I was reading an article that talked about simplicity and minimalism and it mentioned a bit about how having too many decisions can lead people to a "fear of future regret." It's like having too much to choose from can make people feel like what they are going to end choosing wasn't "the best choice" or the "right one", whatever that is supposed to be. I thought it described me perfectly. I feel like the "fear of future regret" is what's driving my worry and anxiety over my future. I often worry about whether I made a good decision moving up North, or choosing social work as a major, or going to the school I chose. The fact that these are fairly major life decisions makes it even worse. Every one of those decisions was costly, especially in terms of finances.
Yet somehow I still managed to survive. I managed to stay afloat. Don't get me wrong. I still become paralyzed with the fear of future regret pretty often, but now that I have a name for it and a way to identify it, I feel like it has less power over me. I feel like I can catch myself whenever I am falling into that downward spiral of fear and anxiety, especially over money, and maybe I can re-orient myself to the present.
I mentioned these fears to my counselor and the first thing she said was that I was thinking too far into the future. I wasn't going to graduate for another year and while these concerns were real, they were not important right NOW. This goes to prove yet again how I have such difficultly living in the moment and just enjoying things as they are. Just being. A lot of the fear and worry will never come true, never come to pass, and even if they DO come true, it's nothing I can't handle. I've done so much more in the past, and I am capable to handle whatever comes to me in the future. Then why all the worry? Is it just a bad habit? Do I cling to it because it's familiar and predictable and gives me something to do? Something to occupy my mind? Perhaps it's better to spend my energy on other things. Worry gets me nowhere and if things turn out splendidly in the future, then I'm going to feel really stupid for worrying about it so much in the past.
Then other times, I wonder how my life would have been different if things had just been chosen for me. Or if I had far fewer options to choose from at all. What if I had lived two hundred years ago, where women mostly only went into two fields of work: schoolteacher or seamstress? On the one hand, I am glad that I have so many options, so much freedom and power to do what I want with my life (within reason), yet I feel that, in a way, it does cause a lot of unnecessary stress. I often wonder what my life would have been like if I had chosen nursing instead. Or finance. Or engineering. Anything but what I'm doing now. Would I have been better off? Would I have made more money? Would I have liked it? Maybe. Maybe not. A part of me thinks that I wouldn't have liked it, that I wouldn't have been as happy or as satisfied as with what I'm doing now. Of course, there's no way for me to know. As of the moment, there's no time machine for me to experience my life over and over again making a different decision each time. But maybe that's for the best. Maybe that's the way life is suppose to be. I do the best with what I have and trust that it turns out well. Besides, if the statistic that people today will have five different careers over their lifetime, then maybe I will get to try all those other career paths after all!
Yet somehow I still managed to survive. I managed to stay afloat. Don't get me wrong. I still become paralyzed with the fear of future regret pretty often, but now that I have a name for it and a way to identify it, I feel like it has less power over me. I feel like I can catch myself whenever I am falling into that downward spiral of fear and anxiety, especially over money, and maybe I can re-orient myself to the present.
I mentioned these fears to my counselor and the first thing she said was that I was thinking too far into the future. I wasn't going to graduate for another year and while these concerns were real, they were not important right NOW. This goes to prove yet again how I have such difficultly living in the moment and just enjoying things as they are. Just being. A lot of the fear and worry will never come true, never come to pass, and even if they DO come true, it's nothing I can't handle. I've done so much more in the past, and I am capable to handle whatever comes to me in the future. Then why all the worry? Is it just a bad habit? Do I cling to it because it's familiar and predictable and gives me something to do? Something to occupy my mind? Perhaps it's better to spend my energy on other things. Worry gets me nowhere and if things turn out splendidly in the future, then I'm going to feel really stupid for worrying about it so much in the past.
Then other times, I wonder how my life would have been different if things had just been chosen for me. Or if I had far fewer options to choose from at all. What if I had lived two hundred years ago, where women mostly only went into two fields of work: schoolteacher or seamstress? On the one hand, I am glad that I have so many options, so much freedom and power to do what I want with my life (within reason), yet I feel that, in a way, it does cause a lot of unnecessary stress. I often wonder what my life would have been like if I had chosen nursing instead. Or finance. Or engineering. Anything but what I'm doing now. Would I have been better off? Would I have made more money? Would I have liked it? Maybe. Maybe not. A part of me thinks that I wouldn't have liked it, that I wouldn't have been as happy or as satisfied as with what I'm doing now. Of course, there's no way for me to know. As of the moment, there's no time machine for me to experience my life over and over again making a different decision each time. But maybe that's for the best. Maybe that's the way life is suppose to be. I do the best with what I have and trust that it turns out well. Besides, if the statistic that people today will have five different careers over their lifetime, then maybe I will get to try all those other career paths after all!
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