So after a few weeks at the same hostel in the CBD (central business district.) in Melbourne, something happened that kind of changed all my plans. And so some tough decisions needed to be made …. Decisions that I was doing a very good job of avoiding by wasting my days sleeping and spending my nights hanging out at the hostel playing pool. Which while drastically improving my game was not really a good way to be using my time. Especially as I was draining my money while struggling to make the decision.
I realized I wasn’t going to make any kind of decision where I was. So it was time for a bit of a change…. But being unready to make any kind of commitment on what I was going to do or where I was going to go. I booked a hostel a little way away and jumped on a tram to St Kilda. Hoping to get some sea air, a bit more peace and a change of scenery to help me make a decision on where I was going to go next.
I wasn’t sure why St Kilda or how it was going to help with finally making a decision on something I’d spent the last week struggling so much to make. But it was the first step.
Having spent 2 nights in St Kilda and being no closer to making my decision. Sat in the kitchen of the hostel at 4 o clock in the morning. There it was….. That one conversation. But more specifically one sentence said by someone I’d met only 10 minutes before. Where I Instantly knew what my choice was and where I wanted to go.
It was like that moment of realisation where I suddenly knew….. No rephrase that, I suddenly accepted what in my gut I knew was my choice all along.
The first part of this realisation was a conversation an hour or so earlier where I mentioned to my friend about a theory I’d heard and believed to be true.
So it goes like this. If you’re struggling to make a decision between 2 choices then flip a coin. Nothing unheard of I know. But it’s not about letting the fait of a coin make the choice for you. It’s about that instant…. When the coin is in the air. There’s no time for thought or weighing up options or pros and cons. There’s just an instinct, a gut feeling, where in that moment you know what way you’re hoping the coin is going to land. That’s the choice that’s in your heart.
I didn’t need to flip a coin though. I just told my friend about this theory. And told him that I knew that I didn’t need to flip a coin. Because I already knew exactly what side of the coin I’d want to see looking up at me if I were to flip it, I had done all along.
I didn’t need to make my decision. I had to accept my decision. To be at peace with the practical thoughts that were telling me I should do the opposite to what I knew I wanted to do.
I love the conversations you end up having with random people in the middle of the night when staying in hostels. And this ended up being one of those conversations I will always remember. I had had so many conversations with people over the few weeks previous about the decision I was trying to make. Lots of people giving me advice and telling me what they thought I should do.
But it turned out that the one person that helped me to make my decision was someone who didn’t even know about the decision I was trying to make. It was a young Australian of aboriginal origin. He walked into the kitchen joined our conversation for 20 minutes and then left. There were a lot of things in the conversation we had that led to the moment of realization. But the exact moment was when he was talking about letting go of your ego and allowing your spirit to take over.
I laughed and turned to my friend and told him I had just made my decision and knew what I was going to do, and explained to the aboriginal guy that he had just helped me make a choice and thanked him for it.
I went backwards and forwards a few more times on my decision after that night. But once I finally stuck with it and booked my flight to Vietnam…. on my last day in Australia in another hostel in a different part of Melbourne the very same guy walked into the kitchen.
I don’t know his name or anything about him for that matter. But I’ll always remember him as the person who helped me to make a tough decision I’d spent over 2 weeks failing to make.