Learning to embrace my choices

realising that my fear of choosing the wrong nail colour extends to other parts of my life

Guys, I finally let it happen. After consistently publishing every two weeks for 38 newsletters, I did not manage to last week!

I felt like time was melting out of my hands having just started a new job (reflection for another time) and landing back in Berlin on Wednesday. Somehow the mountain to climb of logging into my personal email on my work laptop and then into my Substack seemed too steep... Each day after Wednesday I told myself I’d write something the next day and then it slipped all the way until today.

This week I want to explore a topic I realise happens to me when I go to the nail salon. I don’t go that often but when I do, I always have this deep fear that I am choosing the wrong colour. I always struggle and beg those with me to help me pick.

I wanted to dig deeper into this because I realise this issue is pervasive in my life. It is not only when it comes to choosing nail colours. That is just the surface of a deeper problem. When I dig deeper and zoom out at the same time, I realise the fear comes being scared of making the wrong choices in life. It comes from a fear of not living the ‘optimal’ and ‘perfect’ life that I ‘should’ be living and whether each individual choice is bringing me closer to the optimum… or not?

I have interrogated this fear many times and have often come to the same roadblocks. I understand that there truly is no one right path in life and whatever path is right is the one that feels good in the gut. But my gut feels queasy when I have to make these choices and my head often takes over. It makes me realise I have work to do. The habitual pattern that is showing up here is that I am allowing my rational brain that has controlled so many of my decisions (and as a result allowed me to excel in so many aspects of my life) to override the feelings and emotions that arises to help me make a holistically good decision.

I have allowed practicalities decide how I make my next choice, and the next one and the next one. Even making the very insignificant decision of choosing a colour for my fingers and toes (lasting maybe two or three weeks) makes my heart stop for a nanosecond and puts my nervous system into action.

I keep telling myself it is not so significant! And whatever colour I choose, I’ll be okay. But somehow my body still doesn’t feel convince by this. Somehow my rational brain, which is doing the reasonable action of being rational here is not getting across to my body! The one time I want to override my emotions, I can’t. But all the other times I somehow seem to ‘sensibly override’ them.

I haven’t reached a solution or a recovery process with this. It is something I am working on and lately it has been showing up a lot. This thought process has made me realise I say nasty things to myself too often like ‘You are stupid’, ‘That was silly’, ‘Why can’t you make a choice and be happy with it?’

I am not stupid and silly choices are part of life! And I know I can’t be happy with my choices because I am scared of making the wrong ones invoking the inner monologue it both causes and fears. The things I scold myself over are not that big of a deal. They are part of life and I want to slowly get to a place where my reaction matches the situation at hand. I will keep you posted on the journey!