We spend much of our time at crossroads…… these could be physical, mental, emotional or financial cross roads where, at the time, it feels like everything is riding on our decision. We can experience the weight and responsibility for ourselves and of those close to us, those we work with or those we care for all resting on our choice. We can imagine the weight of this decision to be much greater than it is, the possible outcomes more severe. We can catastrophise within our decision making process to the point where we can see no positive outcome to wherever we turn. We give ourselves reasons not to turn and don’t often challenge those reasons to make sure they are based in fact or in our imagination or anxiety. We think things like, “It will be terrible, I’ll make a mistake, people won’t like me, I’ll struggle.” When we look at each of those thoughts though and ask, “What evidence have I for this, is this the truth?” The answer is often that it’s our worries talking and not the truth, we may have little or no evidence to support our negative thoughts but for some reason we find them easy to believe. The key is to challenge each of the negative thoughts – what evidence have I for this? Is this the truth or my worries talking? If a friend of family member was telling me about this, what would I say to them?

Sometimes though circumstances will not allow us to turn in one particular direction. Sometimes our anxieties can be so severe that it’s impossible to turn the next corner. The key here is to have no regret about not turning the corner today as there will be more chances tomorrow. If we do whatever we do at any time for the best reasons, for the safest reasons, for the reasons that harm us and others least, for the reason that on this day there were no other do-able options we should regret very little and we should certainly not beat ourselves up for doing what was the only thing we could do at any one time.