a different perspective, piece of wisdom is offered by Elkhart Tolle from the Oprah.com article Eckhart Tolle: When You Don’t Know What to Do. 

Eckhart Tolle calls this circular thinking “the voice in your head”.  It follows you around, criticizing, predicting all sorts of dire outcomes, chiding you for your selfishness, ridiculing your skills, making you feel guilty for wanting change.

But what if you could stop the voice?  Even for a few minutes?  What if you could just have delicious, beautiful silence, free of the droning racket of the voice in your head?

Elkhart Tolle considers this silence an essential part of finding clarity and making a decision.  Your sensory perceptions increase.  Your presence in the moment becomes fuller.  The movie screen running pictures of all the possible tragic outcomes goes blank.

What happens then? You begin to realize that right now things are really ok, that all along you’ve been able to do things to get to this moment and that you do have the ability to move moment by moment through your life.  You also realize that you’ll be able to see the difference between realistic paths and the overblown drama that the voice in your head predicts.  And you also realize that no matter what you do, in the long run you’ll be ok, that you can handle both expected and unexpected events.  You’ll realize that no choice is perfect and that it’s possible that both are more or less equal and that it will be how you create the outcome that really matters.

Eckhart Tolle tells us to stay present, completely in the moment, and let your  mind stay in stillness.  From there the right solution will often spontaneously appear in your thoughts.

With that kind of confidence and clarity, even though the outcome is not completely certain, you will be able to make a choice.

In peace,

Patti