No regrets

In February 2002 I was visiting Split, Croatia, for one day. I was there with my two friends, and we were at the Diocletian' Palace, built by Romans some 1700 years earlier. It was not one of those palaces where you have to cover your shoes with blue plastics, and you whisper to your friends when you're admiring the art on the walls. No, this was a palace that had become the city, and every inch of it was in every day use. There was even a pizzeria up on the second floor. Everything was made of marble, including the floor of the inner yard and the small alleys between the different parts of the palace. Hundreds of thousands of people must have walked on those streets in the past 1700 years, and the marble had been shined and smoothened by those feet.

It was a Tuesday morning, and the locals were hurrying to work and trying to avoid the tourists who were blocking the streets and taking pictures of the beautiful city-palace. I could't stop admiring the marble streets, and my intuition told me to take my red shoes off and feel the smooth white rock under my feet. But my mind was saying "what would the others think".

I didn't take my shoes off.

I still regret it.

This regret, no matter how silly the original matter was, led me to really understand how important it is to try to live my life in a way that I would not regret anything. It also strengthened my trust in my intuition and instincts. If my intuition now tells me to do something, and if it doesn't put me, or anyone else, in a physical, emotional, financial or any other kind of danger, I will do it.

However, trusting your intuition doesn't mean impulsive decisions. For example, when I left my job last month, it was a surprise to my colleagues, but not something sudden to me. I had thought about it for several months, but waited, because the time wasn't right. When I felt that the time had come, I still took a week to think before announcing my news. I wanted to make sure I wouldn't regret.

Sometimes, when you would like to trust your instincts, but you are afraid of the consequences, a little push might be needed. This happened to me in 2003. I had had a tumultuous year in my relationship, and I had an increasing back pain because of volleyball. I wasn't happy with either situation, but at the same time I was so used to both, that living without sounded scary. My savior came one Friday afternoon, when I read the daily horoscope in a newspaper. "Make the decision you have been thinking about", it encouraged. The next day I dumped him and quit volleyball, and I was happier than ever before.

Despite the greatness of your intuition, it is possible that it is not always right. Therefore it is important to learn when not to trust it. For example, when it comes to my sense of direction, my intuition is usually 180° wrong. Nowadays, if my intuition tells me to turn right, I turn left. It took a long time, and several u-turns, to learn this.

The past three weeks I've been in Finland visiting my family and friends. Another reason for the change of scene immediately after quitting my job was to figure out what I want to do next. I have talked with my friends, evaluated my experiences, dreamt big, and drafted plans. I have scribbled down random ideas in the middle of the night. I don't know yet what I will be doing next, but I think my intuition is onto something.