Life beyond a correct choice

What's right anyway?

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For the last few years, I blamed myself for making a wrong choice.

But I wonder now—can we ever really decide if a choice was right or wrong without actually living it? As if life decisions were multiple-choice questions with only one correct answer.

And how would I even know what the right choice is?

The only way I can decide—assuming I have no superpower to visit the future—is by using whatever information I have at the time.

But what I have also realised is that above all that information lies a blanket of emotions and feelings. Our mind can easily make us believe in things by wrapping us in this blanket, giving us a cosy space where the facts disappear. What drives the decision then isn’t logic—it’s a human craving for love, belongingness, or being seen by someone…the basic needs.

The beauty and the danger of our mind is that it can generate stories to make us believe whatever we want to believe. What looks like concerning behaviour to others in a relationship can look like love to someone who’s in it. Their emotions override the information everyone else can see clearly.

A few months back, I read The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. The protagonist gets to explore different possible lives she could have lived based on the choices she made. But no matter which life she tries, something always goes wrong. She realises that there isn’t any perfect life that exists and ultimately finds a reason to live her original life with a new perspective.

The book reminded me: I can’t replace lived experience with an endless loop of “what if I had chosen differently?”

The only real choice is to live the experience and see what it actually feels like. Not what I imagine it would feel like. Not what it should feel like. What it does feel like.

The more I accept this, the more I forgive myself as a human. For not knowing everything in advance. For making choices based on who I was then, not who I am now. And the more I gather the strength to let go of what doesn’t work for me without being unkind to myself about having chosen it in the first place.

What leaves your life makes space for something more aligned with who you’re becoming. So give yourself permission to try things. To rule out what isn’t for you. That’s not failure—that’s how you get closer to your true self.

Take a Little Pause 🌼

What’s one choice you’ve been judging yourself for? What if you looked at it not as right or wrong, but as information about what you needed to learn?

Share with me if you feel like it. I’d love to know. 😊

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Now?

Sharing what I’m watching, reading, and learning!

📺 Slowly watching: Nothing. Any suggestions?
📖 Happily reading: The Inner Compass by Lawrence Yeo, Do the Work by Steven Pressfield, Courage to be Disliked by Fumitake Koga and Ichiro Kishimi, The Forest of Enchantments by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni(More book recs? Check my list!)
🎨 Exploring: Making soulful digital art ;)

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Rachna

Take a Little Pause is an illustrated weekly newsletter for anyone navigating the beautiful messiness of building a creative, calm and intentional life. If you’re on a similar journey, subscribe for free or become a paid supporter to support my writing and help bring my dream of publishing a coffee-table book to life. 💛