The difficulty of choice

Sooner or later, we all face difficult choices in life. We doubt, we analyse, we hesitate. Academic choices, the ones that determine the fate of your future life, do have to be made (although way too early in my opinion). If you have already found a passion for your subject, you may be confused on your abilities, depth of knowledge and interest, choice between academics and social life. If you are one of the ever-large cohort of the undecided – you are most probably sinking in the swamp of choices, where everything you touch turns into a whole load of new possibilities.

How do you decide? How do you suddenly take responsibility for your whole life? How do you make sure that there is nothing better, and that you will not regret your decision later?

The answer is as dull and boring as you could imagine – you take it slowly. A step at a time, you reason every single assumption that you make. What it the most important part of your life? Comfort, stability, or indeed adventure and new frontiers? Both is a viable option, you should keep that in mind. Are you fine with working under set rules, can you rebuild a system from within, or do you desperately need one of your own?

It is indeed these choices that are more important, than the actual subject areas, because the more confident you are in your decision – the more time, energy and effort you can put into getting there, and thus the more likely you are to succeed. Once you find a general approach to life that you are happy with – be that fitness, always being there for friends and family, or indeed being at the top of the current in your academic field – you will not be distracted by someone being better than you in areas that you do not really care about.

Once you find that general approach to life, you will start to realise that you are either happy with the person you are now, or that you may actually want to consider changing something in your life, in order to become completely happy with yourself. That may sound very tedious, but the confidence in making your decisions does come from your inner confidence.

You cannot make a completely right choice unless you realise that you cannot really get it wrong. It is your life, and being the person you want to be will inevitably bring you to doing something that suits you – something you may currently not even think of as an alternative. The more worried and doubtful you are – the less you are likely to pick up those chances, and to really enjoy life.

Thus, once faced with a choice you really have no clue how to go about, remember that it is ultimately you and your happiness that matters. However difficult the option may seem, if you know that you will be happier that way, go about it. Your confidence in yourself will give you the ability to succeed, and the main thing to remember is to enjoy every moment of it.

Taisiya Trebunskikh 6.2