Opinions and a**holes
I’m sure you’ve heard that saying: Opinions are like a**holes – everyone’s got one and everyone thinks everyone else’s stinks.
In addition to launching me into a fit of giggles, this saying made me think about how wrapped around the axle we get with other people’s opinions.
There’s nothing quite so paralyzing as weighing the input of countless other people on something we’re mulling over. And worst of all – we ask for it! We shop our conundrums around like world-class hagglers, trying to get the best (or, more likely, easiest or most pleasing-to-us) response we can find.
And instead, all we do is circle and circle and circle until we’re so dizzy, we collapse into a heap of indecision and panic.
Because here’s the cruelest truth we never acknowledge: there is no right answer. There is no singular, objective best answer. Everything has nuance, everything has risk, everything has trade-offs.
And when we crowdsource our choices, we inadvertently give away our agency, hoping someone will give us permission to do what we already know, somewhere deep in our heart or spirit, we want to do.
What if instead, we allowed ourselves to be fully in charge – and fully responsible – for the decisions we wanted to make? What if we made the decisions in the directions we wanted, releasing ourselves from even exploring the question of whether we’re making the “wrong” choice or that a better choice is a mere few more hours of analysis away?
Everyone else’s opinions might smell awfully sweet if we allowed them to be just that…someone else’s.
