Sanctifying your decisions

👋 On Tuesday, I went for a glass of wine with my friend Kate.

Kate and I are kindred spirits. We actually met through a London Marathon Facebook group a couple of years ago, when she posted one of her running routes and I asked if she wanted a training partner.

Two weeks later, over coffee (always vet your online friends), we discovered not only were our routes nearly identical, but we lived directly opposite each other.

As in, we’ve since taken photos of each other through our windows.

And while I could absolutely write a love story about Kate (she did get me through the marathon, after all), I actually want to share some of the wisdom we stumbled into on Tuesday night, a bottle (and a half) of wine in, putting the world to rights in a courtyard pub garden in Holborn.

At one point, we got onto the topic of decisions and how to know if you’ve made the right one.

Whether it’s changing jobs, moving home, or feeling like you’ve taken the wrong path in life. As two women who’ve both lived overseas (me in the past, Kate currently) and made a lot of tough decisions around our home lives, I brought up the big question that tends to show up for me when I’m alone on a quiet Saturday afternoon, mid-mundane task:

“What if I should be doing something else?”

No matter how happy or sad I’ve been in my life, I feel like I’m always questioning the decisions I’ve made and the path I’m on. And that’s ranged from “What if I should’ve trained to be a West End performer?”, to “What if I should stop working as a writer?”, to “What if I hadn’t moved back to the UK during COVID?”, to “What if I’d never settled in London?”

(My close friends and boyfriend know that many of these questions are largely spurred on by my current dream of getting a dog and moving to Scotland.)

And when I shared this with Kate, she quoted a Dolly Alderton column (which I have looked for but not found), in which a reader wrote in asking: How do I know I’ve made the right decisions with my life, when I question the path I’m on all the time?

Dolly’s answer was simple: You need to sanctify your past decisions.

And, if it’s not obvious from the fact I’m writing an entire Sunday reset on it, that phrase from Dolly, via Kate, has well and truly stuck with me.

For me, sanctifying your decisions means making peace with the choices you’ve made. It’s not just about knowing you made a decision, but really accepting that you did the best you could with what you had at the time.

It doesn’t mean some of those decisions weren’t wrong, or couldn’t have been handled differently. But it’s about recognising that the 23-year-old me is not the 30-year-old me, and that younger self did the best she could.

Sanctifying your decisions also means trusting the path you’re on. Trusting that if you really wanted to choose differently, you would have. And the truth is, you still can.

If you’re lying on your bed wondering why you’re not living in Australia right now, chances are it’s because you actually prefer the life you’ve built here. Your friends, your routines, and yes, even your job. You’re on the right path because it’s the one you’ve chosen.

Of course, this is easier said than done. I’m Exhibit A of this. I’m strong-willed, independent, and I was more or less single for 28 years, so I’ve made all of my decisions myself… and yet, I still question whether I’m missing out on something, somewhere.

I won’t pretend this isn’t influenced heavily by social media. Some days, I feel like I’m missing out by not moving fast enough (no house, no wedding, no dog, no kids), and others I feel like I need to slow the F down because 30 is the new 20 and we need to be making the most of it.

The point is, on both counts, constantly measuring our path against others makes it easy to feel like we’re falling short or missing out. And that pressure makes it harder to fully accept our own decisions, because we’re stuck wondering if we chose the “better” option. When in reality, I have no doubt that people are also looking at my social media and questioning their own life decisions, too.

So, how will I sanctify my decisions going forward?

Put simply, I’m going to remind myself that hindsight doesn’t change anything, and that I can accept the choices I’ve made AND do things differently going forward, without trying to rewrite the past.

It also means cutting myself some slack when the “what ifs” creep in, and recognising that while yes, these doubts and questions are very normal, they also don’t have to control how I feel about my life (even for an afternoon).

I ended the night with Kate, fairly wine drunk, and excited to head home to my little flat with my wonderful boyfriend to discuss the evening.

Because it was every single decision I’d ever made (yes, including the one that took me into Shake Shack on my way home) that led me to running into the bedroom, flopping on the bed, and realising that “sanctifying your decisions” was the best life advice I’d had in years.

It turns out it’s pretty easy to make peace with the decisions I’ve made when they’ve led me right here.

What I’ve loved this week

#1 Overcompensating, Amazon Prime

We’ve spent most evenings over the past couple of weeks watching Overcompensating. Benito Skinner stars in and wrote the comedy series, which draws on his own experience of coming out and his time at university. The humour is very American, but the show effectively balances the challenges of coming out with some laugh-out-loud moments. There’s also an entire episode dedicated to a Charli XCX concert, which almost automatically adds half a star to the rating.

#2 Table for One, Emma Gannon

I loved Emma Gannon’s debut novel, Olive, so was excited to download Table for One on my kindle. The story starts similarly to Gannon’s debut, with the main character navigating the break-up of a relationship. I found it a little slower than Olive, but I love a book about women breaking free from shit relationships and becoming the best version of themselves, and that’s exactly what this is.

I’ll be so real with you. The heat got in the way, my evening plans got in the way, and the 11PM bedtime was not achieved.

Like genuinely, not even once. So, we start again next week when it’s not a heatwave, and I have fewer plans. Woops! ✨