Welcome to the ninth blog post in the series “Monthly Mindset Shift”! As the name indicates, this series has one new post per month and will continue for the next several months. Each post in the series details a positive mindset shift we can make surrounding a feeling or experience that generally has a negative connotation. (Spoiler alert: For this post, that experience is self-doubt!) These shifts aren’t designed to erase all of our difficult/unwanted emotions around the topic at hand. Rather, they simply serve to improve our general outlook on the matter, which can, in turn, improve our actions and our outcomes. They’re all the more proof that a healthier, more constructive mindset can change the game!
No matter how confident we may feel about our decisions as we make them, it’s natural to second-guess them later. Upon reflection, we tend to forget the specifics of our reasoning for making them. This can make us wonder, “why did I do that anyway?”. This is especially applicable to walking away from relationships, friendships, jobs, career paths, etc. For instance, a year after breaking up with your now ex, you might suddenly feel a wave of self-doubt about that decision. You might start romanticizing the relationship and zoning in on the good times you shared with that person. In reality, though, if you were to relive that relationship (the good AND bad), you’d still decide to end it. The bad of the relationship ultimately outweighed the good. It’s just that your memory of the bad has become fuzzy over time.
As you may know if you’ve read other posts here, a recurring theme on this blog is trust. Developing solid trust in ourselves as well as in our life’s processes is pretty much the cheat code for living at ease. Trusting ourselves doesn’t just mean trusting our present selves but also trusting our past and future selves. In these scenarios of doubting your past decisions, you may not have the clearest memory of why you made them. The least you can do, though, is trust your past self’s judgment. Just because the details are blurry doesn’t mean you didn’t have a menu’s worth of reasons to make that decision.
Of course, we all make mistakes and do things we regret from time to time. However, if you made a conscious, clarity-driven decision to do something that you felt compelled to do, such as leave a relationship that you felt was wrong for you, trust that you knew what you were doing. My post Is it the Right Decision? Ask Yourself This Question may be able to help you confirm (or less likely, deny) that your decision was right for you. Even on the off chance that it was a “mistake”, and that you left the relationship for reasons that you wouldn’t agree with today, that’s where trusting the process comes into play. For one reason or another, you were meant to make that decision. In this breakup example, that person still may not have been right for you long-term, even if for different reasons than why you broke up.
At the end of the day, what’s truly yours can’t miss you. Instead of fixating on why things happened the way they did, find peace in this truth. Know that if you’re meant to reconnect with the person or thing you walked away from, you will, in which case, it was simply a matter of wrong timing. If it’s meant to be in the long run, you’ll be a stronger match when you reconnect than you were the first time around. If it’s not, though, it wouldn’t have mattered when, how, or why it ended. It wouldn’t have worked out regardless.
Another way of thinking about it is this… Say that someone you know and trust made a decision that you don’t fully understand their logic behind. For example, your friend broke up with her boyfriend who seemed like a great guy. This surprised you, as you thought they were doing well together. When you ask her why she broke up with him, she says that they just weren’t right for each other. Even though you don’t know details beyond that, you don’t doubt the validity of her decision. You know she has good judgment, and you trust that she did what was right for her. If you can trust your friend’s judgment despite not having a complete picture of her reasoning, you can surely trust your past self’s judgment despite not remembering the complete picture of your reasoning.
A great way to proactively prevent future self-doubt about your current decisions is to journal about them in real time. Document your thoughts, logic, feelings, etc. behind those decisions as you make them. While you can argue with your vague (and clouded) memory of how things happened, you can’t argue with your own firsthand account of how things happened. Your future self will thank you!
All of that to say, when you catch your mind wandering toward self-doubt of a past decision or romanticization of something you confidently walked away from, lean on your TRUST. Trust your past self’s judgment, as well as the fact that everything happens for a reason. In the meantime, journaling is your best friend for combatting those patterns in the future. When rereading your old writing, focus not only on the concrete details that you provided, but also the overall energy. Take note of your confidence in your decision as you made it. Let that confidence be all you need to know!
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