A Firm Decision
And the unseen forces that follow...
A lot of people slide through life, letting things happen to them, instead of deciding what they want and going after it.
Why is that?
I think it might be because if we choose to go after something and fail, we'll feel disappointment (or we’ll feel like a disappointment, a failure).
If we choose to go after something, firmly decide, we're taking responsibility for our life and responsibility for the outcome of our decision.
If life just happens to us…it wasn't really our fault, was it?
In this day and age, we have a lot of people playing the victim about the circumstances of their life, while never doing anything to make it better.
But, when you choose something, really make a firm decision, unseen forces begin to work in your favor.
Last year I led a group of homeschooled teens through a book study of The Alchemist, by Paolo Coehlo. It is such a beautiful book filled with wisdom in a simple story.
"When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”
~Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
But, it isn't just when you want something, that would be easy.
We all want things we don't have. We all want things that don't seem to be coming to us.
Wanting might be where it starts, but it's really quite passive. The 'want' might even come as a faint whisper from your heart (those are the one's to listen to).
In order to really set the wheels in motion, set the unseen forces in your favor, you can't just passively want, you have to make a firm decision.
“When someone makes a decision, he is really diving into a strong current that will carry him to places he had never dreamed of when he first made the decision.”
~ Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
Of course, the decision is also just a step along the path, but a decision is more active. With a decision you're choosing something, not passively allowing life to happen to you.
In 2016, after a flood, the loss of our business, and an unexpected move, we sat at a big decision point. We knew we weren't going to stay where we were, but what were we going to do?
Life had definitely been happening to us, but we had to make a decision about where we were going to take it from there.
It was another fork in the road moment. There were so many paths we could see before us as possibilities, but which did we want to pursue.
I had been working in an industry I disliked for over a decade, my accidental career. I had spent the last two years daydreaming about moving into an RV and traveling with my family full-time, like I saw others doing on YouTube.
I wanted it so much, but I couldn't figure out how it was possible for us.
My rational mind liked to remind me that we would have to have somewhere to keep all of our stuff, we didn't have an RV, and we didn't have any sort of extra money to make all of these things happen.
After the flood my partner, Johnny, wanted to move to California. I saw that as trading floods and hurricanes for earthquakes and forest fires in a place that was farther away from our families and way more expensive. I mean, California is beautiful and all, but I did not want to put down roots there.
But, the flood had cracked something open inside of me. It allowed me to see possibilities that I hadn't realized before.
Even though we didn't lose much of our actual physical belongings in the flood, something about it made me feel less attached to them instead of more.
"What if we sold all our stuff and went to California in an RV?" I asked.
And he agreed.
We still didn't know how to make it happen, but we made the decision about what we wanted and started taking the steps, like driving out into the night, only able to see a few feet ahead, and trusting our headlights to continue showing us the way.
For the next six months, we began the process of downsizing, with a goal to let go of 75% of our stuff (in the end we let go of 90%, but that's a story for another time).
We made the decision to sell our stuff, get an RV and travel, with no realistic means to do any of it. No money, no RV, just a decision.
Then we began to act on the decision, in ways that we actually could in the moment.
If we were going to do this, we'd have to get rid of our stuff. Even though we didn't have a plan for how it was ALL going to work, we began taking the first step of downsizing our stuff. That was a step we could take.
That one step, led to another and another.
Over the course of the next six months, things happened that couldn't have been planned or prepared for that led us to actually being able to move into an RV and travel for four and a half years (also another story for another time).
We want certainty in this life and it just doesn't exist.
Even when you play it safe and do "everything right," there's no certainty.
It's an illusion. Unexpected things happen every day.
So, listen to your heart.
What is it calling you to?
"What you seek is seeking you."
~Rumi
Make the decision to follow it.
Take the first step and watch what shows up in your path:
unexpected,
unanticipated,
unexplainable things that will lead you to your desire in ways you could never have prepared for.
Inside the Living The Game of Life community this month we've been exploring The Power of Choice and Decision. Our monthly workshop is coming up on July 21st.
✨ The Alchemy of Choice: Turning Intuition into Action
This month’s workshop is a powerful exploration of the inner work behind our decisions — how to move from hesitation to alignment, and begin choosing from a place of trust rather than fear.
We’ll draw on the timeless wisdom of both Florence Scovel Shinn and Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist as we explore what it means to become an active co-creator of your life.
Inside the workshop, you’ll:
Learn a simple 3-step decision-making framework
Experience a guided meditation to revisit past choices and connect to their emotional patterns
Apply those insights to a present choice you’re navigating now
Leave with a repeatable practice and a deeper sense of inner clarity
This is more than a mindset shift — it’s an energetic shift.