The Truth Beneath Decisions

I spent the majority of my life following paths suggested or walked by others, never realizing what was really bubbling beneath the surface and influencing my decisions.

I allowed the winds of life to blow me wherever they pleased.

I played hockey because, well, that’s just what you do as a Canadian kid, especially when most of your peers are spending their weeknights and weekends on the ice.

I played hockey because that was where my environment nudged me years and years before I had any conception of what peer pressure or social expectations were.

I became a personal trainer because I enjoyed my own training, learning the nuances of lifting, nutrition, and physical performance, and didn’t know what else to do. I moved to Toronto to pursue this career because someone I knew had done that.

I became a personal trainer because it seemed my best available option at the time I was transitioning away from playing hockey, and thus a huge piece of my identity.

I started an online fitness coaching business because online coaching was popping off, I’d surrounded myself with people in that space, and I didn’t want a real job.

I started an online fitness coaching business because I wanted freedom of time, location, and finances… I was tired of spending all day in gyms… and because I didn’t believe I had any other skills that I could leverage into the freedom I wanted.

I chose copywriting over fitness coaching because time and energy constraints insisted that I choose between the fitness business I was running and supporting myself with, and the freelance copywriting projects I was doing more and more of.

I chose copywriting because I saw greater earning potential for what seemed like less overall work… and of course the dreamy opportunity of writing for a living.

I built an email marketing team, The Wizards of Wordcraft, because I suddenly found myself with more copywriting work than I could possibly do on my own, and I had a couple writing apprentices at the time who were keen to help.

I built an agency because I didn’t want to turn down a pile of cash.

All easy decisions to justify…

But not one was made coherently. Not one came from a foundation of truly knowing myself, what I valued, what I found exciting, or what I wanted to pour myself into.

So of course nothing was sustainable.

Of course these decisions quietly grated at me until I, and those projects, collapsed.

Looking back, the factors driving those decisions are all quite logical, sensible even.

Circumstance. Comfort. Pressure. Expectations. Money. Pride. Ego.

Y’know… typical human stuff that dictates the lives of so, so many. But certainly not what I want to build my life around or leak into and influence my decision-making.

So I finally took the time to learn what actually drives me.

I learned to read and trust my inner signals.

Pleasure. Ease. Abundance. Growth. Excitement. 

Those are much more appealing ingredients for decision-making.

When those became my filters, everything I thought I could do disappeared.

Suddenly there was a very thick, solid, tight, and clear line between what I was capable of, and what I actually wanted to do. Capability has never been a limiting factor for me… but figuring out where to best channel my efforts certainly has.

I also realized that choosing what you can do vs. what you want to do leads to two very different lives. One isn’t necessarily better than the other, but there is an undeniable compromise in choosing what you can do over what you want to do.

The former essentially leads to a life of quiet, perpetual compromise and self-erasure.

Comfortable for some, criminal for others.

The latter is authentic, but will relentlessly challenge you to stay true to yourself.

And that, my friend, is one of the toughest, most rewarding things in the world.

With love from the cabin,

~ Alexander