Can we ever actually make a bad choice in life, or does our perspective just change about the choices we've made?
Once you reach a goal, do you often find your objective distasteful? Do you work towards something for sometimes years, and after achieving success, become dissatisfied with your newly enriched life situation? Shouldn't you be victorious? Shouldn't you be celebrating?
The answer has to do with the theory of relativity. All things - thoughts and feelings included - are relative. At the time you fought so hard and worked with little thought towards discomfort or pain, you were visualizing the moment when you would triumph over your adversities. You were visualizing a place with less problems. A place where you would not have the pain and suffering you were diligently enduring while your eye was on the prize. You created a world with less emphasis on pain by focusing on a world which would someday be painless. Then, as your creation unfolded, you look at your life from a different perspective than before. You have a new reality. And everything in your life is now relative to your new view.
When I'm out in nature, I sneak along through the woods at a snail's pace. Stopping at very minute intervals to scan the woods. Every single time, when I get ready to take a few steps, I think I have spied every twig and rock and bush in the area. Upon taking a step or two, I look around at an entirely new woods, seeing bushes and trees and rocks as if they have appeared out of nowhere just from moving a few feet.
This is what is happening when we change something in our lives. Our new view is now relative to where we are currently standing - not where we were - and everything looks completely different from this new perspective. It did not matter what I visualized the woods would look like from a few feet away. It did not matter how hard that few feet was to move. It did not matter how bad I wanted to see from another few feet away. I had to realize... I am where I am and this is my perspective, and before I prematurely move to another location I had better see things very clearly from where I am. Before I move on I must not miss the opportunity that I gave myself by putting myself here. If I don't honor and respect where I am right now, my urge to see something new will cause me to miss what is right in front of me... "This is present moment awareness!"
What if you recognize this "present moment awareness" and you're not too thrilled with what you see? Maybe you've worked hard and long to get here and you can't imagine taking on another huge task of change, but you just don't think you can stay where you are. Maybe it's just too boring or miserable or not what you thought it was going to be. In an effort to understand why the way you feel is so unexpected, try visualizing this scenario...
You're visiting a botanical garden. It's spring and all the exotic flowers are in full bloom and the beauty is indescribable. The air is clean and the weather perfect. You've been anticipating this trip to these particular gardens for months and you walk and walk and soak it all up for hours and hours. At the end of the day you're exhausted and exhilarated. It was everything you ever thought it would be. Now that you have that picture in your mind in all it's glory would you want to do it every day? Is your view of the gardens different now than it was yesterday "relative" to the feelings you feel after walking your legs off? Does this feeling relative to the gardens and your exhaustion make the gardens any less beautiful? Of course not but your feelings are relative to right now and in a week or two your feelings will be relative to that "now".
Why should you berate yourself for liking something one day and not so much the next? You shouldn't. You should cut yourself some slack. Just because you've been told all your life that you should make up your mind, doesn't mean that you didn't. You did make up your mind, it just changed based on a new reality or relativity. Just because parents and friends and siblings and coworkers and spouses and probably everyone with whom you have ever come into contact thought you should make a decision and stick with it, doesn't mean you should. They can't see what you can see. Nobody but you can.
The simple understanding that your feelings and attitudes and thoughts are relative to everything else in your life will make you more tolerant of your life's situation. If you can fully accept that your life's situation doesn't have to be judged and analyzed and that it is your creation and you weren't "wrong" to create it, then you will become more tolerant of your own decisions and begin to recognize that you can accept what is, and change what no longer serves you. Anytime, all the time, at your own will and discretion. And you will find a power you didn't know you had, the power to have a higher thought about another possibility and another creation will bloom from this new ability. Your current situation won't be so cumbersome, so strangling, and you will be able to stop judging your every thought and feeling and begin to recognize unlimited possibilities for your life. Then you can begin again, to move on with your own personal process of creation unencumbered!