Decisions. I learned thru time that taking a #decision gets harder the more you open up your horizons. An explorer, a dreamer, someone who wants to learns from own experiences, educating by doing, will get more access to information and learn that there are so many options available. Hence the decision process became one of the most consuming mental processes in our modern times and especially in developed countries. The more possibilities, the harder the process. However, to streamline and ease the decision, one must put the down the value and principles he/ she wants to stick to. Those thoughts that guide you as a human being in one’s presence. Those intangible goals that you want your existence to be marked by. Then read them again and again and analyze options based on them. A wonderful natural selection process will happen. And eventually, building your own reasons for each of the available options will be very helpful to top the choices.
This is what I can say after many decisions that have each changed my life forever. Sometimes I put quantitative selection processes behind, sometimes I just followed my gut and dived into the change. Below are few of them. Some would say it’s been an unhappy course of #failures, I would say it’s been a beautiful though difficult path testing my #perseverance and #resilience.
- I decided to go to university and move away from my home city with no money in my pocket instead of getting a job in a textile manufacturing factory and get a monthly salary to help my family (and have no future). I have always studied hard. At 12 years, I received the key of my city for exceptional study results. Coming from a very modest family, I got the most important piece of advice from my parents early on in my life: education can change your life (and I still apply that, continuously). It was a time when my parents were both of them unemployed following the communism fall and privatization of state factories, thousands of hundreds of people being declared redundant. We had been eating potatoes and mushrooms for the last 3 years when I had to decide on the next step in my life. There were no money for the train ticket nor for the admission exam fee. So my grandparents decided to sell their pig and pay for the transport and exam fee (and you should know in a poor country, a pig would ensure the survival of a family for about one year) – they set themselves for starvation for one year at the benefit of my education. I got accepted to two of the most prestigious faculties in the economic education in the capital. I also received a place in the campus. I was walking to school and spend my subsidized money for transportation on economic newspapers. My parents would send me weekly a pack with food by train, while they survived with almost nothing. It was not long till I started losing my parents and grandparents. Today I bounce back from many hard times by thinking that whatever I do must honor all the efforts they made for me to be the one in the family to forever change the path of future generations and help others with my knowledge and energy. I travelled the world, advanced my studies, worked hard and known many beautiful people. Thanks to one big decision and even bigger efforts.
- I quit my first job. I was a shop assistant in a cloths shop. After one month, I realized that going for low will bring me low. I quit and decided to focus on studying to increase my chances of being considered a good candidate by a multinational. I continued my studies and two years later I got a job with the biggest FMCG multinational which served me as the best school ever, transforming me in a true professional. I decided to go for the long shot at the cost of a hard living. And it’s worth big time!
- We contracted a house loan. Two young, educated professionals with high hopes to improve their lives and change the world, me and my husband. But not too much financially educated for life (again, growing up in a communist country and being the first generation to be educated in democratic environment, though it was not enough to be educated for real life….). It proved that we contracted the loan just in the beginning of the global crisis, which meant a dramatic under-evaluation and a doubled currency rate (banks would then convince public to access foreign currency loans with much better benefits versus national currency). It became close to impossible to keep up with payments, while the responsibilities of parenting were testing us heavily, as our son was just coming like a sun shine in our lives. In this context, to increase our income and driven by the will to give a better chance to our son, we came to our next big decision…
- Moving out of the country with a 11 months baby, as a single provider for the family, in a male dominated country. All the efforts to study and later working hard in the multinational environment, brought me on the top of the list for an opening with another big employer, this time in a totally new culture, thousands km away from home. My son started talking English a s a first language, he interacted from the very beginning of life with kids from different countries, celebrated different nations traditions. He had started to shape up as an international citizen and seeing that, I started being grateful for all the hardship I had been give by life until then. As, in a way or another, that was how the path lead to the chances for my son.
- I quit the highest level position I had. I realized that my physical and mental health were heavily tried by the situation. Nothing else but a burnout after 12 years of continuous work, meanwhile doubled by two spine surgeries. I chose to live with very little savings, instead of dying on a high salary. I decided to stop and breath, re-evaluate my life, recover my health, recharge my batteries and review my path.
I am convinced many people have big decisions on front of them everyday. They should keep in mind they are not alone. Each decision is an important step. Not only for us but for the course of the interconnections between us and other people. Embrace change. Be confident with your decision. Accept disruption. Be ready to accept the consequences. It will all take you where you should be. Be brave and trust yourself!