(More) Guidance

After my last post on this, I figured I'd write something a bit more specific. A couple of ideas that have really impacted me.

The first is one I heard in a talk once, and I have mentioned it before, I think. That is that you are more likely to regret not doing something than doing it. Or possibly that you will regret them more, I'm not sure. I've thought about this, and there's definitely something in it. Of the things you do, there could be all sorts of things you could regret, from doing it wrong, to doing it badly, to just choosing it in the first place; but, of the things you don't do, you just never know.
You don't know how things might have worked out, you don't know whether you might have learned something, or made new friends - or even just enjoyed it. And, more importantly, you don't know how your life may have changed - how you may have changed as a result. All you know is what you did; and, also, that some of the opportunities you turned down may have had quite a significant impact on you. Now, I'm not suggesting that anyone should go for every single opportunity that comes their way without even thinking about it; but what I am suggesting is that you should consider things more carefully when it comes to opportunities. If anything, I think you need to be more sure about turning one down than about taking one; try to lean more in the direction of saying 'yes' more than 'no'.

And the second, which is definitely linked to the first is the fact that when it comes to taking opportunities (or not), we are the only ones who can make that decision. It seems a cliche to say that we are our own worst enemies, but the reason cliches become cliches is because they contain a certain amount of truth. There's a song we sometimes sing at my church which contains the line 'if God is for us, who can be against us?'; and the answer to that question is us. Always us. For a start, we are the only ones who are always around ourselves - even if we sometimes wish we weren't. But, ultimately, when it comes to taking opportunities, we are the ones who have the most power. We can easily stop ourselves from taking them, either absolutely, by not doing them, or more subtly, by procrastinating or not doing it whole heartedly - and then, when it doesn't work out, we say that we knew that was going to happen all along.

And it's not just taking opportunities when they present themselves; but keeping going with them once we have started. For instance, I have recently been struggling with this blog, with keeping going, as it doesn't seem that many people are reading it. Now I'm not going to stop doing it (not yet, anyway), but that is exactly what I'm talking about. When things are tough it is easy to give up, to just stop; and no-one else can do it for you. Or me, in this case. If I'm going to continue with this blog, then I have to do it - no-one else can. Ultimately, the ones who make our choices are us; to do something or not to do something, to keep going or not to keep going; only us.