Why your choice is wrong
No matter what choice you make, someone will tell you it’s wrong.
It’s wrong because it’s not what they would have chosen.
It’s not what they need.
It’s not the choice of other people they know.
It’s not what an expert recommends.
The prosecution rests their case.
You might feel a need to defend it, or argue why you’re right. Don’t bother.
It’s not for them, or anyone else. It’s not even for your future or past. It’s only for you, and only for now.
Your choice helps you do what you need to do, be who you want to be, or feel at peace.
It improves your current actions.
That’s enough.
No need to argue that it’s true.
This thinking has been helping me with perfectionism. I don't have to make the right choice for everyone. Making a choice that's good enough, for me, for this moment, is enough to keep me moving forward.
As for "others," for years I've been thinking of the advice of US civil war General William Tecumseh Sherman. Such heavy responsibly he shouldered.
In fact, some years after the war, he was the first to publicly say, "War is hell."
At the start of the war, he was merely a head of a boys military school, in the South. Soon after he joined the war effort, for the North, he had a nervous breakdown, and could not serve. Luckily, people were more forgiving back then.
He had to give orders and directives and such. His advice was, "Never give your reasons, for your reasons may change."
I think about a person like me in peacetime maintaining his course but for newer, different reasons. So I'm careful what I tell "others."