What Keeps Me From Fucking Up My Life?

21 ways to get better at intuitive decision making, and avoid unnecessary anxiety, painful decisions, and errors worth regretting — or — How to keep from fucking up your life.

I’ve often taken the old saying of “no regrets” to mean that we can’t really make mistakes in life, but that’s never felt true to me. I think we do make mistakes sometimes—I certainly have. Just recently in fact, I narrowly avoided a very big one.

I almost bought the wrong house.

I got myself way down the road—in contract, in escrow, with the deal almost closed—before I realized that it was not just the wrong house, but the wrong house, at the wrong time, in the wrong place—and that perhaps I don’t even want to own a house at all.

After a lot of agonizing, I mustered the courage to cancel the purchase. It was hard—but then I felt the relief and clarity of knowing that I was back on my own path. I lost a significant amount of money, but without regret, having had a close encounter with what would have been a serious error. In this case, even though it was at the very last minute, I knew myself well enough to avoid a mistake.

I’d like to use my recent experience, to ask myself again—how is it possible to make—or nearly make—real, life-sized errors, when does this happen, and can we get better at avoiding these situations?

In the piece that follows here, I’ll share some intuitive methods that I’ve developed from experience, in the context of my recent decision to buy a house—and then, very thankfully, not to buy it.

Intuitive Yoga

Most of the decisions that we encounter along our way are just as much part of our path as the possibilities that emerge from those decisions—as is how we ended up at the point of deciding. Whichever path we choose or end up on remains our path, and so in many ways we can’t really make a mistake—we’re just on our path. It helps to remind myself that “I can’t fuck it up[ Your intuition is what keeps you from fucking up your life—and, if it’s working, you pretty much can’t. ]”—but there’s an important if that follows. I can’t fuck it up if I’m paying attention to my intuition. If I’m not paying attention, or I insist on ignoring it, real mistakes can be made.

In fact, my experience has shown me that most often when I find myself feeling that I’m in the midst of a difficult decision, I have already been ignoring or unaware of some subtle message from my subconscious. Maybe, what we perceive as ‘decisions’ are the result of a lack of familiarity with our subconscious processes. I agree with what Melissa Febos suggests in Body Work, that regret is less about “wishing to undo or to not have done,”⁠ and more about the pain of observing ourselves in a state of confusion, out of touch with our inner voice. Regret is the lament of the soul, crying its sadness at not being heard.

So, how can we get better at intuitive decision-making—helping us to avoid mistakes, and perhaps even allowing us to avoid some decisions in the first place? How do we connect with our capacity for subconscious decision-making so as to steer more true to our own course? How can we live more in that bliss of sweet clarity?

And, given that the subconscious operates indirectly, how can we improve, through conscious work, our ability to move intuitively? There might seem to be a contradiction here, but we can come to be more familiar with the unconscious by focusing our conscious energy in that direction—most of all, by practicing methods that exercise the connection between the two—between the embodied and the thinking self—between intuition and cognition.

We have to learn to approach the subconscious indirectly. We can’t go directly to the subconscious and ask it a question. We have to learn to move in its realm—the realm of the body. One way to understand intuition is as embodied cognition—intuition is the body thinking—and so many of these methods involve paying attention to your body. Another way of getting indirect is through metaphors, symbols, dreams, and other types of inner work, treating what you think, and what you think you know about yourself not as literal truth, but as a sort of symbolic language that points to something deeper.

As with any practice, we get good at what we do, and so the more we practice this intuitive yoga, the better we get at hearing what our subconscious is trying to tell us, and at steering our path with clarity.

Trying to Decide

Early on, and really throughout this very lengthy, agonizing, and expensive process that I just went through, I found myself saying again and again that “I’m trying to decide…” I was glad for the many helpful friends who jumped in with their thoughts, reflections, suggestions, or just to listen to me tell my story about how I had found this place, what I didn’t like, what I liked about it, why it was a good fit, and how I was moving forwards—and as much I hoped that one of those conversations would reveal the answer, in the end they only added to my angst.

The thing is, as I know from past experience, the very first indication that I’m on the wrong path with a decision is that I am trying to decide. “Trying” is the key word here. When we are clear, we make a decision—or at least our conscious mind feels that we do, even if it’s often the case that the decision has been made subconsciously and our ego is just claiming it for itself. On the other hand, a state of trying to decide that persists over time is not so much an ongoing decision process as a state of confusion.

Among many versions of happiness or contentment, I would highlight the feeling of clarity as one of the strongest—and the ill-at-ease feeling caused by a lack of clarity is one of the least pleasant things I can think of.

In my situation, I found myself trying to decide from just about the very beginning. Even after I (seemingly) made a decision and signed the contract, I remained ambivalent, unenthusiastic, and uncertain. Many of my friends saw that too, and some of them even said so. Still, I was more focused on moving forward than on paying attention to what my intuition was trying to tell me—and it nearly resulted in a huge mistake.

When you find yourself in this place of trying to decide, instead of continuing to go hand-to-hand with that confusion, take it as a signal to pause and try some new methods to get a different perspective on your situation.

Zoom Out

One of the most helpful things I’ve learned about thoughts and emotions is to use them as messages, observing them as if on a screen instead of letting them determine my entire experience.

For example, I can choose to witness my fear instead of being consumed by fear. Similarly, when you are faced with a difficult decision and find yourself in this state of trying to decide, you can take the feeling of being mired in decision fatigue as a message to pause and get some distance from the decision.

Fortunately I had a long period of time after signing and before closing. Although I didn’t do it consciously, I did get some distance. I went to Europe and did a long trek in the mountains of Corsica, just walking outside in nature for four straight weeks. When I returned, I still felt a pit in my stomach about the house, but there was a subtle difference. I didn’t feel tortured about the decision. I felt bad about the house. I didn’t like it. I didn’t even want to go there.

The time and distance from trying to decide had allowed my subconscious to speak quietly and slowly—and insistently, and clearly. Soon after getting back home, I had the difficult but very honest realization that this house just wasn’t the one for me.

When we are finding it difficult to decide, one thing that is often true is that we need more information—and that information may well not arrive or be available to us at the conscious level. We need to create some space to let new data, feelings and sensations in, and to let the subconscious operate at its own pace. Intuition doesn’t like to be crowded, rushed or prodded. If possible, put your decision on hold, and focus your attention on something else entirely, and something outside of yourself—even for an afternoon, or just for half an hour.

Go for a long run or a hike, listen to nature or something soothing in your ears, and see what emerges along the way. Of course, meditation is one of the best ways to practice un-thinking, and often results in a new perspective. When I’ve had the presence of mind to pause and zoom out, it’s often been the case that the answer finds me when I’m looking in the other direction.