Sometimes in life, you should leap before you look.

MARTIN STORM

Is caution always your best option?

When we take a leap of faith, what exactly is that faith based upon?

Patrick Overton describes it in a poem called Faith: “When you walk to the edge of all the light you have and take that first step into the darkness of the unknown, you must believe that one of two things will happen. There will be something solid for you to stand upon or you will be taught to fly.”

There are many times in life where our gut reaction is the determining factor in taking on the choices that come before us.

In these moments, we are confronted by a variable, be it an opportunity, an experience, or a quandary. When this happens, we are stuck in the gray zone of determining, whether or not, we should make an instantaneous decision or take the safer route and give the decision the full consideration that it might truly require.

Through empirical knowledge, we find our options continually reinforced with the outcomes of prior decisions that we had to make, in order that we might proceed.

Based upon how our choices resolved previously, we are offered the opportunity to review our current decision-making skills and determine whether or not, our instantaneous reactions are grounded in a reality or colored by the myriad fuels of our imagination, hopes, dreams, fears, and trepidation.

Independent of our prior track record, there always lies the possibility of something being disparate from any of the other circumstances upon which we might be basing our determination. In that subsection of reality lies the infinite possibility that this situation upon which we are ruminating, could well be the unique variable in the larger selection of options that have ever been or ever will be afforded to us.

At this point it becomes entirely incumbent upon us to weigh whatever information we have at our immediate disposal, and based solely upon the information we have on hand at that moment, determine whether or not taking action is warranted.

In the choice to leap, we must know deeply within, that we have the skills, capability, and life experience to weather whatever outcome, positive, negative or neutral that may result, and that regardless, we will continue to prevail. No matter what.

At some point in time, you’re just going to have to trust your instinct, and make that determination.

Happy Wednesday!