The scent of the right choice

Summer always helps me think because I have found a place where it is easier to put distance between me and the world. It's undeniable that having too much contact with everything is a tremendous temptation and a distraction when you want to keep a narrow focus on something very specific, such as making the right choice for yourself. This type of distancing is always so precious because it gives me perspective, it calms any feeling of urgency, slows my reactions and creates room for wiser choices.

There was a time when I felt guilty about slowing down because I was afraid of losing something. Now I know with crystal clear clarity that when I slow down and I create the right space I can grasp and develop my best insights.

It happened two days ago. It was so hot, I was lying in the pool cooling off and, once again, I felt that now familiar wave of enthusiasm coming up from my belly in response to a new and totally innovative project. This project has no guarantee of success yet, but it tastes so good to me that it has already become a yes.

I laughed, because this evolved version of myself keeps surprising me, for the distance it has from who I was and how I worked years ago. At that time it was all thinking and reasoning, analysing and evaluating, with the anxious feeling of forgetting to consider some other important detail, and with the pounding thought on repeat "what if that is not the right thing for me?"

Now I just need to smell and recognise the taste of what belongs to me, because, even though to my logical and rational mind it still looks crazy, there is a part of me that knows almost instantaneously what is "good and right" to me. Like when you smell a familiar scent in the air and even if you can’t give it a name, you feel that it is "yours". When this visceral recognition starts, I have learned that I do not need to know anything else; that choice will make me happy.

I’m not saying it will be easy; I’m not saying I know it will be a success; I’m not saying it will produce positive economic returns, but it is something that is definitely aligned with my own energy, and when things resonate together, they can create amazing outcomes. 

The most beautiful and profound insight I have got in recent times has been the understanding that "everything is right". Everything. Everything I can experience has a meaning and a value. Success, failure, victory, falling, joy, disappointment... these are just shades of life. Every event of my life, positive or negative embeds an important value. What in the past looked like a defeat and a pain, then turned out to be a great opportunity because it pushed me or encouraged me to shift my perspective to something more attuned to me.

When I passionately devote my resources to something, true wealth and joy are what I collect and learn along the way. The goal gives me direction, but this is not the most relevant part. Indeed, I have found that often the result disregards my expectations, not because I was wrong, but simply because that was not the real purpose of moving. It's the people I've met, the tools I've learned to use, the seeds I've sown along the way that are the real treasures of that goal.

The important thing is always and only to choose something that “belongs to me”, to identify that famous familiar scent I was talking about before, because that is the important clue that makes me know I am on the road where I will gather what is right for me. The scent of the right choice has an inebriating and unmistakable taste when you learn to trust yourself.