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Transcription
The speaker discusses the difficulty of making decisions and the tension between personal desires and societal expectations. They explain that ego-driven decisions can lead to unsatisfying outcomes, and that decisions should instead be made based on one's authentic self. They emphasize the importance of listening to one's heart and understanding oneself when making decisions about career, relationships, and lifestyle. They acknowledge that making authentic decisions may not always result in success, but that failure can lead to self-discovery. They conclude that living an authentic life means making decisions that align with one's true self, rather than trying to please others or fit societal norms. One of the things I've found difficult in life is to make decisions and I think there's, you know, I've often tried, when it's big decisions, I've often tried to sort of balance perhaps what I feel like I want to do against what society expects or what the sort of unwritten rules of life are, whether it's, you know, in terms of where I want to live and, you know, what job I want to do, particularly in a career and business and investment sense, I've often thought that tension between what I want to do authentically and what I'm expected to do and what the rules are, all life decisions, in terms of whether I want to travel, whereas really that tying into this whole idea of growing into our authentic self, that's where the decisions need to come from. So, if you think about the ego, it can guide us to the wrong decisions in a number of ways. It might be a decision to satisfy a selfish desire. It might be a decision which is really just one of those societal pressures, one of those sort of systemic beliefs that we've all sort of taken on that's just totally inappropriate to us. An example might be buying a big house in a nice suburb with a big mortgage, because that's what society tells us to do. An example of satisfying a selfish desire might be sort of, you know, convincing someone to have sex even though you don't want to have a long term relationship with them. That's a decision. So, it's a decision to buy the big house in a suburb. And the other decision we might make, the other type of ego decision we might make is to not take a risk, to not travel or to not buy that property or to not start a business, because we're hearing the voice of the ego saying, we're not good enough. You know, don't take that risk or else all these terrible things will happen. So, we make a decision to be inert, to not do anything, to not make that move, to not back ourselves. And it's a decision by not making a decision, by not moving forward, so we don't step into that fear. So, they're just the examples of how, you know, and the other type of decision we make is that the ego decision to want to satisfy our, you know, our sense of self by having like a nice car or a really pretty girlfriend or whatever it is, we make that decision to satisfy that different ego need. Whereas, whenever we're making decisions, we just need to, you know, and the other type of decision we might do is we might think, well, what's going to please my parents? You know, so rather than being authentic to who we are, we worry about what they think or what they want. So, there's all these ways where when we're making life decisions, all these other things sort of get in the way. Whereas, what we should really be doing is digging into our authentic self and saying, well, what's in this decision? What's weighing in me? Where does my heart lead me? How does it tie in with my understanding of who I am and where I want to take my life? So, you look at all the decisions I have to make in the next 6 to 12 months about career, about the women I spend time with and date, about where I'm going to live, about how I'm going to spend my time in terms of my lifestyle, you know, about creating things and creating opportunities and it's all about being truly authentic to who I am, to my beliefs, my abilities. And it's only by stepping into those brave decisions that I'll grow into full authenticity. Now, it doesn't mean you get it right all the time. You might make the right decision. You might make a truly authentic decision. But then the thing doesn't work out, whether it's a relationship or a job or a business opportunity, you might make a decision from exactly the right place with the knowledge you have and it doesn't work out, but then you learn from that failure. You know, the failure, it's the making of the decision and the failure uncovers layers about yourself. So, the other thing we might do is we might make a place, do our best to make our place from an authentic decision from an authentic place, but then realize later, well, maybe we possibly didn't understand ourselves as well as we thought we did. But again, you've uncovered something. Whereas if you make decisions from the ego and from something that's not you, then you're not living a fully authentic life. See, that's actually such a profound truth because life is decisions. You know, we have to decide where we exercise. We have to decide what friends we're going to spend time with. We decide who we want to date. We decide what job we want to do. We decide everything about our life. We decide. And isn't it funny? I've never asked myself the question, where are these decisions coming from? It's being this kind of balancing act between my authentic self and my ego, both in terms of satisfying my selfish needs and feeding that, but also in a very unconscious way about trying to fit in with what my parents expect and what society expects and what my friends are doing. Whereas from now on, I just want to get rid of all that ego and just truly have the courage to be who I am and make authentic decisions.
