Can Making Choices and Doing What’s Best for You Harm Others?
Doing what’s best for you might harm others – but that’s likely beyond your control.
When I was younger, I crowned myself the King of Indecision.
I lived perpetually at a crossroads between two points. So that I wouldn’t make the wrong decision, I frequently made no decision.
No decision, no harm, right? Wrong. By not making choices and deciding for myself how my life should be – I was the plaything of the Universe. Life lived me – save some all-too-brief moments.
Thus, I bounced between jobs, homes, relationships, and spent almost 2 decades unsettled. Rather than choose and choose wrong, out of fear I avoided making choices often. I truly was the King of Indecision.
But as I began to learn how to employ mindfulness and empower conscious reality creation, I began making more choices. I started deciding things and became much less indecisive. In time, I removed and did away with my crown.
Still, from time to time, one of the fears that had driven my indecision reared its ugly head. Choices and decisions that I made caused harm to others.
However – it was not my intent to cause anyone harm. Yet sometimes things we do have unintended consequences.
Cam making choices and doing what’s best for you harm others? Perhaps – but intent matters.
You control nobody but you
Every single person on Planet Earth experiences feelings. Some more than others. What and how we feel is massively differential. Even the most unemotional person is not without emotions. (In Star Trek, much as they deny and repress them, even Vulcans have emotions). They are, I am fairly certain, part of the nature of sentient beings.
Things that happen outside of us and beyond our control can have an emotional impact. Thus, even an unintentional slight can cause pain, discomfort, anger, irritation, sadness, and suffering.
When you stop and look at what caused that feeling, you can generally see if it was intentional. It’s pretty obvious when someone slights you (such as inviting all your mutual friends to a party but excluding you – and ignoring you when you ask about it). You can tell when someone is trying to be hurtful, spiteful, and even harmful towards you and/or others.
Often, causing hurt or harm via action was not intended. But it can be unavoidable. Sometimes you need to go somewhere that others cannot join nor follow. Things that you do might be beyond the understanding of certain friends and loved ones.
And what’s more – change is often disconcerting. When you choose what’s best for you and change to do that – you changing causes distress. Ergo, you might cause unintentional hurt or harm.
There is nothing you can do about this. You have no control over anyone but yourself. All that you can do is recognize that hurt or harm has been inflicted – and act from there.
An apology may be best for you and all
A genuine, sincere apology – even for unintended hurt and harm – is often best for both you and the person(s) hurt or harmed. It shows knowledge and recognition of what has occurred and mends divisions that might happen.
What’s more – if you’re like me, learning that something you’ve done (or not done) caused another to feel hurt – you need to apologize. Particularly when this is collateral “damage” and not at all intended.
While doing what’s best for you might involve a lot of change and uncertainty for you – if you hurt or harm others in the process it won’t sit right. Even if you give a preliminary warning – it might not get through. What’s more, how someone viscerally reacts is utterly outside of your control.
Unintended hurt and harm that someone else feels is not within our control. And that can be distressing all on its own.
Doing what’s best for you can have an unintended impact on others. Even though you had no intention of hurting or harming someone else – an apology might make you both feel better.
One reason I spent so much of my life indecisive was this fear. That the choices I would make might cause hurt and harm to others. Ironically, doing this DID hurt/harm someone.
That would be me.
It’s important to do what’s best for you
Neglecting yourself, sacrificing what’s best for you, or not doing your best to reduce potential hurt and harm to others still causes harm. To you.
The trauma we inflict on ourselves is often brushed off and ignored or downplayed. Yet it’s still there – and still a cause of discomfort and distress.
The longer we avoid this – the greater impact it’s going to have in time.
Avoiding making choices and decisions will bite you in the ass. That’s because the only person who can live your life is you. Thus, making no choices and no decisions will have an impact on you. That’s because you will feel like you are not getting anywhere.
Not being decisive occasionally and letting others choose is not the same as being indecisive. Indecision is disempowering because it takes no action. You make no choices and just stay where you are, not growing or taking control of your reality.
Letting someone else choose is the equivalent of riding in the passenger seat of a car. Indecision is standing outside the car and not even bothering to get into it.
Conscious reality creation and mindfulness require decision and choice. While that can be scary and full of uncertainty – it’s ultimately empowering. That’s because this is how you take control of your life.
You have all the power to decide who, what, where, how, and what YOU are. Choices and decisions as to what’s best for you are how this is done.
Even knowing that unintentional harm might come of your choices and decisions – they’re still worth making.
You are worthy and deserving of making them. Whatever paths you choose to walk in life.
Doing what’s best for you might harm others. While that’s beyond your control, awareness of it opens the channels to fix it.
Do you make choices and decisions to do what’s best for you?
This is the five-hundred and seventeenth exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – using mindfulness and positivity to walk along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.
I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world and empower as many people as I can with conscious reality creation.
Thank you for joining me. Feel free to re-post and share this.
The first year of Pathwalking, including expanded ideas, is available here. Check out Amazon for my published fiction and nonfiction works.
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