A client that I have recently started seeing emailed me to tell me she had left her job.

What will she say when I ask her why, I wondered. Something like…?

“It didn’t make me happy.”

“I really don’t like the people.”

“The politics were toxic.”

“They didn’t make me feel secure.”

Or will she pause for a while, gazing into the distance, searching for a reason and then shrug, “It’s weird. I actually don’t know why. It just made sense to leave.”

Same decision. But the places that decision can come from represent the single most important distinction we can ever make.

Getting married, beginning a project, starting a job, creating a friendship, initiating a programme or trying out a sport…

Or staying married, completing a project, continuing in a job, keeping a friendship, running a programme or staying with a sport…

Or divorcing a spouse, quitting a project, resigning a job, ending a friendship,  ditching a programme or stopping a sport…

We can start, continue or stop all of these out of a huge misunderstanding about the nature of reality. We can act believing that we are securing our happiness or avoiding unhappiness. We can act to feel more secure or more successful or less fearful. We can act to make people love, respect or admire us or because we feel we should. All of this is to act according to an illusion.

Or we can start, continue or stop all of these things because doing so simply, in that moment, knowing that whatever we think about it is made up, makes sense for us to do.

This is the single most important distinction of our lives.

It is the distinction between insanity and sanity, between the trap of an illusion and unfettered creativity, between suffering and bliss, between contraction and expansion.

In that moment, acting out of insecure thought, we suffer.  We are desperately searching for something different or clinging on to things or ending things in the hope of finding happiness or security or love in places where they will never be found. Underneath our fearful thinking we know this, we know we are acting on an illusion but our minds are so tired and full we believe there is no other choice.

When we act from what simply makes sense, not only is there no suffering but we open wide the gates to the glorious unknown. We enter the portal to a whole new world in which everything is possible. In partnership with ultimate creativity, freshness and inspiration we create a new reality for ourselves and others. We have no clue why we are doing it or what will result, we just know deep down it makes sense for us to do.

This is the single most important distinction we can ever make.

So why doesn’t it matter?

It doesn’t matter because the possibility to make that distinction is our birthright.

If we aren’t opening the portal in this moment, there is always, always, always the next moment.

Whatever decisions have been made, no matter how tragic or irreversible they seem, no matter how stuck we have been in the mire of our insecure thinking, there is always the next moment. There is always the possibility of fresh thought.

And the next moment will bring with it the opportunity to exit the illusion and act on what we know to do. Guaranteed.

This is the miracle of our lives.

There is never a moment that does not contain the possibility of inspiration, no matter what has gone before.

There is never a moment in which we aren’t choosing between the two vastly separate worlds of illusion or inspiration.

There is never a moment when that choice matters.