Decisions. We’re always making them. Some are small, some are big, but there’s always something.

Decision-making can drain you and create stress in your life. The stakes are high and you don’t want to make a mistake. It can be agonizing, but the choice still has to be made. How do you avoid making the wrong decision without losing sleep?

The key is to control the emotional story around the decision. It’s not the decision making itself that stresses you out – it’s your emotional reaction to the process.

If you’re afraid to make wrong decisions, you spend a lot of time thinking about your options. It’s good to take some time to process all the information so you can make an informed decision, but once you’ve done it, it’s time to let it go.

When you second guess yourself, when you doubt yourself and spin in ?what ifs?, that’s when the stress multiplies.

Recently, I shared Robert Frost’s ?The Road Not Taken? with the women in my program ?The Big Shift? from Stress to Balance in 8 weeks.?

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

-Robert Frost, Mountain Interval, 1916

Years later, Frost said the following about the poem:

?I wasn’t thinking about myself there, but about a friend who had gone off to war, a person who, whichever road he went, would be sorry he didn’t go other. He was hard on himself that way.?

The way I interpret Frost’s message is that our world is full of choices, options, decisions and endless possibilities. Any decision we make has consequences that we can’t foresee. It might take a long time before we can look back and say: ?Oh! Now I see where that road led me.?

For me, this is the key:

Once you make the decision, consider it done. Don’t doubt it and don’t be hard on yourself. Trust that you made the best decision you could have in that moment.

Say you had to decide between staying home with your family or traveling with your friends. You decide to travel. From the moment you start your trip, everything goes wrong. One obstacle after another.

If you accept these challenges as opportunities, even if you don’t understand them at the time, you will not regret your decision. With the right view, you’ll come back stronger and more determined, and will have learned something new about yourself.

Taking the road less traveled by means being at peace with your decisions and being gentle with yourself, regardless of where the road takes you.